TIGSource Forums

Anyone thrilled about it?

I have been playing the multiplayer demo a lot lately, it is quite fun. My highest char is a lvl 10 Infiltrator (<3 headshots). My Oirgin user is alevicejones for anyone who wants to join the fun.

I'd like to play it just to finish the story, but I've decided against buying any games from EA (though this might have to be an exception)

Interestingly, it was ridiculously cheap in the mexican origin store (less than 40 USD), so even when origin might be mediocre, i couldnt help preordering it.

Considering I didn't like the direction 2 took the series, and I'm really not interested in Origin, I'm gonna be passing on this until it's bargain bin priced.

Shooting feels much better (even pretty good now!) and the multiplayer doesn't feel like an afterthought (which is cool in my book). Still that crazy 'America in space' vibe going on but I'm kind of interested in what happens to Shepard and co.

Also the opening 5 minutes of this game make the entirety of Mass Effect 2 pointless. 'Remember when the reapers enslaved the protheans and built that giant robot dude with the scary eyes? no?'

fuck EA and fuck origin, definitely not paying for it.

though I would like to play it, if only to continue the story. not a fantastic tale but I like sci-fi and it's good enough for me.

Yeah I'm totally hyped for Mass Effect 3.
Well it's EA but... it's Mass Effect as well.
It's Bioware, they're not gonna fuck up a sequel are they? Wait... Dragon Age II.
I guess it would be nice to finish the story... wait, a certain DLC includes central aspects of the story? Mass Effect 3? Meh, what's that?

I pre-ordered it because they were offering Battlefield 3 with it for free for about a day. Was planning on waiting, but that was too good a deal to pass up.

This is exactly what I did. I don't have a problem with Origin, as I use it for The Old Republic and don't have a problem with it. I am looking forward to this game very much. The demo was lots of fun.  :)

Eh, I'm not excited about Origin and I feel like EA is spending too much time playing with microtransaction methods and not enough time making cool games.

I'm gonna skip Mass Effect 3 altogether. Not finding out what happens is a small price to pay if it puts another chip in the pot telling EA to back off. Plenty of other games to play in the meantime.

As much as I'd like to "stick it to EA," I'm too much of a Mass Effect whore to sit this one out. And I wasn't expecting much from the multiplayer, but I have to admit, I'm kind of obsessed with it now. After playing the vanguard class in multiplayer, I can't understand why anyone would play as anything else--everything is just so sloooow in comparison.

Infiltrator would like to have a talk with Vanguard. Assuming he survives...

Probably won't buy it until it gets reeeeeeeeal cheep.  I will be buying one of those neat action figures on day one, though.  


Please no.

Spoilers --- FEEL THE RHYTHM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK99_T61alc)

spoiiiiiler alert

Maybe.  Now that I'm thinking about this, this could be the same thing they did with Mass Effect to try to dissuade people from buying used copies.  He might come with that Cerberus Network code thing they did last time, and this might be for the criminals who are so vile as to buy the game used.  Regardless, sorry for not allowing you to prolong your inevitable disappointment. 

OKAY BIG TIME SPOILERS HERE SO WATCH THE FUCK OUT I AM VERY SERIOUS

Here's the ending of this whole mess. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyGvA5Qre5Y)
But here's a spoiler that shouldn't surprise anyone.  It's dumb.

Looks fake.

You know I'd think so too, but I am inclined to believe this because it syncs up rather well with previous leaked information.  

If anything in that is fake, it's the very end. The quality drops hard.

I actually thought the same thing about Portal 2.  I thought that these low resolution, pre-rendered cutscenes could've never been the actual endings.

I'm saying the audio drops in quality.

I am actually kind of hoping that this is true, because it would be hilarious. Nobody could be stupid enough to actually do that, right?

BIOWARE.  :)

BioWare has yet to stoop to something so cliche as the "it was all a dream/story/hallucination" trick, so I don't really think it's real.

In two weeks they'll be selling a suite of better endings as DLC.

That's it, how hard it may sound but isn't it a good reason to stop supporting it?
What is your stance on this trend:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri0vrJ-y2zM

Unfortunately launch-day DLC is a fact of life. The problem is that in the 3 months or so it takes for the companies to do their slow-ass certification process, the dev team doesn't really have much to do. So they put themselves to work making extra content.

I call bullshit.  The so-and-so squadmate that's DLC was in the leaked script.

TIGSource next compo's theme needs to be JAAAAAASOOOOOOON.

not all planned shit can fit onto the final game due to development time and shit

how is 40 usd ridiculously cheap? i'll wait till it's on sale for 10$ or something on steam, probably by next xmas

i still haven't even played mass effect 1 or 2, either, so i should probably play those first

the game costed 60 usd elsewhere. for a aaa release, thats cheap.

and it wont be on steam anyway.

why won't it be on steam? mass effect 1 and 2 were on there. did their company have a disagreement with steam or something?

They now have a competitor to Steam. (Origin)

ea did, on a matter on dlcs. this is why crysis 2 is no longer sold there.

so mass effect 3 will remain for the time being an origin exclusive.

makes sense. still, if they're a competitor then in order to stay competitive they're going to have to have sales too, so i'll just get it from them when they have a 10$ sale on xmas

ea is not famous for dropping prices in its store. i hope other online retailers do, tho.

I would have to search for a game that costs more than 60 dollars right now. What are you comparing it to that makes you think 60 is "cheap"?

I think the most expensive game I bought recently was Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which is 50 EUR when it's not on sale, and when it is on sale it can be purchased for about a third of that amount. Maybe games cost more if you play consoles instead of on the PC? (But then again, don't most people who play consoles buy used games instead of new ones?)

I never said 60 is cheap, I said that 40 USD for a preorder game that costs elsewhere 60 USD is cheap.


According to google, 50 Euros = 66.03 U.S. dollars

And most modern AAA games cost between 50-60 USD anyway. From steam itself:


Skyrim, 60USD
http://store.steampowered.com/app/72850/
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, 60USD
http://store.steampowered.com/app/102500/
CoD: MW3, 60 USD
http://store.steampowered.com/app/115300/
Anno 2070, 50 USD
http://store.steampowered.com/app/48240/
And even ME2, 50 USD
http://store.steampowered.com/app/24980/

It doesn't have to be that way though.
Devs can, you know, get some time off.
Or begin work on the next project.
Or the DLC could be included free as part of the game's purchase price.
You know.

3 months doesnt sound like a lot of time. they have to plan, write the script and get voice acting, program it, design levels, graphics and animations, and then test it.

though they probably do it independently of the build that's going for certification.

but even still, not a good excuse for shitty launch dlc.

And they decide to cut THAT?  Why the hell would they decide to make meeting a living Prothean is something that should be entirely optional and have no major bearing on the plot.  Oh, hey, it's Prote-Magotes, he's got a few unique lines of dialogue and maybe even a quest of two!  YES SIR WE HAVE FULLY EXPLORED EVERYTHING THAT WE COULD HAVE DONE WITH A LIVE PROTHEAN. 

