View Full Version : Mass Effect 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWIimukNeAE
Kekvit Irae
03-18-2012, 11:06
-snip-
EMERGENCY INDUCTION PORT
seireikhaan
03-18-2012, 11:12
EMERGENCY INDUCTION PORT
Just make sure you're veeeerry careful.
And for god's sake, don't drunk dial the angry alien the deck below you. The airlock is not your friend.
frogbeastegg
03-18-2012, 16:03
Can someone give me a few specific spoilers, please? I want to know if some of the aspects I hated about ME2's plot get an answer in 3. I'll spoiler the questions in case there are people here who have not finished ME2.
1. Is anything done with Shepard's cybernetic implants? It's incredibly obvious that they were sourced from Reaper tech, same as Saren's.
2. How about Cerberus? Is it acknowledged that they are part of the Alliance despite the official line that they are renegades?
3. Skeletor the Lame End Boss. Please tell me there's some kind of explanation for that!
4. Illusive Man. Let me guess: indoctrinated all along? Hope not, that would be the cheap way out.
I hated the way they brought Shepard back after pointlessly killing her, despised being made to work for evil space nazis, and found the final boss unbelievably stupid. If there's something which redeems or builds on those things, great! My opinion of ME2 might retrospectively rise. If ME3 is more of the inane same, blergh.
I loved ME1. 2 was a big disappointment, despite its better characters and numerous links to the first game. ME3 sounds like it drops the ball hard, particularly if you do not touch the MP mode.
1. Is anything done with Shepard's cybernetic implants? It's incredibly obvious that they were sourced from Reaper tech, same as Saren's.
2. How about Cerberus? Is it acknowledged that they are part of the Alliance despite the official line that they are renegades?
3. Skeletor the Lame End Boss. Please tell me there's some kind of explanation for that!
4. Illusive Man. Let me guess: indoctrinated all along? Hope not, that would be the cheap way out.
These answers are based from End of Mass Effect 2 and Beginning of ME3:
1. Nothing as far as I am aware as I haven't completed ME3 and there is zero mention of this as if it was retconned from the series. There was going to be an indoctrination at the end I believe, but they scraped that idea.
2. They are terrorists and never part of the Alliance or working with them at all. Then again, not completed ME3 and I heard nothing contrary to this, only things which reinforced this point of view.
3. This is explained in ME2. They were trying to create a human reaper. All reapers are created using organics of specific races, this was one for the Human race.
4. I don't believe so, he is far more ambitious and opportunistic. He wants to control the reapers for personal power.
frogbeastegg
03-18-2012, 16:50
Thanks. :bow:
These answers are based from End of Mass Effect 2 and Beginning of ME3:
1. Nothing as far as I am aware as I haven't completed ME3 and there is zero mention of this as if it was retconned from the series. There was going to be an indoctrination at the end I believe, but they scraped that idea.
2. They are terrorists and never part of the Alliance or working with them at all. Then again, not completed ME3 and I heard nothing contrary to this, only things which reinforced this point of view.
3. This is explained in ME2. They were trying to create a human reaper. All reapers are created using organics of specific races, this was one for the Human race.
4. I don't believe so, he is far more ambitious and opportunistic. He wants to control the reapers for personal power.
1. Gah! That's what I feared. All that nonsense, for nothing.
2. If you follow the Cerberus subplot in ME1, it says they were part of the Alliance and went renegade. Considering the way ME1 and ME2 treats them, it makes sense if they are an unofficial branch of the Alliance classed as renegade in order to gain deniability. Otherwise, a lot of things get very silly.
3. True, but Skeletor looks human whereas the rest are flying squid. How does that work? Does the human part go inside a standard-issue squid shell? Why does it need to look human in the first place? Also, if it's condensed human consciousness, when Shepard blows it up she becomes something of a murderer. That's an interesting point to address and the game ignored it.
4. Good!
particularly if you do not touch the MP mode.
Multiplayer is a lot of fun and the game actually stumbles only at the ending IMO. If you can just ignore the ending while playing it's really good. Already nearing the end with my second Shepard (femshep JFR).
If you don't play a lot of multiplayer the only issue is the War Assets, and those can be fixed by some simple coalesced file editing.
These answers are based from End of Mass Effect 2 and Beginning of ME3:
1. Nothing as far as I am aware as I haven't completed ME3 and there is zero mention of this as if it was retconned from the series. There was going to be an indoctrination at the end I believe, but they scraped that idea.
2. They are terrorists and never part of the Alliance or working with them at all. Then again, not completed ME3 and I heard nothing contrary to this, only things which reinforced this point of view.
3. This is explained in ME2. They were trying to create a human reaper. All reapers are created using organics of specific races, this was one for the Human race.
4. I don't believe so, he is far more ambitious and opportunistic. He wants to control the reapers for personal power.
Thanks. :bow:
1. Gah! That's what I feared. All that nonsense, for nothing.
2. If you follow the Cerberus subplot in ME1, it says they were part of the Alliance and went renegade. Considering the way ME1 and ME2 treats them, it makes sense if they are an unofficial branch of the Alliance classed as renegade in order to gain deniability. Otherwise, a lot of things get very silly.
3. True, but Skeletor looks human whereas the rest are flying squid. How does that work? Does the human part go inside a standard-issue squid shell? Why does it need to look human in the first place? Also, if it's condensed human consciousness, when Shepard blows it up she becomes something of a murderer. That's an interesting point to address and the game ignored it.
4. Good!
No. Sorry. A lot happens in the last 3 hours that make some of those answers false.
1. Hinted at heavily toward the end but never said one way or another. No resolution of this plot thread.
2. The Cerberus renegade subplot was almost entirely dropped in favor of "super secret billionaire pet project." They try to revive it in an offhand way in ME3, one of your crew has one line of dialogue that brings it up, but the two threads do no mix. Period. After ME2 Cerberus became a super army antagonist, very little in the way of subtly
3. It is explained that the reapers take on the characteristics of the race that they consume. You didnt use the investigate options before the final boss in ME2 did you? All of that is explained there, even if it doesnt make sense.
