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See I hated the ending but I wasn't that keen on Citadel.

It seemed so.. good humored all the way through, I thought it was in stark contrast to the rest of the game and basically felt a bit like fan fiction. It was silly to suggest they would just let the crew sit around doing feth all for a week as well what with everything that was going on.

I mean I played it obviously because the game was so good, but the ending soured me so much I didn't even want to get into it because I couldn't shake the notion "You guys are all fethed anyway"

 mattyrm wrote:
See I hated the ending but I wasn't that keen on Citadel.

It seemed so.. good humored all the way through, I thought it was in stark contrast to the rest of the game and basically felt a bit like fan fiction. It was silly to suggest they would just let the crew sit around doing feth all for a week as well what with everything that was going on.

I mean I played it obviously because the game was so good, but the ending soured me so much I didn't even want to get into it because I couldn't shake the notion "You guys are all fethed anyway"

The Citadel DLC lasted like, one day in lore-time. They only slept one night, remember?

Also, it is understandable that they relax and banter a bit before going into the jaws of the Reapers.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:
See I hated the ending but I wasn't that keen on Citadel.

It seemed so.. good humored all the way through, I thought it was in stark contrast to the rest of the game and basically felt a bit like fan fiction. It was silly to suggest they would just let the crew sit around doing feth all for a week as well what with everything that was going on.

I mean I played it obviously because the game was so good, but the ending soured me so much I didn't even want to get into it because I couldn't shake the notion "You guys are all fethed anyway"

The Citadel DLC lasted like, one day in lore-time. They only slept one night, remember?

Also, it is understandable that they relax and banter a bit before going into the jaws of the Reapers.

Oh yeah! fething hell.. how did I forget waking up in bed with that drunk alien.

Its been a couple of years since I played it... anyway I suppose you are right with the camaraderie as well, it was certainly fun in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers do a lot of joking around but still.

I thought they were trying too hard you know what I mean? Like Joker is funny, but Zaeed and that miserable as feth (I forget his name) 4 eyed guy suddenly became zany pranksters, even Jack was all nice and dancing and gak. It felt at odds with the rest of the story to me.

 Melissia wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
Yup. All of the hints in the previous game about the Ghost Boy

How the hell did an AI entity that leads the Reapers surprise you and lead you to think it just came out of nowhere?

It's been hinted at since the first freaking game!

Seriously, the conflict between organic and AI is pretty central to the plot.

At the end of a game series that emphasizes agency and change arising from the actions of your character, having a god you can't even argue forcing your hand is not appropriate.

At the end of a game series where you have conflict between organic and AI, but ultimately resolve most of the conflicts, rejoin the geth & quarians in mutual cooperation, discover the geth were never truly hostile in the first place, and have an (albeit stupid) romance between an AI and organic having "AIs wills kill organics, so we'll make AIs to kill organics before they make AIs" is jarring at best, asinine at worst.

At the end of a series where they're constantly pushing themes of success through cooperation, having everything done by a Deus Ex Machina is inappropriate and jarring. Contrast the final battle vs sovereign in ME1 and the "Suicide Mission" and escape in ME2.

You spend three games, fighting to convince the galaxy of the truth. You spend three games building relationships and gathering allies with different strengths. You spend the game leading up to the ending getting the galaxy to see past it's differences and working together. Then, at the end of all that. You flip flip a goddamn 3-position toggle switch and wave the problem away with what is basically space-magic. Handed to you, oh so generously by a character you've never met before after they've finished monologue on it's completely nonsensical beliefs, that you've already disproven.

 Chongara wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
Yup. All of the hints in the previous game about the Ghost Boy

How the hell did an AI entity that leads the Reapers surprise you and lead you to think it just came out of nowhere?

It's been hinted at since the first freaking game!

Seriously, the conflict between organic and AI is pretty central to the plot.

At the end of a game series that empathizes agency and change arising from the actions of your character, having a god you can't even argue forcing your hand is not appropriate.