I call terrible writing and planning here.  Either the Prothean squadmate is written so poorly that he IS actually completely nonessential to the plot or someone decided to shave off what should be an integral part to understand and exploring the Mass Effect mythos.

important things are cut in AAA games because of time constraints, the developers can't "choose" what to cut, the producers/suits do

example: most of the second disc of xenogears was cut / compressed because of time constraints. it's one of the most important parts of the game but they still cut it because the producers said so, it wasn't exactly their choice

Actually, developers do, they have time restraints and know what they aren't finished with, tough choices are made, producers/suits are developers too, they manage.

I think it was planned early to be cut and put into dlc, as people said, you can't just decide a month beforehand to pop out a dlc on release day, that stuff has to be planned and organized.

Pushing it on release day is fine in a business sense, but it's very low against customers who has already paid a quite expensive premium for their game, it's dlc meant to make some very good profit, not to empower the game further at a proper price.

you're gonna buy the game regardless, so who cares

watched the actual endings (not that thing posted earlier in this thread) and

jesus christ

the laziest fucking writers



don't worry, i won't spoil it, but suffice to say ME3's story may be the most poorly thought-out of the series

have fun with your preorders guys :coffee:

I think it was settled that, aside from a few cultural tidbits, protheans aren't that interesting. I mean, their big act was exist before the current council races and change the citadel signal. The only remotely interesting and relevant thing to know is how they looked. It's like defrosting a caveman.

Had you told me that we would figure out who shot the cannon that left a derelict reaper around and where the keepers came from, i would have bought your statement.

the only mass effect i have paid money for is the first one and it's staying that way thank you





anyway, i can't say that i know why the DLC was made, but my money is on whatever involves bioware's staff and writers being the laziest they fucking can, because that just about fits everything they have done for the last seven years

I don't have a great understanding of narrative writing, so could you please explain what makes the writers lazy without spoiling the game?

Game is out until june and they are already making DLC.

DLC is part of life now, no use bitching about it really. Nothing anyone can do about it.

You can refuse to buy it.

http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/hulk-explains-why-we-should-stop-it-with-the-hero-journey-shit/

Last time they did a pretty good job.  The game came with the DLC for a squadmate who was far from essential, and clearly the least fleshed out squadmate in the game.  If he was cut form the game, I wouldn't have missed him.  Of course there was no talk about how Zaeed took three months to develop in the time after the game was finished, he was just sort of slipped in.  He felt like a bonus, and it was a rather honest way to discourage people to buy used copies of the game.

Now they've completely changed their way of doing things, and it kind of stinks.


I've never payed more than five dollars for a Mass Effect game.  I'm rather intent on making that a tradition!


No, Hepler only wrote the romance stuff.


They could've been interesting.  I don't think that Dee Jay is going to have that much wisdom to impart in what is probably a limited role.  But, I play Mass Effect to learn this little cultural things.  They really could've done something with this, imagine if he didn't know about the fall of his people, maybe he feel into some permafrost and Paully Shore melted him out.  They really could've explored the horror of waking up to a universe where your species only exist as monsters, a blight on the g-WHOOPS I FORGOT THIS IS BIOWARE SORRY I ALMOST SAID SOMETHING WITH SUBSTANCE.


Guys stop talking about video game things.

Let's all talk about how hard we'll get to hug Tali in this game.  I really fell in love with her in the last game.


Get behind me, Satan.

Also, does anyone know if Hulk and Moviebob are the same person? 

not trying to tell you what to talk about, but no one has anything interesting to say about the dlc and you're just repeating yourselves at this point.

it's not even that, because that's not what happens

it's that literally all your choices were for naught and you get a DEUS EX 3 style PICK ENDING NOW room with your choices basically based around how many paragon points you have picked up, complete with basically the same damn NPC telling you about the importance of CHOICES, when in fact you don't get any

it's just so fucking lazy


i'd explain more but that'd be spoilers. i guess if you really want to understand, go watch some endings. it'll be fun

I'm gonna hug Tali so fucking hard.

30 mins for me.

FFFFUCUUUUCK MY FUCKIGN LIFE


ME# can't import my femshep face! Fuck this shit.

Holy shit I am angry at that. I wont bother to start a fucking new game until they fix that.

...what.

I haven't played it yet, but now I'm thinking maybe I ought not to.

Currently 2.4/10 on Metacritic. (http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mass-effect-3)

critic reviews sure are fucking stupid

since no one is ever critical (maybe because they get money from the companies they write reviews for? great system!)

This might be a dealbreaker for me. Apparently this affects anyone who imported their ME1 character into ME2 and didn't alter their appearance (or maybe anyone who imported their ME1 character into ME2 at all? Not sure...)

Though it's not like I have time to play an umpteen-hour RPG right now anyway, so I guess I'll just wait and keep my fingers crossed that there'll be a patch by the time I get around to it...


Ugh. The Metacritic user reviews hate hivemind is one of the least appealing aspects of the -- and I use the term loosely -- "community."

I'm pretty sure a lot of people are boycotting the game. TotalBiscuit's video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri0vrJ-y2zM) explains a lot, and you can see the series' fans rage in the comments. Super-important content not available to all purchasers, and instead released as DLC? What. And apparently I've heard all our decisions since ME1 make no impact whatsoever... oh well, not that I kept my saved games, but it was supposed to be a pretty rewarding thing to remind us of all the good/bad things we did in the past.

But yeah, goddamn it EA. Way to ruin a fantastic series with all your money-making exploits. I can't believe Bioware agreed to all of this, definitely a high probability of having been forced.

how sure are you that most of the votes aren't fake? 2.4 seems unlikely unless 4chan or reddit or somethingawful or some other shit-stain of a community on the internet got together and rated it a 1.

it's a pretty solid game so far, I don't have many complaints yet. there are a couple of annoying bugs, but nothing majorly game-breaking. if you liked the first two I see no reason why you wouldn't like the third. unless you really don't want more of the same, which me3 basically is more of the same.

I'm a series fan and I don't understand the complaints, at all. The DLC thing was annoying, but then again I'm not 12 years old so I'm not going to spend an inordinate amount of time bitching about that. I certainly am not going to let it hamper my enjoyment of the game.

Tell me a reason why one would want to do that other than just sheer hate for an incompetent game.

If a game is hyped up but obviously bad people will hate on it.

/v/ currently has several posts urging people to 0 it. So, yeah.

I actually do enjoy the ritual of making a mockery out of Metacritic every time a major release comes out.  It's a pretty fantastic outpouring of bile from a frustrated community.  I'm not too keen on disingenuously attacking a game with an flat zero because of that, but it is funny to watch.  Who gives a shit about the user score on Metacritic, let alone the actual score.  At least we get some funny comments out of it and some upset babies.  Let the community blow off some harmless steam.  It's not like anyone cares about the anger from a very vocal minority that will either never ever play the game to see if their rage amounted to anything or will just end up caving and buying it anyway.


I shit you not.  I was eating Chinese food when I was reading this line.  I crack open my fortune cookie, my fortune is 'Be indifferent to snide remarks'.  Cosmic.

But, damn, why is this game such a hotbed for controversy?

It seems like there's a lot of ire flying around concerning the game.  We haven't even talked about all the Slab Bulkhead and Buff McLargehuge romance options that are lighting a fire under community.  Gosh, that's a mess, let me tell you.  As if people weren't mad at Hepler enough, once these scenes leaked the shit really hit the fan.