4. No, sorry. That's wrong. The Illusive Man is exactly like Saren. He believed he was the one in charge but was indoctrinated all along. He never comes to terms with it and it results in a show down that mirrors ME1, except instead of a boss fight, you get interrupts.
frogbeastegg
03-18-2012, 17:47
Multiplayer is a lot of fun and the game actually stumbles only at the ending IMO. If you can just ignore the ending while playing it's really good. Already nearing the end with my second Shepard.
If you don't play a lot of multiplayer the only issue is the War Assets, and those can be fixed by some simple coalesced file editing.
Thanks for the suggestion. I played the xbox versions of 1 and 2 and want to carry my Shepard over to 3, so editing is unfortunately not an option. I have zero interest in playing MP on anything. That means I shall be one 5 second long clip* away from a full ending, and (less importantly) 1 achievement away from 100% completion. Youtubing it just isn't the same.
*the one whereShepard is lying in rubble and breathes
No. Sorry. A lot happens in the last 3 hours that make some of those answers false.
Argh! Well, thanks. Some good, some bad, and 4 is terrible. I'm adopting the approach of "forewarned is forearmed" so that I don't repeat the disappointment of ME2. I've seen a bunch of spoilers for everything else I consider important, and couldn't find anything on these 4.
On 3, I always investigate the full range of dialogue options before advancing a conversation. I didn't feel that the game provided anything remotely satisfactory on those points. It might as well have read "Blah blah, blah blah, wombats!". It's not as if I want everything answered, but I do expect things to make some basic sense instead of leaving me staring at my TV going :inquisitive:
I have just noticed something very interesting...
Those who were discussing about the endings, you might want to reconsider them.
For Froggy:
1) Completely forget what I said,
Thanks for the suggestion. I played the xbox versions of 1 and 2 and want to carry my Shepard over to 3, so editing is unfortunately not an option. I have zero interest in playing MP on anything. That means I shall be one 5 second long clip* away from a full ending, and (less importantly) 1 achievement away from 100% completion. Youtubing it just isn't the same.
*the one whereShepard is lying in rubble and breathes
Guide on how to do it on Xbox 360. (http://social.bioware.com/3734658/blog/211854)
Will require some work, but keeping Shepard alive it worth it if they do release a post ending DLC eventually.
frogbeastegg
03-18-2012, 18:10
Guide on how to do it on Xbox 360. (http://social.bioware.com/3734658/blog/211854)
Will require some work, but keeping Shepard alive it worth it if they do release a post ending DLC eventually.
Page says "Inappropriate Content. This post has been deleted".
I'm happy for my CanonShep to not have that scene, been expecting that general outcome for years and quite like the concept. My other 3 Sheps, well, the whole idea is to see the variety of paths through the game and one needs to get the full ending.
I'm sorry I don't know why that pops up for you. I can still open it.
I'll just paste it here.
Disclaimer:
The method I am about to describe is not supported or endorsed by either Bioware/EA or Microsoft. You are strongly encouraged to play the Multiplayer portion of Mass Effect 3 in order to raise Galactic Readiness, any unauthorised manipulation of your saved game files may be detected over the XBox Live network resulting in you being banned from the service. Those of you who cannot get online with your console have little to no risk because Microsoft cannot block you from a service you do not use, nor can they detect any breeches of the XBox Live terms and conditions by users who keep their consoles strictly offline. If you use the advice in this guide, you do so at your own risk, and neither the author, Bioware/EA or Microsoft are liable for any damages or loss of data that result.
OK with that, still with me? On with the guide.
Everything you need to do any form of Mass Effect 3 XBox360 save file manipulation:
An XBox360. It doesn't matter whether it's modded or not, and the Dashboard is unimportant.
A copy of Mass Effect 3. By 'copy', I of course mean a genuine retail edition (http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-360/games/mass-effect-3/89162).
Diane Allers (AKA Jessica Chobot) aboard the Normandy.
A generic USB storage device - 99.99% of USB devices are compatible with the XBox360.
Access to a Windows PC or laptop
A utility program called Horizon - you can download this tool here (http://www.xboxmb.com/horizon/).
The editing tool itself - Gibbed's Mass Effect 3 Save Editor for PC and XBox360 (http://www.mediafire.com/?a1k072mkhwpkjtf).
Got all that stuff? OK, let's get cracking.
Preparing your USB storage device:
If you're already familiar with how USB storage works in conjunction with the XBox360, you can go ahead and skip this part and we'll meet up again in the next section. For those who don't, USB storage allows you to take files from your XBox360 and safely store them on a removable device. For our purposes, it allows you to port your save files from the XBox360 across to a Windows PC or laptop.
Unless you bought a new pen specially for this, your device probably already contains some files that you may have put there at some point in the past from your PC. Now is a good time to verify if any files exist on the stick, and if so copy them across to a folder on your computer. You'll be needing to completely wipe the contents of the USB device shortly, so make sure you make copies of all the files you don't want to lose.
When you're confident your USB device contains no data you don't want to lose, insert it into your XBox360 via the USB ports on the front or rear, and then power up your XBox360. In the Dashboard, go to the System Settings, and then to Memory. You should see at least three items in the list. Among them should be 'USB Storage Device', move down to it and select that option.
At this point, you'll either see the 'Configure USB Device' screen or you won't. If you see the screen, click 'Configure Now' - this will erase all the content on your USB device, and split the device's 'disk space' in two. The XBox360 will allocate a chunk to itself, and your Windows PC will get the remaining chunk. Don't worry, this isn't permanent. By formatting the USB device at a later point you can remove the XBox360 file system from your USB device and give your PC access to the whole pen again. Don't worry if you get a message saying your device doesn't meet the performance recommendations, as this doesn't matter and can be safely ignored.
