Mass Effect 3

[DuckThor Evil]

No. The bits I don't like, and I've just encountered my first real game breaker, are when you are forced into a situation that is entirely out of character for your style of gameplay or the role itself e.g.

Spoiler

When you are freeing the geth and reclaiming rannoch. You end up fighting a reaper whether you want to or not. But the gameplay itself ruins to whole thing. Shepard basically stands in a killzone with no cover and no where to go facing a 200ft homicidal robot with a laser that can level whole cities. And the only weapon you have is a laser targeting system that takes ages to actually work. The whole scene is totally out of syc with the rest of the game. And very frustrating because of it.

It doesn't change my view that ME is one of the defining game series for this gen, by virtue of scope and vision, but it does make me question the decisions that go into designing the game. It also makes me wonder if anyone at Bioware actually plays their own games from start to finish and not just be testing discrete parts.

Are you stuck in it?

Spoiler

You don't have to finish the targeting in one try, you can aim for a bit, then let go of the trigger if you have to evade the beam and start aiming again, the previous targeting still counts and the aim wont take as long, giving you plenty of time to finish the aim. I think it resets between shots though. I had some problems with the last shot at first, but all in all it took maybe 4-5 tries. It's pretty easy to just run away from the beam.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Are you stuck in it?

Spoiler

You don't have to finish the targeting in one try, you can aim for a bit, then let go of the trigger if you have to evade the beam and start aiming again, the previous targeting still counts and the aim wont take as long, giving you plenty of time to finish the aim. I think it resets between shots though. I had some problems with the last shot at first, but all in all it took maybe 4-5 tries. It's pretty easy to just run away from the beam.

Not really stuck, but not really wanting to do it either as it doesn't fit with the rest of the choices made by shepard in the rest of the game. Makes me want to just leave the quarians and the geth to get on with it and concentrate on the rest of the missions!

 

[Prophecy2k]

The game is for 99% of the time a solid 8~9 for me.
But that last 1% just breaks everything so bad you are going to see the shitty plot holes over the whole series.
I mean you start searching on the internet and find all the plot holes

someone on gaf said this.
You can serve me a delicious dinner, but if you shit in my mouth for desert!
The only part im going to remember is you shitting in my mouth.

Woow... I guess i shall start to brace myself then.

 

[Billy Idol]

You guys are quite a bit overreacting imo! The story is ok. It is not bad.

Name me a game with better story (except ME1 of course ). Name me a game series with a better conclusive last part? Games have shit stories. But...movies have as well. Name one recent block buster movie with a good story!!

Games, movies, books, ol granny telling...good stories are rare nowadays!!

Spoiler

I call kudos to Bioware, to make the ending of this trilogy so clear and definitive!!! I would have hated a cliffhanger open end, just for the sake of eventually making more money with the franchise!
Well done Bioware....and now go improve the graphic tech!!

@BoardBonobo: come on man! You are a gamer right?!?! This scene takes like 2 minutes to finish. Do it, then move on with the other missions...I bet it took you more time to right the forum post, than to actually play the scene...

 

[thatdude90210]

The thing is, Bioware intends to sell DLC that happen during and before ME3, according to the IOS app that came out yesterday "Mass effect 3: final hours" link

Spoiler

Seems rather pointless with the ending. Organics are stranded, killed, or turned partially synthetic against their will. What do I care if Aria retakes Omega or not. Or some other group gets their goal or whatever.

This ending really limits their options on DLC.

 

[MfA]

They let the writers go completely out of control ... the producer was asleep at the wheel. From a writer's point of view (ie. egomaniacal) I can see the attraction in putting a great big universe destroying period at the end ... but from a business point of view it was idiotic, they castrated the franchise (only writers really like prequels).

Mass Effect MMO is DoA with the current ending.

 

[Devious]

Does anyone here have an easier way of removing the disc out of the collectors edition case? I feel like every time I try and remove it, it's going to snap in two. lol

Xbox 360 version btw.

