TL;DW: Here's a really rambly reason why it wasn't that bad, and you just haven't thought about all the deep and powerful implications.
Because there haven't been a million of these videos in the past 5 years or anything.
literally lol no.
Not even kind of.
This video is simply a variation of the indoctrination theory, aka the denial stage of grief.
"what bioware really and secretly meant was _________"
The only tragedy here was EA fucking Bioware permanently and completely in forcing a five year project to be made in two years, thus truncating quite literally everything about it.
"Synthesis is the best thematic outcome"
fuuuuuuuck right off
Can we just wait a few years for things to simmer down and start fresh with Mass Effect, instead of dealing with the baggage of the 3+Andromeda shitshow and without making the game a cobbled together shitshow of a project that wasted the time and money of three dev teams and killed one?
Destroy is still the only good ending. The whole point of the Mass Effect series and the main objective of the games was to kill the reapers, not controlling them or making everyone into reaper people.
my hatred for mass effect 3 will burn until the universe ends
even when I am dead my ghost will still be angry
I think an issue that became very apparent with Mass Effect over time is that it suffered, for all of its lifetime, from what I can only describe as over-saturation of time bombs.
The further each game goes, the more they introduce narrative time bombs; small aspects of lore meant to alarm you that things will eventually go down, and you may or may not be there to see them, but it will explode really loud eventually. It works fine when there's one, maybe two big looming threads on the horizon, but the issue with Mass Effect is that it had so fucking many and hardly any of them found a valuable conclusion - the ones that did, however, could have been their own game altogether.
Like, let's take a look at how many time bombs each game sets up :
The AI/Organic tension arc, by far the most present but also the most dispersed and difficult to follow; more on that later.
The Human/Alien tension arc, which kind of gets resolved by the end of ME1 only to come back full-force with ME2 and essentially just drops like a turd in ME3.
The return of the Rachni, which is essentially just a massive goddamn waste of time despite seemingly being kind of a big fucking deal.
Tying into that, the return of the Krogan, which is only a minor lore thing in ME1 and then becomes a critical side plot by the time ME2 and then ME3 rolls out.
The dark matter plot, which was meant to be the big turnaround point for ME3 but is only brought up like once or twice in the entire series until that point.
To go back to the AI/Organic thing, it has its own set of issues because from the very start the game just does not know when the fuck to stop. It's kind of a microcosm of the same overarching problem with the game's entire narrative but condensed to a single theme; there's tension between AI and organics, that much is made obvious fairly quickly, but then the game introduces so many different minor story arcs to drive the point home, turning the theme into less of a leitmotif and more of a hammer repeatedly hitting you over the head.
The geth and the quarians have trouble
The reapers want everyone dead
Project OVERLORD
EDI that turns out to be that one AI that goes bonker on the moon ????
And while most of these get some sort of conclusion, the issue is that the two best arcs are completely on the side when they should have been front and center, and that's the Krogan arc as well as the Geth/Quarian arc. They are the only arcs that properly conclude and there's multiple reasons for that:
They are the only two arcs which directly relate to characters you grow with as a player
They are the only two arcs where the outcome is realistic, logical and entirely within the player's hands
They are the only two arcs that make the reaper threat actually appealing once the reapers show up and start raw-dogging the entire galaxy.
All of this ranting to essentially boil it down to a simple issue I think was present with the game since day one; the smaller scale arcs were always the more interesting ones, because from a gameplay and story perspective, they are simply easier to portray and easier to relate to. ME2 understood this the best by making your crew the centerpiece of the entire story, and ME3 tried to continue in the same direction but could not ignore the gaping hole left by the reapers int he narrative, a hole they had to address but could not really since the original idea was badly implemented from the very start (the entire black matter subplot which barely ever comes up yet was supposed to be the most important part of ME3's original story before its rewrite).
The medium trying to communicate with your ghost is gonna be so fucking confused.
is this you
http://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1425/31/1425310411961.png
It's not a story that EA would tell you.
I prefer Control myself, always have done, I mean why waste the power of the Reapers by destroying them and all other Synthetics when you can have them help out instead.
Unpopular opinion i guess but i actually still like the mass effect trilogy a lot, me3 included. The gameplay in me3 was sick and some of the missions were very well executed(the whole tuchanka arc basically).