Getting your file onto your USB device:
Before you go any further, log into the user profile associated with your Mass Effect 3 save. With your XBox360-formatted USB device inserted, navigate to the hard drive, and find your Mass Effect 3 saved game. You'll notice that the saves appear to be grouped by character, for example if your Shepard is named 'Fred' there will be a save called 'Fred - Vanguard - 2005/11/22' or something similar. If you select this, you're given the option to move, copy or delete the file.
Ordinarily I'd suggest you copy the file - but Mass Effect 3 won't let you do this. Instead, you'll have to move the file onto your USB device. This means that all your hard work only exists on the USB device and nowhere else. You'd better make a copy of that file pronto or you might make a mistake and lose it all.
Backing up your original save:
Unplug the USB device from the XBox360, and insert it into your Windows computer. You'll notice that if you browse the device in Windows Explorer the device appears to be empty... do not panic, this is normal. The reason you had to configure your USB device on the XBox is so that the XBox can build a file system on the device which Windows ordinarily doesn't know how to read. That's one of the reasons we need Horizon.
With Horizon downloaded and installed, launch the program. It takes a little while, so please be patient. If you get a message telling you that the program is operating in Offline Mode then just click OK. Eventually the main Horizon interface will appear.
To the right of the screen should be a panel called the Device Explorer. With your USB device inserted, you'll see the device and all it's virtual XBox360 folders in the lower portion of that panel. The topmost virtual folder should be 'Games'. Clicking that should expand the tree to display 'Mass Effect 3', and clicking the game's title will expand the tree to display your saved games.
Right click on your saved game, and select 'Extract File...', then choose a location to save your backup copy to, and hit Save. You've now got a fully working backed up copy of your saved game in case anything goes wrong. It's useful to perform this procedure outside of save file hacking from time to time since an average home computer generally has a larger hard drive than an XBox360, and you can even burn your saved games to DVD for an extra layer of protection. To restore the backup, with the Device Explorer panel visible in Horizon and your XBox360 formatted USB device inserted, simply drag the file from your computer's hard drive directly into Device Explorer. Horizon is smart enough to know where to put it, so don't worry about remembering which folders things came out of.
Extracting your saved game from your career file:
Now, as you probably noticed - you may have several saved games associated with a single Shepard within Mass Effect 3, but you only saw one file when you came to put it on your USB drive. This is because the file you have on your USB device is basically a career file. An archive (think of it like a ZIP or RAR file) that contains multiple files, which in this case are your actual saves. Career files are not supported by WinZip, WinRAR or any other regular PC archiving utility, so you'll need Horizon again to get at these files and extract one.
Find your Mass Effect 3 save file within the Horizon directory tree in the Device Explorer, and double click it. The Device Explorer panel will vanish and you'll get a small window in the middle of the screen with your career file as it's title. You'll also see a lot of data, numbers and buttons that look quite scary to newcomers. Don't worry about these - you won't need to touch most of them, and if you make a mistake you can always just restore the backup copy of the career file you made earlier (you did make one, didn't you?) to your USB device to get your file back to it's original state.
Now, click where it says 'Contents'. This will change the window to show all the different save files that are contained in this Shepard's career save. If you can see all your actual saves here, as well as your autosaves and chapter saves (and even new game plus for some reason) you're all good to go. You'll easily recognise your most recent manual save here, as it's the one with the highest number in the filename. Select it, right click it, and then select Extract. You'll be asked for a location to save your file, so find a good directory to store it in and hit Save.
At this point, I'd recommend backing up this file too - so use Windows Explorer to create a copy of the file somewhere just in case.
Extracted the file? Got a backup of your career file and saved game somewhere? OK, let's edit.
Editing the save file to increase or alter War Asset values:
Horizon can't do this, but you may as well leave that window open as it will save you time since you'll need it later. For this part of the process, you'll need to fire up Gibbed's Mass Effect 3 Save Editor for PC and XBox360. You can launch this directly by double-clicking the EXE file within the archive as no installation is required.
With the main interface open, you'll need to get your save file in there. To do this, click Open and find the saved game you extracted earlier. This is the file that has the extension 'xbsav'. There are three tabs in the main interface - Player, Plot and Raw - if 'Raw' is not selected, click it. You'll get a seemingly long list of data displayed. Again, this can be scary, though much of it is obvious and easy to figure out. You don't absolutely need to touch much of this, but if you feel like it explore away.
What you really need to do is go down to the bottom of that list, to where it says 'Player'. It should literally be right at the bottom of the list. This will expand the tree with more items that appear underneath, one of which should be 'GAW Assets'. Find and click this, and then click the tiny button that appears to the right of this line that says '...', to gain access to the GAW Asset Collection Editor.
This bit is a little strange. There are no names displayed for the assets, only numbers. This is why I included 'Diana Allers' in the requirements list. She's referenced in the editor as asset number 186. You'll need to scroll down the listbox until you see a '186' appear - not the 186th item, but the item that is called 186 - and then click it. If you've never edited your save file before, you'll see that she has 5 strength. If she does not, either you've clicked the wrong item (look again, make sure you have the list item with the name '186' selected) or you previously edited the file.
When you're sure (or confident) you have the right item selected, you can manually edit the Strength value. This alters the number of points that the 'Diana Allers' GAW asset brings towards your total. You can make this as high or as low as you like. When you're done, hit OK to close the GAW Asset Collection Editor, and return to the main interface. From here, you can simply click Save (at the top of the screen) to save a copy of your modified save file. You can then safely close Gibbed's Mass Effect 3 Save Editor.
Injecting your modified file into your Shepard's career file:
If you kept your Horizon window open, you're most of the way there already. If you didn't, follow the steps in the sections above to bring up the list of your career file's contents. What you need to do now is right-click on the save file you extracted earlier, and choose 'Replace' from the popup menu that appears. Find your modified save file in the dialog you're presented with, and hit Open. Finally, click the big red 'Save, Rehash, and Resign' button. This will modify the file so that your XBox doesn't detect that it's been tampered with (which is essential otherwise the file will show up as corrupt on the XBox360), and also directly saves the whole career file back to your USB device. You can now close Horizon.