The problem I got with having gay romance options in this game is that it makes me not want to talk to my squadmates because I don't want to have to spurn a gay relationship.  I think that's kind of awkward.  And I''m not being homophobic here.  I kind of ended up accidentally walking into a romance with Miranda in the second game that I didn't even want, then I just had to sort of shut her down.  It makes me kind of depressed to think that Splint Chesthair and Thick McRunfast have these feelings for me, one of them for three games and several years, that my character has no interest in reciprocating.   The poor guy has to watch as I deflower female alien virgin after female alien virgin wondering...  Why not me?  The way casual conversation evolves into flirty after your third conversation with someone is always a little too sloppy for my taste anyway.  Except for Tali, who always seemed like she had the equivalent of four beers in her and you told her you were Mister Cool Spaceman.

It's a shame because I totally would be down with making my MaleShep romance a non-human male alien.  That's the only thing I don't like about this, it seems like there are no gay alien options.  I hope there are, but from what I'm seeing it looks like there are only human options.

I never got why people were so worked up about romance in this game.  The sex scenes were always awkward, and in Mass Effect 2 it resulted in my holding Tali like a body pillow, and then sitting with her with a thousand yard long stare as she just kind of yaps and yaps and yaps and yaps.  It's pretty blatant pandering, but then again I am into being pandered to...

But still, people are really angry over the option for Shepard to put his penis into someone elses penis.  It's pretty embarrassing to see people desperately try to mask their insecurities when talking about this shit.

so why exactly is this game so hated? is it the dlc crap?

Samtagonist, have you seen Space Mutiny?

I haven't watched much MST3K.  I have seen a lot of the shorter PSAs they made fun of, but I've never actually seen a full episodes.

Me and my friends quote that Coily the Spring short all the time.

Okay, your naming conventions were similar to a running joke they have in that episode.



So, back to ME 3. Jim Rossignol seemed to like it a bit. I usually agree with him on things, so I might pick it up this summer.

If there's anything that really rustles my jimmies about the game, it's that your time spent in multiplayer will affect the ending of the game. 

Rock Paper Shotgun actually wrote a bit about this.  Let me try to find th-...

(http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg402/scaled.php?server=402&filename=39183991.jpg&res=medium)

Oh dear.

just played the DLC, and I was kinda bummed out this is what they decided to cut out of the game. can kinda see why so many people were upset about it.

but then again it's a good incentive to buy the collector's edition, since it's actually worthwhile to own and not your typical throwaway boring dlc. still a shady thing to do, but at least it isnt shit content.

I don't care about the DLC since I wouldn't bother buying it anyway but the multiplayer thing has me thinking about returning my copy to amazon.

I guess because it is a half-assed everything. It is not a proper shooter, not a proper rpg, sterile and boring level-design, low-tech-art for an AAA game. Stuff like that.

You are so full of shit it's leaking out your mouth. You might want to have it checked.

Well, the Metacritic user score for Mass Effect 2 is fairly high (in the 80s), and I don't think Mass Effect 3 should be that much worse than ME2 (if it even is worse).

The low score seems to me to be much like the Modern Warfare 3 score - it's just hip and cool these days to hate on a high-profile sequel, especially if it doesn't do things significantly differently from the previous installment in the series (it's also cool to hate on a game that does do things differently from the previous). People end up blowing all the negative aspects out of proportion even if the game isn't any worse than the previous game. The DLC crap doesn't help matters either.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaa, checked, everything healthy

I played Mass Effect 2 on pc and it was unplayable. It was a technical disaster. The collision-system alone is as primitive as it can get, no smooth edge cutting, you can stuck everywhere. And I don't even want to go into A.I. and further concepts.

alas, not all games can be as technically advanced as trap-them (a new arcade classic)

why is that so? you can pretty much ignore it.

What is this multiplayer thing (A deathmatch mode?) and what about it impacts the single player game?

Really? This article and the PC Gamer one they link to didn't really give me that impression: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/06/a-mass-effect-3-psa-multiplayer-affects-the-ending/

Regardless, they should have kept the multiplayer and singleplayer completely separate. In the PC gamer article it sounds like the author did every mission but the boring ones similar to the planet scanning missions in Mass Effect 2.

Edit: I'm going to play it. I can live with these issues and I really want to see how it ends.

and that is why this shit will only get worse

i really dont see how anyone could buy this knowing that it has these issues. it's crazy. that shitty review ends with "hurp despite these horrible issues i still regard it as a masterpiece. the bad ending is actually BETTER HURDURRR!" how disgusting can these fuckers get

edit: a bit off topic, but this type of stuff is one of the big reasons most games make for crap "art"

Sort of related.  A pretty cool video about Bioware.  A nice little wrap up of the problems they have. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QLz0CqtMVc)

The video started off by saying that Jennifer Hepler is just a symbol and not the entirety of what's really wrong with Bioware, but by the end it was still focused on her incompetence ("she's not just a writer; she's a fangirl") and not on Bioware's. Color me confused.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8640139/emotes/wuhh.png)

wuhh?

i should stop being surprised at the things people get worked up over...

It was tated they just beat the main quests, not the side quests (side quest dullness irreleva t). As much as I love RPS, I think that article was truly misleading, specially on what Bioware stated before, that you can either be a completioneist or play a lot in multiplayer, either of which will increase your rating bonus and shit. And it makes sense.

Multiplayer mmight have a little unfair advantge over single player completionist. Unless they make some magic, galaxy readiness on multiplayer will probable affect all single player characters, whereas being an SP completionist would onyl affect a single character.

If you ignore the presence of multiplayer, it becomes a single-player game in which you have to be a completionist to max out your galactic readiness or whatever it's called. It doesn't sound so nonsensical that way, despite some parts being quite dull.

... you're really trying to think of rationalizations for this shit?  :-\

ME2 did the same thing (best ending only for completionists) so...

I'm not saying it's justified or anything, I'm just saying that it's not as bad as it initially sounds and has been blown out of proportion.

you stilll needed to probe hard if you anted the minerals to upgrade your ship.

i can undersand people may not like to play mltiplayer in general, but for those who do, I think ME3 multiplayer is actually good, if a bit repettitive (ot by much anyway)

mass effect 3 has the best halo 2 intro ever

aka it sucks

Mass effect is just a JRPG made as if it was a wrpg, it is where jrpg should have evolve if the had followed the FF7 formula.

Melodramatic messianic main character and support cast with plenty sacrifice to be made along the scenario? nonsensical magic like artefact with ancient godlike creature that spell doom anytime they talk? vision of impeding doom and lost prophecy with lost civilization? romance drama between characters? all checked! I'm playing xenoblade (review: get it) and ff13 (review: avoid) and they are just the same.

Space Opera predates JRPG.

Yeah that's hardly just standard to the JRPG. That's almost Battlestar Galactica!
The original Mass Effect was pretty much emulating that of a old and kitsch Sci-Fi movie, while the sequel became its big budget epic brother.

Also, JRPGs, please never evolve into this. Thanks.

ff12 (review: get it, less for the actual gameplay, and more the ideas it purports through gameplay and strong aesthetic and world, also hitoshi sakimoto soundtrack.)

