Mass Effect Megathread: He said "I should go." Do I sound like that? - Games

I just recently played through Citadel - I'm utterly, heinously late to the party but it was so, so awesome. Made me remember why I actually liked bioware in the first place.

[QUOTE=Generic.Monk;43503384]I just recently played through Citadel - I'm utterly, heinously late to the party but it was so, so awesome. Made me remember why I actually liked bioware in the first place.[/QUOTE] I enjoyed Citadel more than I did the vast majority of ME3. The characters are the only reason I managed to finish ME3, and I enjoyed so so much what was practically fanfiction DLC. It rounded up all those characters, give them their pretty tuxedos and play out in a minimal work enviroment. A lot of people didn't like that, but sweet Jesus I did. It held the sci-fi throwback story up higher than most of ME3 did, which was nice, and I was grinning ear to ear for most of it. I haven't played from Mass Effect since completing the Citadel. That final little scene standing before the Normandy with your best bud was, for me, the best ending that I could have hoped for with what Bioware has become. If it wasn't for the party and the characters, I might have been disappointed, but it's now where I end the series in my head. The Reapers got blown the fuck up, and everyone had a party. Well, I mean, there's the Tali singing scene, but thankfully I've managed to completely erase that from my mind. Mostly.

[QUOTE=DeeCeeTeeBee;43503774]Well, I mean, there's the Tali singing scene, but thankfully I've managed to completely erase that from my mind. Mostly.[/QUOTE] I still think that scene is adorable, even if the singing is atrocious (which I'm fairly certain was done on purpose.) Maybe I'm just too much of a Tali nut.

Citadel gave me more of that warm feeling I get with Mass Effect than the actual game did, simply because of how badly they fucked up the ending and the overall story. You can rip the entire plot apart without trying. I hate saying this, but I enjoyed Citadel more than I enjoyed the core game. Citadel brought back the heart and charm that the ME series is known for, not the rammed-down-your-throat plot-line of Shepard getting PTSD that we got in ME3 (Which completely goes against the last two games portrayal of Shepard)

I wanted to play Citadel, but I made a new char and was going through all the DLC's as I had just bought them all. Got halfway through Omega and was bored to shit of it and haven't touched it since.

[QUOTE=Chains!;43508340]I wanted to play Citadel, but I made a new char and was going through all the DLC's as I had just bought them all. Got halfway through Omega and was bored to shit of it and haven't touched it since.[/QUOTE] Citadel is worth having to go through everything else. It has so many moments great moments and is so full of heart and charm. Unless you actually dislike the characters in the ME universe, and dislike the charm of old sci-fi throwbacks that is the Citadel story, then it's well worth playing. It's so much better than ME3.

[QUOTE=Chains!;43508340]I wanted to play Citadel, but I made a new char and was going through all the DLC's as I had just bought them all. Got halfway through Omega and was bored to shit of it and haven't touched it since.[/QUOTE] Omega was ehh, it's almost completely combat based which isn't a death sentence thankfully because the combat in ME3 is actually quite good; the main problem with the story is that Aria is just batshit retarded at every turn. It's even recognized in the game where you can have a laugh with another character about how amateurish her attempts to decieve and manipulate are. I think she's supposed to represent the renegade path whereas nyreen represents paragon but unfortunately in ME3 renegade goes from 'doing the right thing but being a colossal dick about it and not giving a shit about the collateral damage' to 'the dumbest option you can pick because evil lol'. Leviathan makes the ending make sense more than the extended cut IMO - it means rather than starkid coming completely out of left field there's at least some foreshadowing for it that's tied into (albeit flimsily) the previous games. Citadel is bioware not tryiong to tell a serious emotional story (when they do you end up with the beginning and end of ME3 which are the absolute worst parts of the game) and cashing in on all the loved characters they've created over the course of the series. It's them playing to their strengths and it's marvellous. Not to say they couldn't create a serious dramatic story - it's just that it has to be executed a little better than 'oh a kid died, aren't you sad' or blindsiding people with an ending that is at odds with the previous 98% of the game and was obviously written by two people locked in a room away from the main writing staff (because it was). That's not even to say they can't do emotional moments, [sp]mordin's[/sp] death in ME3 was incredibly well done because it was the conclusion of an actual character arc in a fitting manner in a way that was actually foreshadowed. [editline]12th January 2014[/editline] Has anyone played through ME3 without importing a save? I did it for my first playthrough on launch and it's such a bitter, weird experience that the ending wasn't even a major tonal shift. I did a second playthrough recently with all the DLC and an imported save and the game has an almost upbeat tone between all the imagery of shit getting destroyed. Compared to an unimported game it throws truckloads of war assets at you and barely any squad members from previous games die and those that do get proper sendoffs that are actually meaningful. That being said that playthrough was probably a last hurrah for the series for me, I'm probably gonna leave it alone for a year or two at least until ME4 comes out.