Moving your modified career file back to your XBox360:
Unplug your USB device from your computer, and insert it back into your XBox360. Navigate to your Storage Devices, and then to Memory Unit ('USB Storage Device' becomes 'Memory Unit' when it contains a XBox360 file system), and you should see your Mass Effect 3 save file present and correct. If everything went well, select the Move option to transfer it across to your XBox360's hard disk drive.
Verifying your edit worked:
Now it's time to see the fruits of your labour. Launch Mass Effect 3, and manually load the correct save file from among your Shepard's career saves. Hopefully you were sensible and saved on the Normandy, if you weren't... you'll have to get back there ASAP. Head to the War Room and check out your GAW Assets.
You'll need to find 'Diana Allers', she's tucked away in 'Alliance'. If everything went well, her value should have altered from 5 to whatever value you changed it to within the editor. You may even notice that - providing you changed it significantly - your blue/green EMS bar will have updated to reflect the change. With a boosted Allers, it's much easier for a single-player only player to obtain the maximum EMS.
Why did I choose Allers:
Just in case you get a touch guilt-ridden over adjusting your EMS in this way, you'll be pleased to know that as long as Allers carries the burden of all your alterations - the status quo can be easily returned by simply booting her off the ship. It's true that you can always edit her values back down to 5 again and that kicking her off the ship would actually cost you those 5 points, but you always have both options so you can pick a method as you see fit at any stage down the line.
And besides, if you're going to carry her around with you on the Normandy, this at least makes her a more valuable asset.
That can get your game/account locked for Xbox live. Not recommended.
seireikhaan
03-19-2012, 06:06
AAAAAAAAAAAAARG.
Made it to wave 9 on gold against reapers with my drell adept. I benny hilled the last half of the wave on my own for about 15 minutes, finished off the last two banshees, 4 brutes, and a small number of ravagers. Only to be felled by literally the last marauder. :bigcry:
AAAAAAAAAAAAARG.
Made it to wave 9 on gold against reapers with my drell adept. I benny hilled the last half of the wave on my own for about 15 minutes, finished off the last two banshees, 4 brutes, and a small number of ravagers. Only to be felled by literally the last marauder. :bigcry:
I haven't even tried Gold and don't want to until I can earn some ultra-rares. Getting my Black Widow back would be nice, if I can't get that, perhaps I should start building up a Salarian Engineer. Energy Drain is amazing.
This just in, Bioware is full of it. (Hey, what else is new! :laugh4:)
A post from their main Mass Effect account on facebook was made, saying how they had absolutely no plans to change the ending. That post has since disappeared into the ether and has been replaced by this one.
https://www.facebook.com/masseffect/posts/275243029217754
We are aware that there are concerns about a recent post from this account regarding the ending of the game. In this post it was stated that at this time we do not have plans to change the ending.
We would like to clarify that we are actively and seriously taking all player feedback into consideration and have ruled nothing out. At this time we are still collecting and considering your feedback and have not made a decision regarding requests to change the ending.
Your feedback and opinions are of the utmost importance to us. We apologize for any confusion this has caused. Our top priority regarding this discussion is to keep communication with you, our loyal fans, open and productive.
It was intriguing to think about what sort of games they might've been playing before, but this (in my mind) confirms they're just talking out their more unpleasant end, and playing a desperate game of PR/damage control. I think what likely happened is they had more planned for the ending but it got cut due to time, much like what happened with KOTOR 2 and Obsidian.
What are they planning to do going forward? Your guess is as good as mine. But after this its very unlikely they have some magic "ending DLC" hidden up their sleeve, like they were wanting us to think.
In the meantime MP is no less fun.
seireikhaan
03-19-2012, 07:26
I haven't even tried Gold and don't want to until I can earn some ultra-rares. Getting my Black Widow back would be nice, if I can't get that, perhaps I should start building up a Salarian Engineer. Energy Drain is amazing..
Gold reapers is brutal. Brutes by wave 2, banshees by 3. From wave 4 on, it's basically wave 10 from silver and more ridiculous as it continues.
Gold reapers is brutal. Brutes by wave 2, banshees by 3. From wave 4 on, it's basically wave 10 from silver and more ridiculous as it continues.
Correct me if I'm wrong but that doesn't sound fun. I think i'll stick to silver.. :dizzy:
seireikhaan
03-19-2012, 08:59
Correct me if I'm wrong but that doesn't sound fun. I think i'll stick to silver.. :dizzy:
Maybe it's the souls player in me, but if you have a very competent team and very few screw ups, it's a lot of fun. Very, very challenging. But fun.
Of course, with even just an average team you'll get rolled during wave 3.
seireikhaan
03-19-2012, 09:31
And found my first cheater. Or, at least, the first one that didn't care about it being obvious. N7 ranking of 7,040 with a Saber X as his weapon. :inquisitive: Yeah, because that sounds totally legit.
frogbeastegg
03-19-2012, 12:56
I'm sorry I don't know why that pops up for you. I can still open it.
I'll just paste it here.
Disclaimer:
The method I am about to describe is not supported or endorsed by either Bioware/EA or Microsoft. You are strongly encouraged to play the Multiplayer portion of Mass Effect 3 in order to raise Galactic Readiness, any unauthorised manipulation of your saved game files may be detected over the XBox Live network resulting in you being banned from the service. Those of you who cannot get online with your console have little to no risk because Microsoft cannot block you from a service you do not use, nor can they detect any breeches of the XBox Live terms and conditions by users who keep their consoles strictly offline. If you use the advice in this guide, you do so at your own risk, and neither the author, Bioware/EA or Microsoft are liable for any damages or loss of data that result.
OK with that, still with me? On with the guide.
Everything you need to do any form of Mass Effect 3 XBox360 save file manipulation:
An XBox360. It doesn't matter whether it's modded or not, and the Dashboard is unimportant.