I miss the utopian idealism of Mass Effect 1. It felt more nuanced, without everything being all dark and fanfiction-y.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIP73xIAPLU&feature=g-all&context=G2df11e2FAAAAAAAAVAA

RPS' review is pretty critical despite all the ad money they are getting.

Also seriously shut up about multiplayer giving readiness you can get it just by doing all the sidequests. You know, THE EXACT SAME THING YOU HAD TO DO TO SAVE ALL YOUR TEAMMATES AT THE END OF ME2.

jesus fucking christ

that being said this game is written like a pit stain so far. hoping my favorite character won't be ruined (tali)

And they failed to mention the face import issue

I have some really, really, REALLY bad news.

I heard the rumours years ago. I hope they are not the same rumours.

 :crazy:

if you want shepard to live you will literally have to grind resources just like it's fucking me2 again. i went with the worst ending and felt bad about it but fuck it i hate fucking mining

also this game is written by idiots, and none of your choices in any of the previous games matter whatsoever, even if people are dead. the sole exception is if garrus or tali died, in which case they're gone. otherwise, characters like URDNOT WREAV or ANOTHER MAGIC GETH
will appear instead of wrex and legion -- and so on, for all the important choices. fun times. note that wreav's name is syllabically similar to wrex so that they don't have to do more lip syncing. quality!

also the ending is based entirely on your rating and not on any actions or your choices in the game. that's good right? roleplaying is hard

Is it just me or does nobody like anything anymore?

i... i like things...

maybe nobody likes shitty cash ins

maybe?

idk

maybe

Well said.

really?

that's what you're gonna go with?

"well said"

haha

ha

hhhh

Liking it for the dlc alone!

I never really liked Bioware RPGs starting with KOTOR. :gomez:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIP73xIAPLU

40% of people who bought Mass Effect 3 at Gamestop also bought the From Ashes DlC.  I'm sure EA grows ever bolder as this news reaches them.

Gamer Culture




 :handjoystick:

This is depressing. Mass Effect 3 is the best example of bad writing over the course of a series. This is like reading a fanfiction, not a canonical entry into the main series of such a highly lauded science fiction epic. It is the Star Trek Generations of Mass Effect. Just how badly did BioWare fuck up to make a game this poorly written? I miss the days of subtlety and nuance, of futurism and science. Now? Now it’s a ridiculous patriotic space marine soap opera with all the subtlety of a dog smearing its ass on your carpet as it blasts out diarrhea. About as appealing, too. But when it’s the end of the galaxy, I suppose you can indulge in your wildest writing fantasies. Even if they have less dimension than a piece of paper.

[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.

So far, in Mass Effect 3, every choice I have been given has been catastrophically unsubtle and poor. During a mission where you encounter Grunt and find that he has joined the Krogan military for real, you encounter the Rachni queen. She has been imprisoned by the Reapers and exploited for the military effort. If you free her, Grunt dies (unless he was loyal at the end of Mass Effect 2). If you don’t free her, she dies and Grunt lives. It is, quite literally, a binary choice of “which character do you like more.”


This underlies the ultimate laziness of Mass Effect 3: it’s the final chapter, so let’s just kill people off and call it a day. Really? Is that the best you can do? Here’s a clue: just fucking killing people off doesn’t make your game dramatic and inspiring. It just makes you look like amateurs. I can seriously count the number of missions in which no characters relevant to the plot die on one hand. ONE HAND. What the fuck is wrong with BioWare?

This is just the ultimate expression of BioWare’s lazy writing, but it’s hardly the only one. The whole game starts, almost verbatim, in the same way that Halo 2 starts. There are countless scenes of flat dialogue and uninteresting responses. The game attempts to pull you into the conflict by beating you over the head with an emotional truncheon. And the funny thing is that, unless you understand writing a bit, you won’t be able to point to why Mass Effect 3’s story feels dumber and weaker than the previous installments. But I do, and here’s why:

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

you're just jealous

why don't you like anything?

I agree with this. Though I did enjoy the game, seeing character after character die left me a little numb. It seemed like at one point they couldn't figure out how to kill off a character so they just hard them commit suicide. It was very stupid, the character could have reacted differently and it would have been more enjoyable than just watching them die. Fuck that, reloaded my save and played through that again.

The ending was poorly written, but I liked the basic premise of it. It was just poor writing that ruined an otherwise acceptable ending.

The more annoying thing, to me, is I used the default save, so unlike most of you (I assume) I started with most characters dead. Now, because of the plot railroad (choo choo) they couldn't just get RID of those segments with Wrex and Legion and such, so they just put in transparent expy characters. My favorite is Urdnot Wreav, whose name is similar enough to mean they can save on lip syncing and also looks the same to save on animation.

The copy of Legion is literally just a hologram of Legion that they use because they couldn't figure out a way to do the bit without him there. Which is even lazier, I suppose, since they don't have to change any dialog at all, or make a new model -- that was really the first time I felt annoyed by it, even though I guess the thing with the bugs happens before it... At least with that they paid lip service to it being someone else, right?

Choo choo!


I still... had fun with it, because I thought the shooting wasn't bad and it was pretty short. Story was really just... badly done. Not a bad idea, but the worst execution I've seen since DA2.


So it was ok, and I don't mind having played it like I have some games, but if you're thinking of buying it I'd say wait.

This is depressing. I really liked MA before, I'm really not sure if I'll get this or not though. More depressing, though, is that Bioware recently has been kinda sucking and this means if there is a Jade Empire 2 it will suck.

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.

:wtf:

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.)

i thought me1 was already published under their ea banner

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?

Someone formerly at Bioware, currently Riot, defends the DLC choices (http://www.gamefly.com/news/article/209920/mass-effect-designer-defends-day-one-dlc-says-game-developers/)


Hahahahahaha, okay!  You got it! 


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.


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.


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


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


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

wait, what?

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.

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


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

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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6QMZjxV-v4&context=C4aee407ADvjVQa1PpcFMAWl9Q3Kq8PXz2qEgnjaI8Tk-sp8ZQtk0=)

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

nooooooooooo ;(

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

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.

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.

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.

Agreed. It felt random and incoherent, with no real direction or clarity. Everything was shoehorned and railroaded. As usual, the text on the conversation "pie" never reflected what came out of Shepard's mouth.

The game blue screened twice and crashed once. Pathetic programming. FOV of 70 with no option to change! I felt nauseous in the first minute of gameplay, had to use a freaking fan-made utility to hack the config file to increase FOV to 90. Just... urgh. And all the menus had the do their cute little fade-in animation so it took a second to perform every single action. Got on my nerves when I needed to dock with the citadel for the umptillionth time and the dock button made its slow and dramatic appearance. Eww pop-up dialogs couldn't be dismissed with a key, no you had to break flow and aim for the button every damn time. The movement controls were atrocious.

[spoiler]
There was some really terrible game design too. Like that... boss fight where you aim the laser pointer at the reaper; I failed the last shot three times in a row, with absolutely no idea what I did wrong. On my fourth attempt, I succeeded, and I still didn't know what I had done wrong/right, because I played all four attempts exactly the same. Or that bit at the temple where you activate the two devices to summon the maw to fight the reaper; I was repeatedly and randomly foot-stomped to death, killed in one hit with no way to predict or react.
[/spoiler]
Hey, at least they scrapped the completely asinine and grind-tastic resource mining, bypass and hacking minigames.