At the end of a game series where you have conflict between organic and AI, but ultimately resolve most of the conflicts, rejoin the geth & quarians in mutual cooperation, discover the geth were never truly hostile in the first place, and have an (albeit stupid) romance between an AI and organic having "AIs wills kill organics, so we'll make AIs to kill organics before they make AIs" is jarring at best, asinine at worst.

At the end of a series where they're constantly pushing themes of success through cooperation, having everything done by a Deus Ex Machina is inappropriate and jarring. Contrast the final battle vs sovereign in ME1 and the "Suicide Mission" and escape in ME2.

You spend three games, fighting to convince the galaxy of the truth. You spend three games building relationships and gathering allies with different strengths. You spend the game leading up, getting the galaxy to see past it's differences and work together. Then, at the end of all that. You flip flip a goddamn 3-position toggle switch and wave the problem away with what is basically space-magic. Handed to you, oh so generously after a character you've never met before gets done with monologue on it's completely nonsensical beliefs, that you've already disproved.

Yes, but this was a much bigger and worse threat than before. sometimes we are limited to what we can do. In this case, you did all you could do, and you couldn't save everyone. Its out of your control this time. That is as real as the mass effect series has ever gotten, and thats why I love the ending. IT felt real in the end. The game communicated to me that it wasn't going to be a happy ending. I had context clues all over the place. The child, the reapers. The last game is about death, and accepting it.

 Asherian Command wrote:

Yes, but this was a much bigger and worse threat than before. sometimes we are limited to what we can do. In this case, you did all you could do, and you couldn't save everyone. Its out of your control this time. That is as real as the mass effect series has ever gotten, and thats why I love the ending. IT felt real in the end. The game communicated to me that it wasn't going to be a happy ending. I had context clues all over the place. The child, the reapers. The last game is about death, and accepting it.

If this ending was going for that theme, it did it poorly. Having space magic wipe out the threat does nothing to support that theme. If ending was about accepting death, accepting the inevitable, the inevitable would have happened. The galaxy would have died. What we got was a lazy Deus Ex Machina, literally a god sprang forth from the machine and resolved the plot Casey Hudson and Mac Walters didn't have the guts to.

Now you take everything back they did. You make that ending shepard gets hit by the laser blast and immediately cut to Liara's message being played for the next cycle. That's an ending I would have liked. It would have been a downer, but it would have been a downer that was derived from elements and themes (though not tone), present in the rest of the series.

The fundemental nature of a Lovecraftian story is the unknown. And in Mass Effect we get to understand the threat and know their history and motivations. A Lovecraftian threat would be unknowable or if it was knowable, it would drive you mad.
A more more Lovecraftian story is that of Convergence of Cyriss in Warmachine. A new planet whispers into certain people's dreams and tells them to prepare the world for the arrival of an ancient god. Heck, even Ghost Busters is more a Lovecraftian story than Mass Effect. (Secret cult working to bring back an ancient god with a long and convoluted history, astronomy and end of the world.)

 Chongara wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

Yes, but this was a much bigger and worse threat than before. sometimes we are limited to what we can do. In this case, you did all you could do, and you couldn't save everyone. Its out of your control this time. That is as real as the mass effect series has ever gotten, and thats why I love the ending. IT felt real in the end. The game communicated to me that it wasn't going to be a happy ending. I had context clues all over the place. The child, the reapers. The last game is about death, and accepting it.

If this ending was going for that theme, it did it poorly. Having space magic wipe out the threat does nothing to support that theme. If ending was about accepting death, accepting the inevitable, the inevitable would have happened. The galaxy would have died. What we got was a lazy Deus Ex Machina, literally a god sprang forth from the machine and resolved the plot Casey Hudson and Mac Walters didn't have the guts to.