A copy of Mass Effect 3. By 'copy', I of course mean a genuine retail edition (http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-360/games/mass-effect-3/89162).
Diane Allers (AKA Jessica Chobot) aboard the Normandy.
A generic USB storage device - 99.99% of USB devices are compatible with the XBox360.
Access to a Windows PC or laptop
A utility program called Horizon - you can download this tool here (http://www.xboxmb.com/horizon/).
The editing tool itself - Gibbed's Mass Effect 3 Save Editor for PC and XBox360 (http://www.mediafire.com/?a1k072mkhwpkjtf).
Got all that stuff? OK, let's get cracking.
Preparing your USB storage device:
If you're already familiar with how USB storage works in conjunction with the XBox360, you can go ahead and skip this part and we'll meet up again in the next section. For those who don't, USB storage allows you to take files from your XBox360 and safely store them on a removable device. For our purposes, it allows you to port your save files from the XBox360 across to a Windows PC or laptop.
Unless you bought a new pen specially for this, your device probably already contains some files that you may have put there at some point in the past from your PC. Now is a good time to verify if any files exist on the stick, and if so copy them across to a folder on your computer. You'll be needing to completely wipe the contents of the USB device shortly, so make sure you make copies of all the files you don't want to lose.
When you're confident your USB device contains no data you don't want to lose, insert it into your XBox360 via the USB ports on the front or rear, and then power up your XBox360. In the Dashboard, go to the System Settings, and then to Memory. You should see at least three items in the list. Among them should be 'USB Storage Device', move down to it and select that option.
At this point, you'll either see the 'Configure USB Device' screen or you won't. If you see the screen, click 'Configure Now' - this will erase all the content on your USB device, and split the device's 'disk space' in two. The XBox360 will allocate a chunk to itself, and your Windows PC will get the remaining chunk. Don't worry, this isn't permanent. By formatting the USB device at a later point you can remove the XBox360 file system from your USB device and give your PC access to the whole pen again. Don't worry if you get a message saying your device doesn't meet the performance recommendations, as this doesn't matter and can be safely ignored.
Getting your file onto your USB device:
Before you go any further, log into the user profile associated with your Mass Effect 3 save. With your XBox360-formatted USB device inserted, navigate to the hard drive, and find your Mass Effect 3 saved game. You'll notice that the saves appear to be grouped by character, for example if your Shepard is named 'Fred' there will be a save called 'Fred - Vanguard - 2005/11/22' or something similar. If you select this, you're given the option to move, copy or delete the file.
Ordinarily I'd suggest you copy the file - but Mass Effect 3 won't let you do this. Instead, you'll have to move the file onto your USB device. This means that all your hard work only exists on the USB device and nowhere else. You'd better make a copy of that file pronto or you might make a mistake and lose it all.
Backing up your original save:
Unplug the USB device from the XBox360, and insert it into your Windows computer. You'll notice that if you browse the device in Windows Explorer the device appears to be empty... do not panic, this is normal. The reason you had to configure your USB device on the XBox is so that the XBox can build a file system on the device which Windows ordinarily doesn't know how to read. That's one of the reasons we need Horizon.
With Horizon downloaded and installed, launch the program. It takes a little while, so please be patient. If you get a message telling you that the program is operating in Offline Mode then just click OK. Eventually the main Horizon interface will appear.
To the right of the screen should be a panel called the Device Explorer. With your USB device inserted, you'll see the device and all it's virtual XBox360 folders in the lower portion of that panel. The topmost virtual folder should be 'Games'. Clicking that should expand the tree to display 'Mass Effect 3', and clicking the game's title will expand the tree to display your saved games.
Right click on your saved game, and select 'Extract File...', then choose a location to save your backup copy to, and hit Save. You've now got a fully working backed up copy of your saved game in case anything goes wrong. It's useful to perform this procedure outside of save file hacking from time to time since an average home computer generally has a larger hard drive than an XBox360, and you can even burn your saved games to DVD for an extra layer of protection. To restore the backup, with the Device Explorer panel visible in Horizon and your XBox360 formatted USB device inserted, simply drag the file from your computer's hard drive directly into Device Explorer. Horizon is smart enough to know where to put it, so don't worry about remembering which folders things came out of.
Extracting your saved game from your career file:
Now, as you probably noticed - you may have several saved games associated with a single Shepard within Mass Effect 3, but you only saw one file when you came to put it on your USB drive. This is because the file you have on your USB device is basically a career file. An archive (think of it like a ZIP or RAR file) that contains multiple files, which in this case are your actual saves. Career files are not supported by WinZip, WinRAR or any other regular PC archiving utility, so you'll need Horizon again to get at these files and extract one.
Find your Mass Effect 3 save file within the Horizon directory tree in the Device Explorer, and double click it. The Device Explorer panel will vanish and you'll get a small window in the middle of the screen with your career file as it's title. You'll also see a lot of data, numbers and buttons that look quite scary to newcomers. Don't worry about these - you won't need to touch most of them, and if you make a mistake you can always just restore the backup copy of the career file you made earlier (you did make one, didn't you?) to your USB device to get your file back to it's original state.
Now, click where it says 'Contents'. This will change the window to show all the different save files that are contained in this Shepard's career save. If you can see all your actual saves here, as well as your autosaves and chapter saves (and even new game plus for some reason) you're all good to go. You'll easily recognise your most recent manual save here, as it's the one with the highest number in the filename. Select it, right click it, and then select Extract. You'll be asked for a location to save your file, so find a good directory to store it in and hit Save.
At this point, I'd recommend backing up this file too - so use Windows Explorer to create a copy of the file somewhere just in case.
Extracted the file? Got a backup of your career file and saved game somewhere? OK, let's edit.
Editing the save file to increase or alter War Asset values:
Horizon can't do this, but you may as well leave that window open as it will save you time since you'll need it later. For this part of the process, you'll need to fire up Gibbed's Mass Effect 3 Save Editor for PC and XBox360. You can launch this directly by double-clicking the EXE file within the archive as no installation is required.