 

[bkilian]

You are also ignoring the fact that you haven't played Mass Effect 3, which makes your "opinion" sound like a textbook case of trolling. You've made your mind about this long time ago, or did you camp at your friend's house and watched the whole thing I'm also upset about the ending for many reasons, but the game up to that point was great and with better ending (which imo would have been a trivially easy to do ) it would have been as close to flawless as I could realistically expect.

Can somebody explain to me what was wrong with the story in ME 3 before the ending, from other angle than "the end ruins everything?", which is an angle that I disagree with, but can understand.

What kind of ending were you expecting? From the beginning, Bioware was pretty clear this was a trilogy and it was going to end.

Spoiler

Did you expect rainbows and bunnies? Maybe you wanted the hollywood ending, where Shepherd and Liara settle down in a little cottage and have lots of little blue children, a few of whom become ardat-yakshi and kill everything in sight?

 

[AlNom]

I don't see why they removed all the stuff about Dark Energy build-up becoming a problem. I mean, they kept hinting at it in the previous two games, and hell, the whole point of the mass effect is that dark energy is released. Sure it's just space pollution, but at least it made sense to some extent why the reapers would keep coming back every 50K years - to stop rampant use of MEF. MEF may be the end-game for technology, but perhaps elevating the races to that point immediately would allow for some time to come up with an alternative. The geth developed their space-faring technology on their own for instance, attempting to not be dependent on others. Maybe they could have developed an alternative "clean gas".

You could argue that it's a circular problem with the Reapers providing the ME tech in the first place, but that introduces a random variable to the progress of species making it harder to predict what will happen and when.

Meh, anyways. What's done is done.

Does anyone here have an easier way of removing the disc out of the collectors edition case? I feel like every time I try and remove it, it's going to snap in two. lol

Xbox 360 version btw.

If it's anything like the Gears 2 CE, try removing one of the plastic bits that holds the disc in place - wriggle it until it snaps off. You don't want to do any more than that otherwise it won't hold the disc at all.

Or just press those 3+ bits inward to release the disc.

 

[joker454]

Name me a game with better story (except ME1 of course ).

Maybe that's part of the issue. I haven't played ME3, but ME1 was such an amazing and memorable game to me that even though I loved ME2 it seemed a bit dissapointing in comparison. ME1 just set the bar to high, so when I eventually get around to playing ME3 I'm fully expecting it to be worse than ME1 hence maybe I won't be as dissapointed as others are here.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

What kind of ending were you expecting? From the beginning, Bioware was pretty clear this was a trilogy and it was going to end.

Spoiler

Did you expect rainbows and bunnies? Maybe you wanted the hollywood ending, where Shepherd and Liara settle down in a little cottage and have lots of little blue children, a few of whom become ardat-yakshi and kill everything in sight?

There is a five page article on the issue which is somewhat accurate of my feelings.

http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/2/

Spoiler

Imo the ending is structurally and logically a complete mess. The ending feels underdeveloped, like it was outsourced to some C-studio and this is a stark contrast to the rest of the game, which I felt was of epic quality.

I didn't necessary need a happy ending. I went in expecting Shepard to die. This is not the biggest issue, although I would prefer happy ending. I've already written few posts about the end, but I'll try to put it together, even if there is too much stuff to type...

For starters the ending undermined most of what you did during the trilogy. The war assets you collected had very illogical effect to the ending. Instead of having actually a direct meaning like your actions, ship upgrades and decisions in ME 2 suicide mission, here they only affected what the energy ball from Citadel does. Why did war assets (other than the ones specifically Crucible related) affected the effects of the Crucible energy ball? Why and how was Normandy fleeing from the battle with my squad mates on board ?, how does that work logistically? How the hell was Anderson and Illusive man at Citadel? The recycled ending video felt totally out of place in the "good" endings, where it only harmed Reapers, but still caused damage to Normandy and made it crash. Only the bad ending with destructive energy was fit for that scene.