Also... there's no sound in space. You can't hear lasers, explosions or ship engines. This is such a huge annoyance in popular sci-fi media, it really ruined the space scenes for me. There is no sound in space.

I suspected BioWare was going downhill after what they did to Dragon Age 2 (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=18380.0), but I was still holding on to Mass Effect 3. Now it's confirmed; they're a bunch of idiots and I look forward to absolutely nothing they'll be making.

you serious? there's also no such thing as giant robots that annihilate all living life on a 50,000 year schedule, no such thing as travel between galaxies, or a species that has a life span of up to a million years. I could go on forever. no sound in space is a pretty stupid thing to nitpick about.

as for pathetic programming, ME3 was easily the buggiest out of them all. I didn't mind the FOV and only crashed once, but I had other problems. most common problem in my game was invisible objects/people. people/objects would become invisible during cutscenes, so sometimes shepherd would be talking to someone who wasn't there. that and getting stuck in the cockpit around joker was two bugs that really annoyed me throughout the entire game.

though I didn't mind them getting rid of the bypass mini-games, but standing in front of a door for 5 seconds waiting for shepherd to magically move his hand around and open it wasn't exactly thrilling either.

Funnily, ME2 actually had that whole no sound in space ding the first attack to the Normand, right when she goes to rescue joker, all you can hear is Shepard breathing.

I remember that, which makes me surprised to hear that they didn't do that in ME3. Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Wnuhlb0qS30#t=278s) of that opening sequence.

Would you also bash the cloak in Crysis since it is physically impossible to have a suit with that feature in real world?

It is not physically impossible, some of the science behind such a thing is touched upon in the following article:
http://www.popsci.com/node/31078

There's a difference between something that just doesn't happen because there's no way it could happen and something that is not yet feasible with current technology but is certainly theoretically possible within the laws of physics.

the star wars movies would have been a lot less exciting without sounds in space

well the original 3

nothing on earth could make the newer 3 any less exciting

Mass Effect mentions auditory emulation for space sounds so shush.

firefly had spacefights without sound and they were tense as fuck

I think you guys have figured out the problem with this game good job.

Incorrect. All the things you listed are possible, if not plausible. But sound in space is an absolute physical impossibility because sound waves require a medium to travel through, but space is a vacuum. Unless you fill space with something, there's no sound.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIGzpi9lCck


I disagree. I think 2001: A Space Odyssey and Battlestar Galactica (it does have sound in space, but extremely muffled) demonstrate exciting space sans sound. Indeed, knowing that sound in space is a physical impossibility is exactly what make Star Wars or Mass Effect that much less exciting for me.

Once again, a fair number of sci-fi settings have "auditory emulators" which are intended to provide an explanation for "why is there sound in space." A program simulates sound in a coherent way based on sensor data.

I know Star Trek, Mass Effect, and Shattered Horizon at least mention it. Star Wars is excusable because it's not sci-fi, it's sci-fantasy. It's not intended to be even remotely realistic.

People walk on asteroids without pressure suits in Star Wars, thus we can assume that in the Star Wars galaxy, there is in fact a medium in seemingly empty space through which sound can travel.

Your bungled attempts at making a dent in the Star Wars lore were fruitless this time.

You haven't spent enough thought about the technicalities. You can only be invisible from one view-angle since a color- pigment cannot have different colors at the same time. Logical, isn't it. The cloak in Crysis is about being invisible from different view-angles at once, no matter where you are. That is physically impossible.

So what now, does it ruin the experience for you because it cannot be done?:P

Screw from ashes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRRpGlmtws8)


and my non working shepard:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1047844/sheps.jpg)

Nature disagrees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_camouflage).

Oh, sorry, we forgot everyone is you.

EDIT: To make me seem like slightly less of a dick, I'll actually contribute. Anything is possible with art. Anything. The artist(s) making the art get to decide what is and isn't possible in the reality they create. If you don't like it, you don't agree with them. They didn't get it wrong.

hey guys who would win a fight: luke skywalker or gandalf?

Luke Skywalker cause he's not old.

No it doesn't. Metal Gear Solid's 4 stealth does actually provide the most realistic model. And it perfectly shows why Crysis-stealth is impossible: A color-pigment cannot have different colors at the same time. I don't see what is so difficult to understand it.

You could probably do something with viewing angles (like the 3DS does) and multiple colors per point but output towards different angles

even mission impossible 4, which was idiotic, didn't do the multiple angle thing



if you have two people who are, like, on opposite sides it could work. otherwise you're going to be seeing what other people should be seeing and it won't work. this is not hard.

Does it even matter whether it's possible or not? Things like cloaking suits, portal guns, hyperspace travel, etc. are essentially the sci-fi equivalent of magic spells in fantasy games. They may or may not actually be possible in real life, but you at least can point to the cloaking suit, portal gun, hyperspace drive (or whatever it's called), etc. and say "that's what allows you to cloak/portal/travel faster than light." The difference with the hearing sound in space thing is that unless you count the "auditory emulator" explanation there isn't that thing you can point to to explain it, and it ends up looking like the developers forgot about that detail. It's like what Star Wars would be like if they didn't mention any "hyperspace" travel, completely ignored the speed of light, and just had the characters shouting out speeds that are faster than the speed of light.

tl;dr: Is the real-life feasibility of a cloaking device really that important to your enjoyment of the game?

yes the realism of the sci fi is paramount to immersion into the game world

there I said it with a straight face someone give me a high five

You people are the reason every fucking horror movie has to have some dumb bimbo pull out her phone and say "I can't even get service out here!" so that some douchebag you're watching the movie doesn't just snidely turn to someone else and say "Why don't they just call for help?". 

That is why I find the ambition to stay as close to realism as possible naive and very restricting. Reality is just one set of rules, you don't always want reality everywhere. In games we can play god and define our rules the way we like it. For me it is then about keeping consistency and not breakng them when designing the game. The player has to be provided a clean framework he can grow in.

cool bro


anyway I think that you can pretty much get away with anything, as long as you don't insult your audience's intelligence

I think the red letter media reviews of the Star Trek movies actually makes this point extremely well. You can have cool sci fi stuff, but just make it consistent.

Sound in space is kind of a "no one knows or really cares" thing at this point so... big ol shrug

Man, the intelligent aliens in nearly every sci-fi show are fucking humanoids, what the fuck. Since evolution surely developed in drastically different ways in drastically different ecosystems, intelligent aliens should look like something tht would terrify eldritch abominations.

So it means all sci-fi works suck.

well that's to be seen

the way biology works on earth might be pretty unique, but there's not really a whole lot of variation that could come out of our particular system of life

now, other forms of life could totally be a thing. but, again, that's to be seen.

(future genetic engineer here what whaat)

These guys fly and manipulate objects with their feet and mouth (http://www.bioteams.com/images/ravens_demonstr.jpg)

This guy walks on four legs and manipulates objects with his friggin nose (http://animals.nationalgeographic.co.uk/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/animals/images/primary/african-elephant2.jpg)

and their level of intelligence is probably around that of our ancestors of only some tens of millions of years ago.


