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[Aloshi]

I just finished it.

The ending is as bad as everyone says.
At least I got Battlefield 3 for free with my pre-order. I guess.

[Blademasterbobo]

their games have started to go downhill since the EA acquisition. if you look at the release dates, their last two "good" games (ME 2 and DA 1) were released around a year after the acquisition (ie, they were in development before it happened.)

[Alevice]

i thought me1 was already published under their ea banner

[Blademasterbobo]

They were acquired in 2007, which is when ME was released. DA:O had been in development since way before that, and they probably already started ME2 around then. Merging them with Mythic in 2009 might've also negatively affected them?

[Samtagonist]

Someone formerly at Bioware, currently Riot, defends the DLC choices

"judge our games based on what they are."

Hahahahahaha, okay!  You got it! 

"There's no point in releasing DLC a year after your game has come out when most people have already sold your game back to GameStop three times,"

But that means that the same number of people would own the game.  If the game is changing hands so often, surely it's going to end up with someone by the time you release the DLC.  Then again, Gamestop is always kind of gravid with used copies of Mass Effect for under ten dollars.  Maybe the game does have a high return rate.

Players rant--they know nothing about this DLC that's coming out except its name.

Of those whiny, entitled players who know nothing about the details!  I'm sure once they know that we took out a plot critical squadmate who is needed to get one of the endings of the game they'll calm down.

We just want to release awesome stuff.

It must be so heartbreaking to then have to be forced to release Mass Effect 3 and it's DLC.

Judge our games based on what they are. Judge the DLC based on what it is.

The game is garbage.  The DLC is a shitty cash grab.

Stop thinking you're a producer and telling us when and where we should be building our content.

Is everyone who steps up to a podium at GDC required by law to be the biggest tool in the universe?

[Alevice]

a plot critical squadmate who is needed to get one of the endings

wait, what?

[JoGribbs]

8 hours into it, think it's pretty good.

Mass Effect is not art.

"Joe you are being apologist"

No I am just saying that sometimes I want to watch Seth Green fall in love with a robot.

"so you're playing it to laugh at it?"
 
not entirely, there are moments like walking into a hospital and finding an old crewmate who is now terminally ill, and these old days the characters are reminiscing about are days that I was there for, days that I, the player, literally experienced. Bioware, whilst adding a few new rooms, have kept the new Normandy more or less the same as ME2. I wonder the hallways and I look around places that I had personal conversations in, these locations inextricably tied to events in my past. I do this in life sometimes. I do this in Mass Effect too.

"so there is genuine pathos"

well no. The guy whose dying is like in his combat gear still... like in the hospital... if Bioware wanted to show he was dying or w/e then they could have like... put him in hospital gowns. The human interaction in this game is also too stilted and robotic for me to engage with anything. I was talking to somebody about their students and they said 'if anybody messes with my students, I'll tear them apart' and so I picked an option like 'what do the students do?' but it came out as 'what's SO valuable about these students ANYWAY?'. At another point a... robot that looked like a naked lady was asking my advice about how to romantically woo my crippled pilot. The plot of this game is... indulgent. I read somewhere that they let you romance Garrus in ME2 because fans wanted you to be able to, even though it doesn't really make sense. Now, I'm not saying that Bioware are afraid of sex or anything but... they have these epic codex pages on how every single gun or engine or exoskeleton in their magic space universe works, but there's nothing really on how... like aliens fuck. Like what does a Turian penis look like? Is it bifurcated like a kangaroos? The point is that the EDI thing is cliche and gross. Bad writing + poor animation means Idontgiveafuck. What emotionally effects me about this game are things like... knowing a person over time. Visiting a location and seeing it changed. Discovering the fate of characters I knew a long time ago. Hearing about how war has affected the various races in the galaxy, races which I am to an extent familiar with. Not particularly the writing or anything

"so you agree Bioware has gone downhill"
 
No this shit was in the first Mass Effect. The people have always looked bad, and the story has always been a thinly-veiled military wank fantasy, where good honest soldiers try and face down a deadly threat that's incapable of negotiation, but are stopped by spineless bureaucrats with their 'rules' and 'due process'. Like I said sometimes I just want to see Seth Green fall in love with a robot. I think games can be art but Mass Effect 3 is not that. It's schlocky sci-fi and I think I'm okay with it.

[Samtagonist]

a plot critical squadmate who is needed to get one of the endings

wait, what?