Yea, ME3 is really weird if you start from there. It assumes that everyone who can die is dead, so you get the worst possible out comes on everything, and despite what Bioware claimed about it being a good start point, nothing is explained.

The game's coding tells it to change several lines during missions if it detects the player didn't import a save. E.g. During the London mission, Harbinger is never mentioned if the player didn't import a ME2 save.

[QUOTE=MaddaCheeb;43507128]Citadel gave me more of that warm feeling I get with Mass Effect than the actual game did, simply because of how badly they fucked up the ending and the overall story. You can rip the entire plot apart without trying. I hate saying this, but I enjoyed Citadel more than I enjoyed the core game. Citadel brought back the heart and charm that the ME series is known for, not the rammed-down-your-throat plot-line of Shepard getting PTSD that we got in ME3 (Which completely goes against the last two games portrayal of Shepard)[/QUOTE] Honestly, with some tweaking, I would have been 100% okay with Citadel's villains being the big bads of ME3 instead of the Reapers. They kinda shot themselves in the foot by showing the Reapers coming out of hibernation at the end of 2, but if they had tied it up better they could easily have used [sp]Shepard's evil twin[/sp]. I was honestly amazed at how none of that felt contrived, there was actually a very good reason for [sp]the existence of another Shepard[/sp] and it really hammers home the point about togetherness better than helping solve centuries-old disputes.

It's really strange how even after you defeat [sp]The evil Shepard[/sp] in Citadel, and then Miranda drops by, she says that [sp]She had no clue that there was another Shepard, even though she was in charge of the Lazarus Project in 2.[/sp]

[QUOTE=MaddaCheeb;43516207]It's really strange how even after you defeat [sp]The evil Shepard[/sp] in Citadel, and then Miranda drops by, she says that [sp]She had no clue that there was another Shepard, even though she was in charge of the Lazarus Project in 2.[/sp][/QUOTE] It seems plausible to me still, considering how Cerberus has a strange way of running things and has perfected the art of fucking up horribly.

I'm still pissed that we didn't get the potential hundreds of different kinds of Reapers that were shown at the end of ME2, instead we just got three types: Harbinger (who is unique), Sovereign-classes and Destroyers. [t]http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111030074512/masseffect/images/6/69/Reaper_fleet.png[/t] Just looking at that one image, it has more types of Reaper than in ME3.

[QUOTE=Ekalektik_1;43516173]Honestly, with some tweaking, I would have been 100% okay with Citadel's villains being the big bads of ME3 instead of the Reapers. They kinda shot themselves in the foot by showing the Reapers coming out of hibernation at the end of 2, but if they had tied it up better they could easily have used [sp]Shepard's evil twin[/sp]. I was honestly amazed at how none of that felt contrived, there was actually a very good reason for [sp]the existence of another Shepard[/sp] and it really hammers home the point about togetherness better than helping solve centuries-old disputes.[/QUOTE] Nah. It was 100% animoo fancervix, and it smelled like it. Sure it's great to do all the injokes and repeat a variation of that other thing from that part in ME1, but you can't end a game on that, much less a galaxy spanning trilogy.

Well, considering the current ending, it wouldn't have been that much better or worse.

[QUOTE='[Green];43516530']Well, considering the current ending, it wouldn't have been that much better or worse.[/QUOTE] I don't think it would have fared well. Citadel works almost impossibly well as a side-story and a send-off to the series, but it would have completely undermined the Reaper threat, even more so than our current ending. Regardless of how it was handled, ME3's ending at least deals with the Reapers which, for better or worse, is what the entire series was building up to since we met Tali in Mass Effect 1 and she gave us that geth data core.

[QUOTE=Flicky;43516433]I'm still pissed that we didn't get the potential hundreds of different kinds of Reapers that were shown at the end of ME2, instead we just got three types: Harbinger (who is unique), Sovereign-classes and Destroyers. [t]http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111030074512/masseffect/images/6/69/Reaper_fleet.png[/t] Just looking at that one image, it has more types of Reaper than in ME3.[/QUOTE] Harbinger doesn't even talk in ME3. That always felt a bit weird.

[QUOTE=Generic.Monk;43517974]Harbinger doesn't even talk in ME3. That always felt a bit weird.[/QUOTE] They also did a horrible job of establishing him as leader of the reapers. Seriously, he's constantly mentioned by name in conversations with Anderson, but they never actually got around to explaining who or what Harbinger was, even though there was potential for a lot of story ark that you can only really explore through speculation in the codex, or the wiki. He's (or it's) a Villain that was never officially [I]recognized[/I] as a Villain, if that makes any sense. Like Bioware knew they were going to incorporate him into the story, but forgot to do so, and only ended up mentioning him in odd places.