But good luck making an audience relate emotionally to that.

if the game (movie, book etc.) is dumb entertainment and is honest about it i have no problem with having my intelligence insulted.

I'm insulted you're implying I have intelligence.

This has bothered me for a long time as well.

Hey guys, you don't need to make up these petty and abstract gripes about Mass Effect.  We're not even done getting mad at the actual problems yet.

There are dozens of design flaws in the game and you guys are complaining about it having sound in space and not portraing aliens realistically enough? Seriously?

I thought 'Sphere' by Michael Crichton handled this issue really well, but I was twelve so maybe not.

im not griping, I've never played any of the mass effect games, I just like talking about fun topics  :durr:

I am the other way round. Why don't many intelligent aliens look as practical as we humanoids? They look disabled and only suited for primitive attacks or crap according to poorly minded fictions (Crysis cough). Intelligent species require properly shaped free arms and fingers and have to walk on foot anyway. They need their body to build things, not to destroy them.

Intelligent species require what?

Did you peek at God's design notes to get that inside information?

Welcome to sarcasm and tangents

Guys come listen to my invisible radio in space with me. I'm bringing hot humanoid alien girls. If you talk to them 3 times they'll have clippy sex with you.

How else would you want to build a spaceship?

Like bobo was getting at, you don't need it to have different colors at the same time; you just need each point to have different colors depending on viewing angle.

It involves getting rid of diffuse components and a lot more. No one is even able to say such a material can ever exist, so it is pure fiction.

I mean, we have things currently that display different colors depending on viewing angle.

Actually, invisibility is possible. It's just not that practical yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YO4TTpYg7g

It bends light using heat, instead of actually emitting it. It does produce distortions in the air, but so does the suit in Crysis.

Also, metamaterials (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial) can be "invisible" to narrow bands of light (like, say, one frequency) by bending it around themselves instead of reflecting it. Scientists have been trying for a while to create a device that could cloak things from the entire visible spectrum, using that technology.

But sorry for being slightly off-topic. I just think things like that are really cool.

More on-topic: I find ME3 fun so far, but haven't had time to get very far into the game. Hopefully I'll keep liking it, but I'll have to play more before I really decide.

Well, I just got passed the Sanctuary mission and I let Miranda die, the scene after it, in the Normandy with Tali drunk mourning her death was the best dialog in the whole series. :beer:

Overall I'm liking it so far, although I'm finding it weaker than ME2, the only thing that is better is the action but even that has it's flaws, using the same key for getting into cover, jumping obstacles and rolling was an awful decision, the game does one instead of the other all the time. And while the planet scanning mini-game sucked, it at least gave you a reason to explore the galaxy, here you have nothing.

Looks cool, however I have yet to carefully figure out what it really is. But whatever, the point is that if one can make a cloak then one can also find a way to make space-action hearable by processing radiation-signals in your space-ship-speakers to increase awareness.

This is an entirely human-centric perspective. Just because it works for use, doesn't mean other separately evolved species wouldn't have a different way.

For example, I can think of several advantages tentacles confer over "properly shaped arms and fingers", and quadrupedal or undulatory locomotion is actually far more common and provides more advantages over being bipedal. Feet and legs and hands are not the ideal by a long shot.

Tentacles and organs enhancing crafting skills are good, but often when you see an alien-fiction with two arms they are just too degenerated to be of any use except of looking cool.

There is nothing to indicate that five or more fingers are the most useful.

Yeah there's no "right" model in biology

Things just improve over time, and the way things succeed differentiate for a number of factors that eventually lead to different species

but as much fun as it would be to explain ecology in a sparknotes form right now, I think I'll just let you believe absolute horseshit because it really doesn't matter

Relevant Mass Effect 3 discussion.

oh sorry

uh mass effect 3 sucks because its studio is poopy

there sorry to offend you with my off topic posting I hope dragonmaw doesnt ban me

My life depends on constant on topic TIGsource forum mass effect 3 discussion.

Mass Effect is just as fantasy. Biotic powers = Jedi powers.


Not only is it possible, it's already being done, by nature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridescence) as well as technology. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography) Just consider your average LCD screen for the simplest example; look at it from a different angle, and the colors shift.

And Jedi powers are just bacteria in your blood.

I recently read that Star Wars Fans still implode with utter disgust and hatred whenever they hear that.

Crysis-Cloak is not Holography.

So how big are Cerberus as an organisation supposed to be anyway? Big enough to invade the Citadel apparently, even though it's supposed to be... like unimaginable big?

Why would they want to...?
How could they even...?

This thing that just happened in my video game is dumb.

I'm more confused about how Cerberus became a bunch of dicks and everyone left it between ME2 and ME3... it should be better explained.

thats not what hard science fiction means

Woah, you're right.  I've completely misunderstood these notes I've been taking in class.  I've just had a midterm too, I'm lucky I wasn't asked any questions about the difference between the two.

 

In ME2 they go to lengths to say like 'maybe cerberus aint so bad' and then in ME3 it's like 'cerberus are evil robots'.

There are degrees. Eezo and such are second tier hard sci-fi, which is plausible but currently impossible  technology. Star Trek fits here, same for Firefly. There is not a lot of first tier sci-fi, even amongst the grandfathers of the genre.

This game just asked me the meaning of life and then gave me two options...

Was the Renegade option, "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women"?

really? you must have been asleep, the game explained this.

spoilers about cerberus, probably don't read unless you've beaten it,
it was explained in those logs in the cerberus base near the end of the game. they were always a bunch of dicks but hid it from shepherd. surrounded him with familiar faces so he would cooperate, stuff like that.

cerberus's more extreme recent actions were explained because the Illusive Man became indoctrinated, he salvaged that incomplete human reaper from the collector base and kept it in the cerberus building. so it was able to influence him like sovereign did saren.

also I'm pretty sure shepherd knew cerberus was only a necessary evil in me2. but it's been awhile since I played that game so I don't remember much.

(http://i1068.photobucket.com/albums/u447/Samtagonist/masseffectneverforget.png)

I think the kid was supposed to represent that we'll never be able to save everyone. And by "think" and I mean "had shoved down my throats constantly." I think it'd be more "powerful" if they just showed us him at the very beginning, seeing him blow up, then never bothering with it again.

I know the kid is somewhat important later, and we'd forget about him if the game didn't poke us with him every now and then. Still, I'd feel "worse" if they showed me the deaths of people I cared about. Especially ones that I directly caused/failed to prevent the deaths of.

I don't like when the protagonist 'reacts for' the player full stop.

That right there is fucking gold.

http://arkis.deviantart.com/art/Mass-Effect-3-Alternate-Endings-SPOILERS-289902125

this guy obviously isn't a professional writer, but I really like this alternate ending.

Best fan-made ending I've seen can be summed up pretty easily. They said all the reapers were on earth at the end, aye? Well, why not just blow up that one mass relay? I mean, problem dealt with. Sure you lose earth, but you don't lose every other colony/contact with other civilizations/technology/free will/etc.

Finished it...

WHAT THE FUCK?

Oh well... OK, now I get the whole Cerberus thing. It's a fun game, but definitely not as good as ME2, it's shorter, more linear and most of the characters that I liked from ME2 appear just for fanservice. James and EDI could've been better used.