The whole series was about choices, but the ending was in stark contrast to everything else we did. There was no choice to try to even reason with the Space god brat on their view. You couldn't bring forth the breakthroughs you managed to do during the trilogy like the peace with the Geth. All the options were bad. With Mass relays destroyed, the whole fleet was stranded in the Sol-system. The Quarians whom just got their home world back thanks to my efforts can't go there ever again and it was all for nothing. Turians and Quarians are going to have massive problems with food.

There should have been some sort of meaningful confrontation with Harbinger if only dialogue, but preferably more than that. I can't believe they didn't give us that.
We still got to upgrade the ship as a safety measure for a combat situation, but that didn't turn to mean anything. We were prepping Citadel defense worse, but that didn't turn out to mean anything. Nothing really mattered for the end, except in very illogical and twisted way. The war assets should have had direct and visually clear meaning in the end or in the events leading into to the very end, but they didn't. How does me having Turians, Krogans and Geth ships in the fleet make Synthesis as an option? or calibrate the effects of the energy ball?

How is two minute recycled video with glaring plot holes and full of inconsistencies a proper end to a five year journey that delivered at a high level during that entire time. The actual game was near perfect in my eyes and all the pieces were perfectly aligned and in right positions for us to have an ending of epic proportions. The ending should have been expanded more, they promised a lot more. It would have been easy to make it a lot better.

I would actually even be somewhat ok with the star child stuff and the choices if the events prior reaching the Citadel would have been better connected to other events in the game, specifically the was assets playing a significant part. They pieced in a finish that felt like a sloppy fart. It feels like they did as little effort to the finish as humanly possible and after the high quality of the game up till that point the ending was just depressingly badly put together.

It's hard to put all that into words. I think the link has some good stuff that explains things better.

 

[MfA]

What kind of ending were you expecting?

Spoiler

I expected the McGuffin to weaken the reapers, allowing the alliance to defeat the reapers with Harbinger being the end boss in some way (probably with a mission going inside to kill him from within). With war resources determining how happy the ending gets to be.

I didn't expect them to effectively end the ME universe, cause who the hell expects a company to kill a successful franchise like that?

 

[Ghostz]

Game with better story than Mass Effect? That's easy: Bioshock, GTA4, Uncharted 2, Alpha Protocol, Portal......

 

[thatdude90210]

Spoiler

Nobody is asking for fluffy bunnies or blue babies. But in the end, a player who have spend at least a 100 hours on a heroic trilogy should at least feel some heroism. Instead, you have to commit partial genocide to prevent total genocide. What do you think would happen to all those ships that came to fight with the Normandy? If the Normandy barely outruns the blast and crashes, all those others that didn't outrun the blast would be caught in the blast.

Plus all those who came to fight would be stranded without mass relays. You united the Geth and the Quarians? Great, their fleets aren't going home anytime soon. Cured the Genophage? Oh too bad their strongest warriors who came to fight aren't going home. And all the colonies that aren't yet hit by Reapers, they aren't getting resupplied soon.

The ending"s" basically only allowed the player who loved the ME universe (you don't spend the at least 100 hours on it if you don't) to take away much of what they love about the ME universe. That's why the ending is a franchise killer.

 

[AlphaWolf]

so you were expecting fluffy bunnies.

 

[thatdude90210]

Would have been better if you said blue bunnies.

 

[Acert93]

Fluffy Bunnies who make Blue Babies Didn't you read the entire spoiler

So... Mass Relays. Are they some sort of constructed wormhole (errr Einstein-Rosen Bridge) if I am understanding this correctly to allow transit over large distances quickly that could not otherwise be accomplished without such?

Btw, what is the "Mass Effect"?

Sincerely, total Mass Effect newb... but quite enjoying the meltdown. I never knew people cared this much about a game... then again I cried when I was 8 when Optimus Prime died.

 

[AlNom]

They're giant sling shots.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_effect_field

The mass effect is a phenomena when applying an electric current to eezo matter, which can either increase or decrease the mass of an object within the field.

 

[Acert93]

Wow, skimming over that indicates Mass Effect has a pretty large and fleshed out universe. Impressive.

 

[Arwin]

Did anyone try the PSN version? I might try it and if I get bored with the combat (which killed my interest in the previous two really early) there's always story mode ...