With the main interface open, you'll need to get your save file in there. To do this, click Open and find the saved game you extracted earlier. This is the file that has the extension 'xbsav'. There are three tabs in the main interface - Player, Plot and Raw - if 'Raw' is not selected, click it. You'll get a seemingly long list of data displayed. Again, this can be scary, though much of it is obvious and easy to figure out. You don't absolutely need to touch much of this, but if you feel like it explore away.
What you really need to do is go down to the bottom of that list, to where it says 'Player'. It should literally be right at the bottom of the list. This will expand the tree with more items that appear underneath, one of which should be 'GAW Assets'. Find and click this, and then click the tiny button that appears to the right of this line that says '...', to gain access to the GAW Asset Collection Editor.
This bit is a little strange. There are no names displayed for the assets, only numbers. This is why I included 'Diana Allers' in the requirements list. She's referenced in the editor as asset number 186. You'll need to scroll down the listbox until you see a '186' appear - not the 186th item, but the item that is called 186 - and then click it. If you've never edited your save file before, you'll see that she has 5 strength. If she does not, either you've clicked the wrong item (look again, make sure you have the list item with the name '186' selected) or you previously edited the file.
When you're sure (or confident) you have the right item selected, you can manually edit the Strength value. This alters the number of points that the 'Diana Allers' GAW asset brings towards your total. You can make this as high or as low as you like. When you're done, hit OK to close the GAW Asset Collection Editor, and return to the main interface. From here, you can simply click Save (at the top of the screen) to save a copy of your modified save file. You can then safely close Gibbed's Mass Effect 3 Save Editor.
Injecting your modified file into your Shepard's career file:
If you kept your Horizon window open, you're most of the way there already. If you didn't, follow the steps in the sections above to bring up the list of your career file's contents. What you need to do now is right-click on the save file you extracted earlier, and choose 'Replace' from the popup menu that appears. Find your modified save file in the dialog you're presented with, and hit Open. Finally, click the big red 'Save, Rehash, and Resign' button. This will modify the file so that your XBox doesn't detect that it's been tampered with (which is essential otherwise the file will show up as corrupt on the XBox360), and also directly saves the whole career file back to your USB device. You can now close Horizon.
Moving your modified career file back to your XBox360:
Unplug your USB device from your computer, and insert it back into your XBox360. Navigate to your Storage Devices, and then to Memory Unit ('USB Storage Device' becomes 'Memory Unit' when it contains a XBox360 file system), and you should see your Mass Effect 3 save file present and correct. If everything went well, select the Move option to transfer it across to your XBox360's hard disk drive.
Verifying your edit worked:
Now it's time to see the fruits of your labour. Launch Mass Effect 3, and manually load the correct save file from among your Shepard's career saves. Hopefully you were sensible and saved on the Normandy, if you weren't... you'll have to get back there ASAP. Head to the War Room and check out your GAW Assets.
You'll need to find 'Diana Allers', she's tucked away in 'Alliance'. If everything went well, her value should have altered from 5 to whatever value you changed it to within the editor. You may even notice that - providing you changed it significantly - your blue/green EMS bar will have updated to reflect the change. With a boosted Allers, it's much easier for a single-player only player to obtain the maximum EMS.
Why did I choose Allers:
Just in case you get a touch guilt-ridden over adjusting your EMS in this way, you'll be pleased to know that as long as Allers carries the burden of all your alterations - the status quo can be easily returned by simply booting her off the ship. It's true that you can always edit her values back down to 5 again and that kicking her off the ship would actually cost you those 5 points, but you always have both options so you can pick a method as you see fit at any stage down the line.
And besides, if you're going to carry her around with you on the Normandy, this at least makes her a more valuable asset.
Thanks for the copy/paste. :bow:
Unfortunately Tiaexz is right: there's a chance it will get my entire account banned. Microsoft are hypersensitive about savegames due to the achievement system.
gaelic cowboy
03-19-2012, 14:29
And found my first cheater. Or, at least, the first one that didn't care about it being obvious. N7 ranking of 7,040 with a Saber X as his weapon. :inquisitive: Yeah, because that sounds totally legit.
How are these people cheating?? are they changing the stats of weapons or something?
Finished single player last night was a bit apprehensive about the end after all the hate on the web I have to say I thought it was fine. (my enjoyment came from the the ride along the way)
I fairly confident Mass 4, 5 an 6 will be made though likely with a new character and I am guessing EA will never anyone branch a story as much again the Mass 2 suicide mission will never be allowed ever again.
Finished single player last night was a bit apprehensive about the end after all the hate on the web I have to say I thought it was fine. (my enjoyment came from the the ride along the way)
I fairly confident Mass 4, 5 an 6 will be made though likely with a new character and I am guessing EA will never anyone branch a story as much again the Mass 2 suicide mission will never be allowed ever again.
You I think that reading spoilers on the Internet allows for some degree of tempering against the bad ending. I mean when you read posts along the lines of, "OMG THE ENDING RUINED MY LIFE!" then one expects the worst. After that when you get an ending with no dead bodies in view it actually feels quite good. :laugh:
That's actually one reason I advised everyone to check out the spoilers so that they go in prepared and don't receive any unpleasant shocks. Because people do (and I confess I am one of them) get very involved with their characters.
I predict that if there are future games, they would either be shooters or some other genre. I can't see them doing another RPG in ME universe anytime soon. Tends to get stale.
gaelic cowboy
03-19-2012, 16:37
I predict that if there are future games, they would either be shooters or some other genre. I can't see them doing another RPG in ME universe anytime soon. Tends to get stale.
Oh some kind of shooter no doubt with a bit of story thrown in for good measure (http://ie.games.ign.com/articles/122/1220932p1.html)
I predict that if there are future games, they would either be shooters or some other genre. I can't see them doing another RPG in ME universe anytime soon. Tends to get stale.
ME3 is already more shooter than RPG so that's highly likely. To be honest, I think the stripped down RPG nature of 3 will be their model going forward. Some choices but overall the game based in third-person action.