Now you take everything back they did. You make that ending shepard gets hit by the laser blast and immediately cut to Liara's message being played for the next cycle. That's an ending I would have liked. It would have been a downer, but it would have been a downer that was derived from elements and themes (though not tone), present in the rest of the series.

Everyone always calls it space magic.

Its an electro magnetic pulse. Its not that difficult to realize that.

There are four endings. The failure/refusal (shooting the machine god or walking away), the synergy ending, the desturction ending, and control ending. All which are considered to be good and bad.

These are all representations of death. Synegery (belief of something better), refusal/failure (refusing to work with death, and subsequently dying), Destruction ending (Acceptance of death), Control (True Sacrifice/Being a Hero), These are all different types of death.

The ending is quite brilliant in my opinion. Though I also liked Spec Ops: The Line. And everyone around here seems to think I am crazy for that.


But overall this game I would classify as a Lovecraftian horror story. Because in the end it is hopeless, the ending is out of our control, yes we do get to choose which our path is, but in reality is it really our choice? No it is not. In the end the god in the machine chooses for us, that last bits of humanity and sanity are finally gone. The universe is basically screwed.

I am one of the few who said this. "The extended edition was terrible." Because the original ending was very lovecraft, as everyone in the universe is doomed.

The fundemental nature of a Lovecraftian story is the unknown. And in Mass Effect we get to understand the threat and know their history and motivations. A Lovecraftian threat would be unknowable or if it was knowable, it would drive you mad.
A more more Lovecraftian story is that of Convergence of Cyriss in Warmachine. A new planet whispers into certain people's dreams and tells them to prepare the world for the arrival of an ancient god. Heck, even Ghost Busters is more a Lovecraftian story than Mass Effect. (Secret cult working to bring back an ancient god with a long and convoluted history, astronomy and end of the world.)

True and not. But we still don't know everything about the reapers and their true god. (outside of the dLC that kind of ruined that)

We don't know everything about them. Do they truly die? Or do they merely continue to exist? The god will always exist. What we do to the reapers is nothing, one day they will comeback. We don't know anything about them really.

 Asherian Command wrote:
[

Everyone always calls it space magic.

Its an electro magnetic pulse. Its not that difficult to realize that.

There are four endings. The failure/refusal (shooting the machine god or walking away), the synergy ending, the desturction ending, and control ending. All which are considered to be good and bad.

These are all representations of death. Synegery (belief of something better), refusal/failure (refusing to work with death, and subsequently dying), Destruction ending (Acceptance of death), Control (True Sacrifice/Being a Hero), These are all different types of death.

The ending is quite brilliant in my opinion. Though I also liked Spec Ops: The Line. And everyone around here seems to think I am crazy for that.

Within the context of just ME3, I don't think I'd disagree with you. But ME3 isn't a stand-alone game. It's the third and concluding chapter to a series, and the themes and major selling points of that series, through 98% of the entire thing, are that teamwork, choice, and self-determination are major aspects of the game. That you CAN save the universe from the all-encompassing threat of annihilation, that you CAN...through the fundamental concepts of teamwork, choice, and self-determination...survive the suicide mission. Maybe not without cost. Maybe not without loss. But on the whole, you come out ahead.

ME3 continues to embrace and sell these fundamental concepts, up until the end. Then, it dashes them out the window, and replaces them with a fatalistic, inevitable, unavoidable fate that, no matter how you look at it, leaves the world these characters inhabit worse off than when they started. On a basic, primal level, it rejects the reality that the series has spent hours and hours creating, and substitutes a new reality. From what I've read, those that embrace and enjoy the ending do so only after engaging in some mental leap (such as making the game about death, and how you can only fight it off for so long) to accept the new reality, while those that hate the ending recognize that a huge plot bait and switch has been perpetrated on them, and refuse to accept it with a smile.