IIrc he's not even mentioned by name in ME2 - you have the posessed collectors that are called 'Harbinger' but they occur before you can even make the connection between them and the reapers. He's probably named in arrival when you have a conversation with him though, I don't know for sure since I haven't played it but it'd make sense.

[QUOTE=Generic.Monk;43518368]IIrc he's not even mentioned by name in ME2 - you have the posessed collectors that are called 'Harbinger' but they occur before you can even make the connection between them and the reapers. He's probably named in arrival when you have a conversation with him though, I don't know for sure since I haven't played it but it'd make sense.[/QUOTE] He is named in Arrival when you speak to him, but until the post-Suicide Mission part of the game (otherwise the hologram of him is still the Collector General) you just assume that Harbinger is the name of the Collector General, or some sort of Collector Hivemind. And I agree with you, it always felt weird that the most we got out of Harby in ME3 was a horn here or there when he was blasting other soldiers at Earth.

Nah, I didn't mean that the clone would take the place of the Reapers as Shepard's opposing antagonist. I'd just figure that if Shepard's the icon for resisting extinction, the Reapers could've just as well made themselves one. Kind of like another Saren, except now it's a Reaper Shepard. Was talking about the concept of the clone rather than the exact plot of Citadel.

I am planning to replay Mass Effect 3, but i lost my old saves. How much do i miss by not starting from a Mass Effect 2 save?

Well you could just find a save from the ME2saves site that made the same choices you did and use that.

[QUOTE=Str4t0s;43540063]I am planning to replay Mass Effect 3, but i lost my old saves. How much do i miss by not starting from a Mass Effect 2 save?[/QUOTE] Assuming you're on the PC, I could just whip up a save file for you with everything you wanted. Just tell me your critical choices, morality leaning, gender, name, romances, class; all that kind of shit. And yes, you can just edit the face to look the way you want it to. So we're literally doing the Lazarus project on your saves.

Starkid was retarded. They should have just made it Sovereign or Harbinger fucking with Shepard. I mean yes, the reaper conciousness as a whole made sense, but having it look like a kid? That was silly. Not to mention the reapers were acting stupidly. Shepard got to the crucible- every reaper around earth should have beelined to the crucible and prepared to bombard it with fire. I mean shepard was literally at the helm of the weapon that could destroy or control them. Why were they so careless?

[QUOTE=ViralHatred;43544960]Starkid was retarded. They should have just made it Sovereign or Harbinger fucking with Shepard. I mean yes, the reaper conciousness as a whole made sense, but having it look like a kid? That was silly. Not to mention the reapers were acting stupidly. Shepard got to the crucible- every reaper around earth should have beelined to the crucible and prepared to bombard it with fire. I mean shepard was literally at the helm of the weapon that could destroy or control them. Why were they so careless?[/QUOTE] Literally almost nothing about the ending makes sense. It's better for your health if you just don't think about it.

The combat during the last mission was pretty boring. I mean the bit where all the spaceships are arriving and wrecking Reapers is one of the best things about ME3 but the actual gameplay was so forgettable. It was just you fighting Banshees with your squad like it was a multiplayer match.

[QUOTE=Dumb Dog;43547080]Literally almost nothing about the ending makes sense. It's better for your health if you just don't think about it.[/QUOTE] I don't know. You could crowbar it as a final solution to the problem of mass-effect technology through the use of the destroy option which solves the original me1/2 storyline.

[QUOTE=jp_rsardeto;43547298]The combat during the last mission was pretty boring. I mean the bit where all the spaceships are arriving and wrecking Reapers is one of the best things about ME3 but the actual gameplay was so forgettable. It was just you fighting Banshees with your squad like it was a multiplayer match.[/QUOTE] While I love that bit where the fleet arrives in the Sol system, I can't help but wonder why the ships' shots aren't more carefully placed. In ME2 it's stated as soon as you walk into the Citadel by someone in the Alliance Navy that whenever you fire a shot, it's going to hit something, some time. Just look at the intro to Priority: Palaven. The Turian fleet just kind of shoots all over the goddamn place, and at least 90% of their shots go whizzing past the Reapers, and they'll eventually hit Palaven. The explosions of the few that actually hit the Reapers don't bode well for whatever is on the ground. Same thing with the final space battle, when the whole fleet just starts spamming their guns, at LEAST 50% of those shots are going to hit Earth somewhere. I feel like if anything, the shots should have been slow, calculated, and almost guaranteed to hit their mark, or at least be very close.

For all we know they could have some sort of proximity explosive or a timed projectile in use in order to prevent stray or missed projectiles from flying through endless space.