Double post! Sorry guys but here's the results of the N7 weekend: basically, everyone did their part. Three million brutes got nullified so everyone can expect two unlocks coming their way tomorrow at 5pm PST, provided you participated and won at least one game :yes:
Fluffly breakdown is here: http://blog.bioware.com/2012/03/19/operation-goliath-success-2/
Looking forward to the next challenge weekend as this one was a ton of fun. All in all I think i had about 15 extractions against Reapers on Silver - here's hoping this weekend's events has taught some of the new blood how to act accordingly when facing down a banshee charge. (probably not, but a man can dream)
Greyblades
03-20-2012, 17:28
Spoilers:
http://angryjoeshow.com/2012/03/top-10-reasons-we-hate-mass-effect-3s-ending/
johnhughthom
03-20-2012, 18:43
Spoilers:
http://angryjoeshow.com/2012/03/top-10-reasons-we-hate-mass-effect-3s-ending/
I wasn't sure that was Joe at first, he sounds more like Depressed Joe than Angry Joe.
Being honest, I can use the basic premise from the Endings and produce something vastly different instantly and it would only take the group of Bioware developers an afternoon. Most time consuming would be getting the voice actors to read out the new lines. This is what I would do different on the fundamental level:
The Star Child doesn't exist, it is simply Harbringer.
Now this rips open all the new possibilities. Such as the Blue choice and even worse, all the supporting evidence for this is in the game already as if it was planned then cruelly snatched away.
Don't you think it is hilarious how the Illusive man is some how the Paragon choice at the end? How "Star Child" said he cannot control the reapers and what not but "you" can? And it doesn't explain the very beginning of the game either. Restart the game or even the Demo, and watch the child very carefully. No one helps him aboard the "ship", he simply disappears from the Ducts with accompanying Reaper noise. It says in the Codex about indoctrination producing ghostly images. All in short, Shepard is indoctrinated. The whole thing about going for the Blue is so the Reapers end up actually winning and absorbing Shepard's essence, owning the Galaxies best. Then they just proceed to destroy everything once and for all.
Anyway, I will leave the Green for abit, then I will go for the Red:
This is apparently the choice Anderson would take, somehow, the best Paragon of Virtue in the Entire series is doing the "Renegade" choice and what better way for "Star Child" (Harbringer) to do then trick Sheperd into thinking Anderson is the bad guy in all of this, and not the illusive man. Also, the Reapers are on a totally different system then the other synthetics, such as the Geth and apparently afterall, the Star Child owns it all, he could simply go "Star Child, stick it in your torpedo tube". So the Red ending is technically the best ending as you defeat the Reapers, this is why Harbringer is trying to persuade you away from it towards the other two options which also outright kill you, this is why the Red ending gives the "gasping scene" at the end as you defeat Harbringers influence and thus free yourself.
Green Ending:
Congratulations, you just turned everyone into Husks. Unlike the Blue ending where the Reapers simply outright win, the Green is the "Organics will join the Reapers", so everyone is effectively turned into Husks. So whilst you "save them", they are now enternally bound to their Reaper Overlords. A very bittersweet ending.
Now for the brand new cut scenes for the End.
New Blue:
Commander Shepard gets absorbed by the Reapers, Harbringer grins as he looks on his successful task. Now possessing the galaxies most important figure (yourself), the Reapers now get that very crucial upperhand and simply smackdowns on the super armanda, then just rips apart the world. The whole Galaxy quakes in terror as they have Commander Shepard upon their television screens telling them that the reapers have won and to embrace them. It cuts to a scene where the council are in an emergency bunker under attack, "They got to him... Sheperd was indoctrinated, we were fools." "Clearly we were outmatched by a superior foe, a sound strategy.". The Crew people of the Normandy are like - Tali: "I cannot believe it.. Sheperd... indoctrinated..". In short, it isn't a twist ending, it is an ending which simply tells the player "Damn, you are dumb. You couldn't see through the obvious? I mean really.. Illusive Man is the good guy all along?!"
New Red:
This one is very similar to the current. If you got bad war assets, you end up wiping out everyone including the reapers by blowing the galaxy up to due to the number of "mistakes", but if you do everything, you unllock the ME equal of the Deathstar to use against the Reapers, thus having the firepower to wipe their behinds off the face of the galaxy.
New Green:
Everyone gets assimilated like the Borg. It is a stalemate, a "Draw" ending, where the Reapers "Basically Win", but they do not fully get their way, and Organics? Well, they just survive as part of the Reaper Collective now.
What is not in the cutscenes:
Normandy fleeing or paradise planet.
On a completely separate note:
Surely when they built the crucible they would have noticed that to some how fire a weapon, you need to destroy part of it, and the other various levers and handpanels and what not.
@ Tiaexz
Two words Space Magic! :clown:
About the red ending.
The only thing that makes it bad ATM is that all synthetics with Reaper tech in them die. Now a paragon Shepard can live with sacrificing EDI, but killing the Geth really sours the deal. (I haven't tried a game where I prevented Legion from uploading Reaper code as yet, so I do not know what will happen in that case....do the Quarians kill the geth anyway?)
Being honest, I can use the basic premise from the Endings and produce something vastly different instantly and it would only take the group of Bioware developers an afternoon. Most time consuming would be getting the voice actors to read out the new lines. This is what I would do different on the fundamental level:
Now this rips open all the new possibilities. Such as the Blue choice and even worse, all the supporting evidence for this is in the game already as if it was planned then cruelly snatched away.
Don't you think it is hilarious how the Illusive man is some how the Paragon choice at the end? How "Star Child" said he cannot control the reapers and what not? And it doesn't explain the very beginning of the game either. Restart the game or even the Demo, and watch the child very carefully. No one helps him aboard the "ship", he simply disappears from the Ducts with accompanying Reaper noise. It says in the Codex about indoctrination producing ghostly images. All in short, Shepard is indoctrinated. The whole thing about going for the Blue is so the Reapers end up actually winning and absorbing Shepard's essence, owning what the Galaxies best. Then they just proceed to destroy everything once and for all.