And while the series does hint at a hidden, as of yet un-met power behind the Reapers, having it turn up in the final minutes of the series and decide the fate of everyone in the game is a truly spectacular fail in terms of storytelling. You don't set up your Biggest Bad Yet for 3 games, and then have it appear and talk the protagonist to death, then roll credits. Even people without any kind of experience with writing good stories will recognize a fundamentally bad story when they see it, and ME3 is a prime example of that.

kingbobb wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
[

Everyone always calls it space magic.

Its an electro magnetic pulse. Its not that difficult to realize that.

There are four endings. The failure/refusal (shooting the machine god or walking away), the synergy ending, the desturction ending, and control ending. All which are considered to be good and bad.

These are all representations of death. Synegery (belief of something better), refusal/failure (refusing to work with death, and subsequently dying), Destruction ending (Acceptance of death), Control (True Sacrifice/Being a Hero), These are all different types of death.

The ending is quite brilliant in my opinion. Though I also liked Spec Ops: The Line. And everyone around here seems to think I am crazy for that.

Within the context of just ME3, I don't think I'd disagree with you. But ME3 isn't a stand-alone game. It's the third and concluding chapter to a series, and the themes and major selling points of that series, through 98% of the entire thing, are that teamwork, choice, and self-determination are major aspects of the game. That you CAN save the universe from the all-encompassing threat of annihilation, that you CAN...through the fundamental concepts of teamwork, choice, and self-determination...survive the suicide mission. Maybe not without cost. Maybe not without loss. But on the whole, you come out ahead.

ME3 continues to embrace and sell these fundamental concepts, up until the end. Then, it dashes them out the window, and replaces them with a fatalistic, inevitable, unavoidable fate that, no matter how you look at it, leaves the world these characters inhabit worse off than when they started. On a basic, primal level, it rejects the reality that the series has spent hours and hours creating, and substitutes a new reality. From what I've read, those that embrace and enjoy the ending do so only after engaging in some mental leap (such as making the game about death, and how you can only fight it off for so long) to accept the new reality, while those that hate the ending recognize that a huge plot bait and switch has been perpetrated on them, and refuse to accept it with a smile.

And while the series does hint at a hidden, as of yet un-met power behind the Reapers, having it turn up in the final minutes of the series and decide the fate of everyone in the game is a truly spectacular fail in terms of storytelling. You don't set up your Biggest Bad Yet for 3 games, and then have it appear and talk the protagonist to death, then roll credits. Even people without any kind of experience with writing good stories will recognize a fundamentally bad story when they see it, and ME3 is a prime example of that.

Oh don't get me wrong, I still think parts of it could be better. I am a critic first and gamer second.

I critic all games. Even the good ones.

No game is perfect. There are certain things I would do completely different, like make the player aware this might happen with foreshadowing.

 Asherian Command wrote:

Oh don't get me wrong, I still think parts of it could be better. I am a critic first and gamer second.

I critic all games. Even the good ones.

No game is perfect. There are certain things I would do completely different, like make the player aware this might happen with foreshadowing.

That's an important distinction that I agree with: As a game, ME3 plays fine. I played through a good portion of it, and while I didn't think it was as good as ME or ME2, overall, it's hard to say that the gameplay was any worse, and in many ways, it was better.

But the whole ME series has also been about story, and ME3 fails in that regard in a big way. Not only in the ways I mention above, but even within it's own story, the ending just comes out nearly from no-where. And I think for a lot of players, who wouldn't be making an effort to compartmentalize their enjoyment of the experience in game and story parts, having the story fall flat at the end runs a big chance of killing the overall experience.

kingbobb wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

Oh don't get me wrong, I still think parts of it could be better. I am a critic first and gamer second.

I critic all games. Even the good ones.

No game is perfect. There are certain things I would do completely different, like make the player aware this might happen with foreshadowing.

That's an important distinction that I agree with: As a game, ME3 plays fine. I played through a good portion of it, and while I didn't think it was as good as ME or ME2, overall, it's hard to say that the gameplay was any worse, and in many ways, it was better.