Most interesting thing is how the game is affected by the first two, I feel like playing all over again making different decisions just to see how it affects ME3. Specially, killing  Wrex, Kaiden, Mordin and the Rachni Queen, which played a big part in my game...

I played without my saves, because I didn't have them.

Only until after I beat ME3 did I find this:

http://masseffect2saves.com

so, doing a second play-through now.

except for the kaiden/ashley thing, almost nothing is different. clones or brothers of dead characters will fulfill the same spots. it's lame.

Citation needed.

Check the requirements.

Watched the other endings on Youtube and... damn Bioware, that's so lazy.

I didn't really understand the ending but I didn't think it was like... horrifically bad. It's not 'human reaper' bad anywho. Is it just that it ends abruptly or...?

EDIT: Ok seriously there is a petition on the internet over this but I don't understand the problem. Is it cos there were only two ending choices? Is it cos the game just ends without telling you what all your decisions lead to etc. ?

EDITEDIT: reading up on it I see the problems...

I was gunning it through the entire ME series.  Just beat ME1, went onto ME2.  Hoooooly shit, it's like night and day.  I went from having like fifteen skills to level up fifteen times to having four things to level up four times. 

They traded RPG complexity (more skills, equipment, etc) for shooter complexity (cover, headshots, etc) between ME and ME2. I like the increased action of ME2 but I miss the RPG choices in ME1

I didn't hate the ending as much as other people seem to, but:

-It's a shame the story apparently boils down to a Gurren Lagann ripoff with the same exact three ending choices as Deus Ex 1.

-The abruptness/not actually telling you anything ness of the actual ending videos makes them kinda pointless. I don't mind short/cryptic endings, but the cutscene I got was completely interchangeable with at least one of the others. I was confused for a minute and thought I'd picked the wrong one by mistake.

-The various "fuck you"/low-effort solutions to things fans actually care about (like the Tali thing, claiming for months they "had a plan" and knew how important it was, and what we got was a stock photo and five minutes in photoshop) aren't goodwill generators, and don't incline the audience towards giving you the benefit of the doubt. So when I see an ending I'm wondering whether this is what they really meant to do or whether someone just didn't give a fuck.

I actually preferred ME1's combat over 2's. The dumb tacked on ammo system meant I couldn't go through the whole game sniping like I did in 1.  :handthumbsdownR:

FWIW, I liked sniper rifles better in ME2 and specially 3.

Not being able to scope in ME1 while injured made being an Infiltrator a bitch. I can understand that it's to keep you from running guns blazing, but medigel has a hell of a cool down. I spent quite a bit of the game sitting in a corner after a battle, waiting for my medigel cool down, or for my suit to heal itself. And fuck all if someone was poisoned.

I used to just go Marksman while playing an Infiltrator. And having such a wobbly grip on the sniper rifle made me under use it, unless I was giving the initial surprise attack.

And overload disabling your current weapon was a bitch.

This (http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/) is a good article about why people think the ending is bad.

i didn't do enough fetch quests and then was only given one choice for the ending


can anyone seriously tell me why the MERGE ENDING was made impossible because i didn't find go mine enough asteroids to find books for boring asshats on the citadel

i dont care that the endings are bad so much as that all my choice was removed. moral? immoral? fuck you go do more sidequests for no reason

are you sure? I'm almost 100% certain that no matter how bad your score is you get the two choices. the third/merge option seems like just a bonus novelty ending, it really makes no sense to me.

I really think the ending was rushed, remember when Engineer Adams requests some thermal thing? After you buy it, it's never mentioned again after they install it.

Oh, and the scene at the end where you see Joker flying the Normandy through the relay? It really felt like there should have been something there that explained why he was flying around in the middle of space for no reason, but there wasn't.

Hope future DLC fixes those huge holes in the ending. Considering how widespread the hatred is for the ending, I don't see why they wouldn't. They wouldn't be the first company to fix an ending through DLC.

"Hey guys we messed up the ending pay us $10 for a much better fixed ending ;) ;) ;)

With love,
EA"

It's coming, god damnit.

If your score didn't meet the threshold, your decision is based on whether you destroyed or preserved the collector base. If you did, then you get to choose between destroy or control. If your war assets exceeded 5000, you can choose to do merge. I think that's how it goes, anyways.

E: If your assets are low (not sure how low), some endings kill the soldiers on earth. If it's high enough, only the Reapers are defeated/etc.

if your score is too low, you only get one option regardless of what you've done in the past. collector base, whatever, doesn't matter. there's no reason for this to be the case.

i can dig why the earth might blow up if the score is too low, sure, or other things like that, but not why i couldn't pick the other two endings.

DAY WHO GIVES A SHIT OF ME PLAYING ALL THE MASS EFFECT GAMES

Enemy health regen is the worst thing to happen to third person shooters since...  Mass Effect.  Trying to get to Mordin in Vorcha City, USA on insanity difficulty is terrible.  If you don't constantly focus one dude they just jump up to full health in seconds.  Was hoping I could finish Mass Effect 2 today, and jump on Mass Effect 3, but things are moving at a crawl.

Morale low, strongly considering switching to Alpha Protocol. 

Mass Effect 2 (***)
Alpha Protocol (****)

do it.

Posting my twin's review of the game because why the hell not

http://www.tbstactics.com/2012/03/mass-effect-3-pc-review.html

Vorcha health regen is actually their special ability, not a general combat mechanic. They are like trolls in fantasy games. You can prevent their and Krogan regeneration by using Incinerate or flaming ammo.

Warp also works. I believe you have Miranda and Jacob with you at that point. Try using Pull with Jacob, then Warp on Miranda to detonate Warp in an area.

Yeah, I'll figure it out.  It's not my first time playing ME2, just the first time at this difficulty and on the PC.

Also, the Final Hours of Mass Effect 3 has been released on the Apple Store!  Here's just a taste of the genius behind ME3!

(http://i1068.photobucket.com/albums/u447/Samtagonist/masseffectvideogamey.jpg)

I sort of agree with that, at least within the concept that ending on a boss battle would probably feel too game-y.

Wouldn't want anything too satisfy-y.

They had already gone the route of practically making the game into the videogame equivalent of action schlock, it would have actually fit to add a final boss at that point.

Because RPGs based around choice really benefit from boss battles. That's why the Human Revolution boss fights were well-received by the gaming community.

First of all, the point of my bitter sarcasm was originally to just call attention to the term 'video-gamey'.  It's such a disgusting thing to hear someone who makes a video game say.

Secondly, yeah, it could've worked in Mass Effect 1.  Imagine if when you got Saren to kill himself he just stayed down.  You've confronted him about his relationship with the Reapers a few times, and it's become abundantly clear that no organic working for the cause of the Reapers is doing so under their own will.  It's a nice correlation of a few plot points, and it rewards you for maxing out Renegade or Paragon.

Mass Effect 3 is not an RPG where your choices matter.  They spent three games working out how to make this as 'video-gamey' as they could.

In the long run, that one last plop of diarrhea onto an entire mass of dogshit wouldn't have mattered, but it's more the principle of the thing.