I've been hearing a lot of people saying the From Ashes DLC unlocks a new ending option.

giant robot tits

I really have a hard time believing that this is the culmination of Joker's arc.  Because up to this point Joker had been a pretty cool character.  The first game does a good job of establishing his character.  He's, well, Seth Green.  I liked talking to him, and I liked learning about him.  He was just a very likeable character, there were no strings attached to that.  We learned how he feels about flying, why he does it, and we get to see him be a great pilot.  For a comic relief character who flies the ship, well, it seemed pretty good. 

The second game handled it well too.  The introduction of EDI and Legion provided some tension for him to deal with.  The whole game Joker is forced to deal with this dubiously trustworthy AI that has invaded HIS ship.  The first thing every expects is some sort of HAL9000 situation, and Joker is no stranger to expressing how he feels about that.  Then the ship gets invaded, and the salvaged Reaper AI asks for full control of the ship.  You're thinking, 'oh boy here we go', but EDI proves to actually be trustworthy.  There's no backstabbing, no betrayal, she's genuinely helpful and even cracks a joke or too.  In the end Joker learns to be a little more trustworthy of her and she learns to be a little more human.  It was a nice scene, a nice arc, and two nice characters. 

MASS EFFECT 3
EDI GETS A BODY AND JOKER WANTS TO FUCK IT
ITS LIKE TWO FUTURAMA PLOTS SMOOSHED TOGETHER

[Manuel Magalhães]

I think the new ending is where Ethan Mars appears on scene by surprise while running furiously and kills your character by shouting repeatedly his son's name. After this Ethan hugs his son, the universe explodes making the screen white and then he wakes up in the toilet of a french bathroom.

[Samtagonist]

I think the new ending is where Ethan Mars appears on scene by surprise while running furiously and kills your character by shouting repeatedly his son's name. After this Ethan hugs his son, the universe explodes making the screen white and then he wakes up in the toilet of a french bathroom.

SPOILERED for INTENSE EMOTIONAL EMOTIONS

he cudnt save teh kid
he is deed
send dis to five other peopel or someone you love will be kiled by reepers!!!!!

[Manuel Magalhães]

nooooooooooo ;(

[moi]

[Warning: Pretty heavy Mass Effect spoilers ahead, for all games in the series]

In Mass Effect and sequel, there are two events that stand out as nuanced, influential, and impactful character moments.

In Mass Effect, you find the queen of a race long thought extinct held prisoner inside a laboratory on a frozen planet. Centuries before, her and her children wreaked havoc across the galaxy, and were only stopped by one of the Council races uplifting an army of brutes to beat the snot out of them. She is the last of her kind.

You are given two choices in this scenario. The first is to release her, which could potentially lead to another galactic war. She possesses the dead to talk, after all, and her story sounds a little fishy. Her children have, after all, been attacking you this entire time, and her reassurance of “oh, they were crazy” doesn’t appeal. The second is to incinerate her, completing the genocide of her species and potentially saving the galaxy from another century of strife. Both choices offer a hard consequence. In one, war is likely to happen if she is ever found. In the other, you commit complete genocide. What can you do?

In Mass Effect 2, you are given a choice between using a virus to rewrite Geth that are hostile to organic life forms, or destroying the virus and allowing the Geth to make their own decisions. It underlines the concept of free will and whether or not any one person has the decision to remove it from those that have it. If you destroy the virus, the Geth that wuld be affected will continue attacking organics, but they do so of their own free will. If you use the virus to rewrite the Geth, you stop a conflict but remove their ability to think independently. It is, yet again, a poignant choice that feels smart and subtle.

Mass Effect 3 takes the path of least resistance in every single element of its writing, and it shows.

So basically ME 1 and 2 are a just a big ripoff of the Ender books?

[allen]

I have the From Ashes DLC and I only got the 2 ending options. You get a third if your war readiness thing is high enough (I THINK), which you can increase by playing multiplayer or doing every side quest and scanning every planet in the entire game. Or a mix of those. Fuck that, I just watched the extra ending on Youtube. And it was dumb, obviously not meant as a true ending but some kind of cheap bonus for doing a shit ton of work.

[Dragonmaw]

It's dependent on the "outcome" of the last battle. You improve the outcome by getting war assets. War Readiness is not actually needed, but it increases the effectiveness of the assets you already have. So you can either get every war asset and function at 50%, or get a few and function at 100%. Or somewhere in-between.

I actually kinda like the system, even if it's in the middle of a pretty bleh game.

[allen]

how could you like the system? it's kind of just..there. a reward for doing those boring misc quests on the citadel where shepherd spies on people's conversations, finding random shit in levels, or scanning planets.

at least those boring mini quests have some meaning to the game rather than just a tiny reward of money and experience, but it didn't really contribute anything meaningful to the game as a whole.