But the whole ME series has also been about story, and ME3 fails in that regard in a big way. Not only in the ways I mention above, but even within it's own story, the ending just comes out nearly from no-where. And I think for a lot of players, who wouldn't be making an effort to compartmentalize their enjoyment of the experience in game and story parts, having the story fall flat at the end runs a big chance of killing the overall experience.

Certainly knowing what I know now, I wouldn't play the ME series. I feel like taken as a whole the ending turned the series from an overall positive experience for me, to a negative one. It was that bad.

 Chongara wrote:

Certainly knowing what I know now, I wouldn't play the ME series. I feel like taken as a whole the ending turned the series from an overall positive experience for me, to a negative one. It was that bad.

This.

I loved ME1 & 2 but have absolutely no desire to play them again because of number 3.

The defence the game receives blows my mind. Cannot comprehend it.

Yeah. Loved ME1 despite the stupid Mako, liked ME2...until the very end. Awesome speech and then...a fething stupid giant robot from the 90s. Really. Gave ME3 a chance to recover and the game was good...but then...the ending. Dear lord. Horrendous. The worst thing wasn't really the lack of choice in the first ending and it basically being the same ending with a different color tone. It was trash, but what topped it off was the "kid from nowehere suddenly spills off exposition".

Any game, movie, book or ANYTHING that resorts to a character explaining the entire plot in detail means two things:

a) You think yourself that you sucked at telling a good story and need to educate the player on it.

b) You really sucks at story writing.

There admittably were quite a few loose ends after ME1 and a lot of retconning, but ME2 tried to pick those up and fix them. ME3...however...ugh.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Yeah. Loved ME1 despite the stupid Mako, liked ME2...until the very end. Awesome speech and then...a fething stupid giant robot from the 90s. Really. Gave ME3 a chance to recover and the game was good...but then...the ending. Dear lord. Horrendous. The worst thing wasn't really the lack of choice in the first ending and it basically being the same ending with a different color tone. It was trash, but what topped it off was the "kid from nowehere suddenly spills off exposition".

Any game, movie, book or ANYTHING that resorts to a character explaining the entire plot in detail means two things:

a) You think yourself that you sucked at telling a good story and need to educate the player on it.

b) You really sucks at story writing.

There admittably were quite a few loose ends after ME1 and a lot of retconning, but ME2 tried to pick those up and fix them. ME3...however...ugh.

Mass effect 1 is still my favorite of the series. And you don't really leave on a trumiphant note really. I mean the alliance fleet is in ruins and as is everything else.

I still love the ME series and list it in my top 3, but the ending was horrible. As a writer I would have hung up my lap top if I wrote an ending that stupid.

 MWHistorian wrote:
I still love the ME series and list it in my top 3, but the ending was horrible. As a writer I would have hung up my lap top if I wrote an ending that stupid.

Lets not forget some of our setbacks as writers as well. WE have all written an ending that our teachers have hated.

 Chongara wrote:
At the end of a game series that emphasizes agency and change arising from the actions of your character, having a god you can't even argue forcing your hand is not appropriate.

That isn't even what happened to begin with, so the rest of your rant is a bit incoherent to me.

He's referring to Deus Ex Machina -_-

Deus = God.

 Sigvatr wrote:
He's referring to Deus Ex Machina -_-

Deus = God.

He is. we noticed that

But it is not a conventional one.

 Sigvatr wrote:
He's referring to Deus Ex Machina -_-

Deus = God.

I know. And the leader of the reapers was not a deus ex machina.

 Melissia wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
He's referring to Deus Ex Machina -_-

Deus = God.

I know. And the leader of the reapers was not a deus ex machina.

We llterally I would consider him one. A God of the Machines. But not a metaphorical device called a deus ex machina.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
He's referring to Deus Ex Machina -_-

Deus = God.

I know. And the leader of the reapers was not a deus ex machina.