With the extended cut the destroy ending is good enough for me, only minus is that the geth die off too which is just a dumb plot device if u ask me, so ive chosen to ignore it lol.
I played the series for the first time last year, and I pirated ME2 and 3 and I still felt fucking betrayed by the ending.
It was fucking awful.
I don't know, for me the ending was more than expected considering the shitshow the game was turned into after ME1. Like, I know many people love the story tailored by all three games as a whole, and the first one mass effect was definitely not a perfect game, it had many gameplay flaws and it was a bit clunky here and there, but it never felt like it's some B-grade sci-fi combined with a superhero comic. Starting from the second one, it all went down the hill IMO. They started adding more and more unnecessary and/or straight up hilarious characters(like that ninja guy, who came straight from some shitty anime whose only function was to be as annoying as possible), the story became more complicated(in a bad way), and the list goes on. Sure, the last two games still had some interesting stories to tell, and sometimes the events happening on screen were pretty entertaining, but it was nowhere near to the first one. They just didn't feel consistent. Hell, the devs even turned most of the female characters into some sluts, which basically made any serious conversation with them impossible for me. Just compare
ME1
http://www.d4gameplay.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ashley_williams_mass_effect_2.jpg
ME > 1
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/F2RxV2bN9mtxzYt3ERuE7g.jpg
Like, people complain about Andromeda, but wtf is this thing.
To sum it up, I know many people would disagree with me, but I personally just don't think ME in general is a good or even half-decent game franchise. It started with a solid and intriguing premise, had some really impressive and dramatic events along the way like the ending of ME1, but eventually just turned into some caricature on itself, with the dumb ending being it's cherry on the cake.
ME2 is also fucking crammed full of DLC and they're kind of a bitch to get on PC. Far as I'm aware, they finally discontinued the awful bioware store and are now allowing you to buy all the DLC for ME2 on origin, but that'll cost you 25 bucks just for the extra content. The Steam versions outright do not have official access to DLC as far as I'm aware.
So, yeah, as much as I'd like to support the purchase of this game on steam for the price, it's a bit hard to do so considering how much of a pain in the ass it is to get the full experience.
I did not like ME2 all that much. It was a huge step down story wise from ME1. The only one I’d honestly replay is the first one.
I pirated 2+3 cuz it would have been a bitch to get the DLC and I’m a broke ass college student. Too expensive, and too difficult, this many years on.
My whole thing with that is that we lambasted Saren in the first game for his intertwining of machine & organics (implants) because of how the Reaper's could influence him. In ME2/3, Illusive Man wants to control them and Shepard rightfully tells him to fuck off. Unsurprisingly, Shepard is right and the Reapers essentially use them as pawns. At no point in the entire trilogy is any outcome other than "Destroy them All or Die Trying" presented as a viable option. And then ME3 comes along and with this deus ex machina and says "Nope, those are valid ideas and here's a magic button to let you do it."
Hell, the Destroy ending even has its own little "Fuck you" by forcing you to destroy the Geth/EDI because of some nonsense where "Organics and Machines can NEVER co-exist" which can and should have been immediately refuted by the fact that it is entirely possible to have the Quarians & Geth make peace with one another. Just really poorly thought out.
Anybody who tries to say that ME3's entire main plot can be saved at all is massively overselling the game to themselves. The whole concept was flawed from the moment they made the main plot for Mass Effect 2, when they decided Commander Fuckface Shepherd wasn't special because he had pertinent knowledge, good connections, and exactly enough authority to investigate the threat without stepping on the Alliance's toes... it was because he's a hero, a bloody legend! The shootingest action hero in all of space, and a true hero for humans and humans only! After that point, there wasn't a way to reconcile what the plot needed to happen with what Shepherd could do. It was like the lead writers were at odds with eachother throughout ME1, then the wrong guy won control over ME2 and ME3, and then realized he had no goddamn clue what he wanted to do.
Shamus Young's retrospective on the entire Mass Effect series, as well as the corresponding Spoiler Warning playthrough of it, explains every issue with the game series pretty thoroughly. The link at the start of this paragraph will take you directly to the beginning of his postmortem of ME3, and this link can take you to the very beginning. It's very much worth the hour or so it takes to read.
Yeah, Shamus is spot on. I read it after playing through the series and i agreed with him wholeheartedly, he vocalized my feelings in a very good way.