If Mass Effect 3 had a big boss battle at the end it would feel even worse and even more stupid than it already does. The whole point of the game (and the series in general) is learning to cooperate and shit, so making it "Commander Shepard takes out the bad guy" is already dumb as hell. As is, the game lacks any real boss fights, and I'm glad for that. It's not a game I want boss fights in.

Boss fights work best in the shmup, beat-em-up, and metroidvania (action platformer) genres. That's pretty much it.

That has nothing to do with why the Human Revolution bosses were bad. They were bad because they were developed third-party and turned out incongruous and imbalanced. There's no reason at all that "choice-based" gameplay (kinda debatable anyway since your choices turned out not to fucking matter in this case) should necessarily preclude boss encounters.

I don't think this game needed a boss, but I would've appreciated one anyway. It's a convention I enjoy. That's a preference.

Too gamey-wamey, video-shmideo! 

if you don't take what you've learned and apply it to a penultimate challenge which combines all the things you've mastered then why are you even playing a game?

to have vaguely sexual scenes of stiff alien love?

snoozeville

anecdote: I was watching a movie with a friend yesterday and I noticed he had the ME3 game box.
Me: you've been playing mass effect 3?
Him: yeah
Me: I heard a lot of nerds have been raging over the ending
Him: well this game literally couldn't be worse than mass effect 2 so I don't care

there you have it, ME3 > ME2

only a gamer would buy a sequel to something because it was bad

Bioware announced that they will make a new ending for it. http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/3/21/2890005/mass-effect-3-ending-to-be-retooled-in-response-to-complaints (http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/3/21/2890005/mass-effect-3-ending-to-be-retooled-in-response-to-complaints)

and no signs for fixing face import. fuck.

The ending to Mass Effect has been compared to Dickens, Bach, and DaVinci in terms of demanding respect. I should play it before they change it to see what sort of brilliant masterpiece all of my choices lead up to.

three different colors of explosion

and i still cant seem em! :(

By who, Bioware?

Lots of apologists, who think its art and the culmination of the artist's true vision. From the "art is subjective, every child's drawing is beautiful" school.

Demanding change is a bit silly, but not because the work demands respect.

Yahtzee finally got around to reviewing it, but his review was kind of boring IMO.  It's like he knew everyone already hated it or was dissapointed in it, so he couldn't get as excited about trashing it :(

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5497-Mass-Effect-3

The ending is bad, deal with it. Demanding a new one is ridiculous and Bioware ACEPTING and doing it is even more.

Thy finally stated that next patch will fix face import. Apparently they are on the certification process. Let's hope it doesn't take too long.

http://blog.bioware.com/2012/03/21/4108/ (http://blog.bioware.com/2012/03/21/4108/)

Hahah, read that. There is a (rather concealed) forum post (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/323/index/10385157) that served as the coments section, quite conveniently.

We'd love to hear what you have to say.  Just, y'know, not me personally.  Because I'd rather put a bullet in my head than listen to one of you nerds.

When I commented they would be selling better endings as DLC I had intended that as a joke. Now I'm out of material.

Its broken steel all over again.

I find this all hilarious.

Mass Effect is dumb guys. It's a dumb thing. It was always a dumb thing. Let's all forget about it and go swimming. Just... spread your arms out and float on top of the pool in the sunshine. It's fine its good its alright.

But then I can't fuck an alien.

A gay alien.

It perplexes me that the Mass Effect universe has such a liberal attitude to sexual relationships but a very gung-ho attitude to due-process free warfare.

So either you kill the aliens or you fuck em.

Hey, we don't kill or fuck the ones that are funny.  Hanar, Elcor, Volus.  I guess it only applies to human shaped bipeds.

I just imagine that if in Mass Effect 4 someone on your ship wanted to have a relationship with an Elcor the options would be 'go for it' or 'maybe you're not ready for a relationship right now' or 'does he have a good personality' and not, you know, 'EWW HOW DOES THIS EVEN FUCKING WORK'.

No man, just no.  Don't even joke like that.

NO.

Why else do you think all the endings leave the universe in more or less the same shape?

After that ending, there's no way a Mass Effect 4 can be made without completely fucking up the franchise.

The sad thing is that we're talking about EA and a best-selling franchise here so you know it will be done.

From what I can tell, the endings fundamentally change the galaxy, including the destruction of the mass relays, leaving the galaxy in a new dark age.

Not exactly "More or less the same shape".

Maybe the revised ending will leave more wiggle room for a sequel. :p

Yes the ending 'fundamentally alters' the universe, but all endings alter it in ways that would, in future games, be kind of hard to differentiate. In every ending:

-The Reapers are no longer a threat (they either die or go away)
-There are no more mass relays
-Shepard is dead

The only spanner in the works is the whole synthetic/organic life thing. Though I'm sure they'll pull the 'so much time has passed that no one remembers the etc.

shepard lives in some of the endings

It makes no realistic sense that he does survive, it seems more like something they slapped in to appeal to the fans. 

Sure, if they simply never touch some of the subjects, it could work without contradicting the ending.

They could also take the Silent Hill way and make one of the endings cannon and ignore the others. I'm sure people would love that!

He survives in the >=5000 war assets "Destroy" ending. That ending zaps your synthetic body parts, and you have a lot. Still, I'd assume that in the superspace future synthetic implants have failsafes that prevent people from dying if they fail. They're not pacemakers, they're augmented improvements; you shouldn't need 'em.

But it still makes no sense that he'd survive the fall, the explosions that would probably happen, rubble, etc.

EXTENED CUT IS OUT, GUYS

It is my understanding that he never even made it onto the Citadel.

(Indoctrination theory)

But I haven't played the new DLC.

Has anyone played through the new ending?

Apparently the new DLC all but destroys the IT.

Basically, yeah.

The retail ending was incoherent garbage.

The difference with the EC stuff is that now you can understand the garbage, they retcon a few bits here and there, and explain the rest. But it's still a crap ending to one of gaming's greatest-ever trilogies.

It's a shame Hudson e Walters made the ME trilogy ending into The Matrix trilogy ending all over again. Someone forgot to send them the memo that everyone hated that one, and it killed the entire franchise from how awful it was.

the EC removed the bad taste from my mouth.

I still don't like the ending, but at least it's less horrible now. I wanted to know what happened after the blasts, and now I do. plot holes and series theme inconsistencies are still there, but at least I got a sufficient epilogue.

First, is there a subject on mass effect 3 multiplayer ? If yes I didn't find it.
So among you guys, how many play Mass effect 3 multiplayer =) ? I just stated to play it again a week ago and I'm having fun and I'd like to play with people from the forum =)

(http://i.imgur.com/tLFNf36.png)

I was veeery into ME3MP, but got crazy burned out. Never got to unlock many of the Reckoning pack that I wanted. http://n7hq.masseffect.com/home/overview/?name=alevicejones&platform=pc

play warframe

I tried for a while to like warframe but the unlocking model is more painful than on ME3 and got tired of playing two characters. This was in very early access tho. Maybe tis better now.

Waw you played a lot =D I only started the mass effect trilogy two years ago >< It's old now and there's not many people that still play it I guess =/



Same here ! Tried but I didn't want to pay or farm to get new characters. I still think the design of the game is super cool though !