We llterally I would consider him one. A God of the Machines. But not a metaphorical device called a deus ex machina.

A god in the sense of "an unimaginably powerful being" given how superior its technology is to our own, but the same could be said about a veteran guardsman with a lasgun on a feral world.

 Melissia wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
He's referring to Deus Ex Machina -_-

Deus = God.

I know. And the leader of the reapers was not a deus ex machina.

We llterally I would consider him one. A God of the Machines. But not a metaphorical device called a deus ex machina.

A god in the sense of "an unimaginably powerful being" given how superior its technology is to our own, but the same could be said about a veteran guardsman with a lasgun on a feral world.

Basically. I mean we had no understanding of what the hell it was really. Just the Conduit or a higher being. Thats about it really.

Oh, it was easy enough to understand.

In summary, "catalyst" was a vastly intelligent AI with access to massive amounts of power and resources gathered over the course of millions of years, which was still running off of its programming from its extremely arrogant creators (whom still think of themselves as the alpha race and superior to everyone else, even though they're forced to do things like hide in caves in the deepest parts of ocean worlds).

It kept trying to kill Shepard and end humanity in order to harvest us, and everyone else, as it had always done. However, Shepard, a mixture of machine and human due to the efforts of Cerberus, refused to die. As such, it was confused. It had no idea what to do, and so it sought input, like many machines do when they are not sure what to do. Shepard, being the most exceptional being in the universe at the time, was given the ability to be the one to be that input.

In the end, it was simply a machine doing what it was programmed to do. It was actually quite easy to understand.

 Melissia wrote:
Oh, it was easy enough to understand.

In summary, "catalyst" was a vastly intelligent AI with access to massive amounts of power and resources gathered over the course of millions of years, which was still running off of its programming from its extremely arrogant creators (whom still think of themselves as the alpha race and superior to everyone else, even though they're forced to do things like hide in caves in the deepest parts of ocean worlds).

It kept trying to kill Shepard and end humanity in order to harvest us, and everyone else, as it had always done. However, Shepard, a mixture of machine and human due to the efforts of Cerberus, refused to die. As such, it was confused. It had no idea what to do, and so it sought input, like many machines do when they are not sure what to do. Shepard, being the most exceptional being in the universe at the time, was given the ability to be the one to be that input.

In the end, it was simply a machine doing what it was programmed to do. It was actually quite easy to understand.

Yeah. And it took the visage of the childhood so Shepherd would feel comfortable.

I mean there were hints EVERYWHERE. I mean everywhere, that Shepherd had bits and pieces of reaper tech inside of him.

Eh, I don't know about that. I don't think she had any specifically reaper tech inside of her like that.

 Melissia wrote:
Eh, I don't know about that. I don't think she had any specifically reaper tech inside of her like that.

I remember it being hinted at throughout mass effect 2. They used some reaper tech during the project. And my one thing I wonder is how did they experiment on Shepherd?

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Eh, I don't know about that. I don't think she had any specifically reaper tech inside of her like that.

I remember it being hinted at throughout mass effect 2. They used some reaper tech during the project. And my one thing I wonder is how did they experiment on Shepherd?

I don't remember that at all. And it wasn't hinted during


You sound like you're leading up to the indoctrination theory, and I've already posted my opinions on that (I am one of its harshest critics)..

 Melissia wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Eh, I don't know about that. I don't think she had any specifically reaper tech inside of her like that.

I remember it being hinted at throughout mass effect 2. They used some reaper tech during the project. And my one thing I wonder is how did they experiment on Shepherd?

I don't remember that at all. And it wasn't hinted during

Spoiler:

the project logs you see during the end-game of 3.

You sound like you're leading up to the indoctrination theory, and I've already posted my opinions on that (I am one of its harshest critics)..

Hmm. Then it must be from there. Hmm.

I might need to look it back up. Oh wait my bad. I forgot -.- Sovereign parts were used in Cerberus projects.