Mass Effect set up what could have been the greatest RPG series of all time. Mass Effect 2 told us that was never going to happen but it could still be pretty good. Mass Effect 3 twisted the knife and laughed. Andromeda sat in the corner and drooled.
BioWare torpedoed the series - and ultimately themselves - by giving Karpyshyn the boot.
The thing these videos always miss is what the basis of Mass Effect was. Mass Effect was an amalgamation of choices spanning over 3 games, where decisions made in the first game effected the story of the third game. Then the ending was the exact same no matter what you did throughout 3 games. Red, blue, or green.
3 games worth of story and actions meant nothing in the end. Thats why ME3 sucked. Spouting the pants on head retarded indoctrination theory doesnt make it suck any less.
Do you want an honest answer?
Also shutting out the entire writing team on the ending is an absolute dick move, no matter the context.
As has been over in the main megathread with a fine tooth comb, Saren is Control, not Synthesis.
Since we're talking about Mass Effect, can I say how fucking annoyed I was when they added ammo to ME2?
ME1's gameplay was clunky, but I loved the idea of infinite ammo on all guns with a cooldown period, and I thought the explanation was interesting.
I remember starting ME2 and immediately googling if there was some way to get a ME1-style gun in the game, like maybe you can choose between the two types. No dice.
And the explanation was so fucking flimsy too. There was no reason why I couldn't carry a ME1-style pistol with me in case I ran out of ammo.
I get that reloading might be more efficient in battle, but Shepard is going to alien worlds and shit, infinite ammo would only be a positive.
There was no reason why they couldn't improve the combat AND keep the one thing that made combat signifigantly different from all of the other shooters out there.
Feels like I can't go 5 minutes on youtube without seeing another video essay about why "this shitty videogame was actually perfect and you're just dumb".
Whilst Mass Effect ultimately failed to really strike gold besides a couple of interesting storylines with universally disappointing conclusions, I think it's a bit unfair to claim they're the only time gaming has ever gotten close to having their "own" star wars or star trek.
There's plenty of instances of the gaming industry coming up with long lasting impactful series that spanned across several storylines and characters without borrowing from other media.
iirc there was something you could mod to get cooldown guns. it was like an ini file or something and it was literally changing one line and a 1 to a 0
i dont even know if this is a real thing but i think you could also get a mixed system where you'd have a cooldown but would use heatsinks and reloading when you overheated
You know you fucked up your RPG's story bigly when the best part of someone actually purchasing it is that they got access to your (legitimately good to be fair) horde mode multiplayer.
When I'm cremated people will find within the ashes the concentrated remains of my essence in the shape of a red, green, and blue middle finger.
Yup, this annoyed me greatly.
I kind of liked ammo being introduced because it made sense lore-wise. The issue with old-school heat sinks is obvious both gameplay and story-wise in ME1, with geth shield tech being literally too good for weapons which have to wait for quite some time to shoot once they overheat. You'd constantly run into shields that would be a bitch to deplete, and would come back before your weapon was done cooling down, and this issue was not only there in gameplay but also in canon.
As a result the shift to heat sinks which can be ejected made more sense in ME2; storywise the gun industry adapted to a new standard capable of dealing with increasingly better shield technology. Gameplay wise, especially with ME3, it allowed for the introduction of much more varied guns that could work in odd ways. The guns in ME1 were extremely predictable and simplistic in their functioning due to the way they had to discharge heat.
Ironically I think the game which handled the situation the best was Andromeda; weapons are standardized to use detachable heat sinks but you can modify them to use what is in-game referred to as "vintage heat sinks", essentially bringing ME1 style ammo back, with an appropriate UI change and all. And the issue, gameplay and story wise, becomes very apparent and also pretty fucking cool IMHO: some of the newer gun types, which are meant to be able to quickly eject heat sinks, tend to be fucking awful by design when fitted with a vintage heat sink, whereas more classic designs which pack a stronger punch will work fine or even better, since the time between shots is meant to be longer from the get go.
It would have been cool to see this be a thing from ME2 onward (ME3 kind of did it with an old school rifle you can find in the Citadel DLC). But since ME:A is basically the best the series has to offer in terms of shooting (and absolutely fucking nothing else) it's worth checking out if what you want is for the old ammo system to be back within a shooting framework that's actually fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeSFDtTUqEg
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