Yeah I just didn't understand that. At all. It was the reason why I chose Red and said to hell with the consequences. It was far better than the alternatives.
Seriously? I've spent all game telling this guy he's a lunatic (rightly so) and watch him murder innocent people by the thousands. By the thousands. In playing a renegade I did some stuff Shepard probably isn't proud of, but you never go as far as TIM does in ME3. And suddenly the game tells you that he was right all along and his mass-murder was the way to go? Are you :daisy: ribbing?
Green was no better imo. Like you said it had a distinct borg vibe to it, the only way that even remotely made sense for imo was Red. Unfortunately it still suffers from how ambiguous the entire ending is. :shrug:
I still am of the opinion (expressed on the last post of page 9) that Bioware simply ran out of time and had to scrap half the ending, almost mirroring what happened with KOTOR 2. All the signs are there.
I still am of the opinion (expressed on the last post of page 9) that Bioware simply ran out of time and had to scrap half the ending, almost mirroring what happened with KOTOR 2. All the signs are there.
I messed up with the Qaurians and Geth with the result that the Quarians got wiped out and Tali threw herself off a cliff...yet I had the romance scene with her before the final showdown. So yeah I'm inclined to believe they ran out of time.
Greyblades
03-21-2012, 04:54
I've noticed a bit of unfinished parts too, there's a bunch of grey elcor shapes with spoons growing out thier heads standing around the inaccessable parts of the citadel nightclub, dont look too closely at the far off dancers either; ever seen one of those lamps that have a cloth that wriggles around in an air stream?
And have you looked around in that little area before the final push to the beam? You start out overlooking a hole in a wall where two marines are shooting through, from the angle provided by the window if you walk towards it you can see that they are shooting at nothing. If you wait around they dont ever stop shooting until you go down and join them, and even from that angle as they close the hole it still looks like they're fighting nothing, what with no returned fire.
The idle human soldiers look robotic, a row of marines salute in exact unison and dont stop saluting ever, every single soldier ends standing in the same place, even the guys who have been relieved of holding the gate are just standing like doofus' facing the wall.
Also the krogan are pretty orderly during wrex's speech, shifting thier feet, checking thier weapons, almost like they're ignoring him. And they dont cheer, not so much as a weak "raaah" in wrex's audio clip. I know wrex isn't exactly Henry V here but come one!.
Kekvit Irae
03-21-2012, 11:25
Finally redeemed my Commendation Pack. I got the N7 Hurricane SMG.
https://i41.tinypic.com/28bzc5h.png
Finally redeemed my Commendation Pack. I got the N7 Hurricane SMG.
https://i41.tinypic.com/28bzc5h.png
I never got any N7 weapons at all. So feel honoured. Totally ripped off.
seireikhaan
03-21-2012, 14:31
Finally redeemed my Commendation Pack. I got the N7 Hurricane SMG.
https://i41.tinypic.com/28bzc5h.png
Ditto here. I even tried it with my turian soldier's marksman just to see if it made it good. Noap.
Greyblades
03-21-2012, 15:56
Hey angry joe's put up an indoctrination theory video.
spoilers: http://angryjoeshow.com/2012/03/indoctrination-theory-proof-of-me3-ending-dlc/
Hey angry joe's put up an indoctrination theory video.
spoilers: http://angryjoeshow.com/2012/03/indoctrination-theory-proof-of-me3-ending-dlc/
Wow, there are actual thoughts and theories based on what I noticed? Amazing.
Finally redeemed my Commendation Pack. I got the N7 Hurricane SMG.
https://i41.tinypic.com/28bzc5h.png
I got a Geth Pulse Rifle.
To be fair, not as bad as the Hurricane, but I really have no use for the multitude of assault rifles out there. The Avenger and Vindicator can handle just about anything when I need them, which is seldom due to overlap with any non-Hurricane SMG.
It looks like they refunded me another pack!
This time I got the N7 Valiant Sniper Rifle.
Kekvit Irae
03-21-2012, 18:33
I got a Geth Pulse Rifle.
To be fair, not as bad as the Hurricane, but I really have no use for the multitude of assault rifles out there. The Avenger and Vindicator can handle just about anything when I need them, which is seldom due to overlap with any non-Hurricane SMG.
I'd rather have the Hurricane than the GPR. The GPR does extremely sub-par DPS and sustained DPS. Then again, I'd rather have neither, since I use my Mattock for assault rifles, and I use SMGs if I want to suck.
Finally redeemed my Commendation Pack. I got the N7 Hurricane SMG.
https://i41.tinypic.com/28bzc5h.png
I got the valiant sniper rifle :3
https://i.imgur.com/oKeDS.png
johnhughthom
03-22-2012, 03:13
Mass Effect 3 ending so controversial even the BBC is reporting on it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17458208)
Mass Effect 3 ending so controversial even the BBC is reporting on it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17458208)
Not really sure what else I can say at this point other than "interesting." The discussion in the last 3 weeks has covered just about everything there is to say, both here and around the internet at large.
Personally, i'm going to pause my current New Game+ play through and wait until after April to see what they're up to. Probably the best idea at this point.
thefluffyone93
03-22-2012, 19:21
I got a Geth Pulse Rifle.
To be fair, not as bad as the Hurricane, but I really have no use for the multitude of assault rifles out there. The Avenger and Vindicator can handle just about anything when I need them, which is seldom due to overlap with any non-Hurricane SMG.
Need....SHOTGUNS...
Vanguard...must....
SHEPARD CHAAAAARGE!
and Shockwaves, shockwaves everywhere....
Need....SHOTGUNS...
Vanguard...must....
SHEPARD CHAAAAARGE!
and Shockwaves, shockwaves everywhere....
I have to admit, I tried Vanguard recently and it was a lot of fun.
Infiltrator will always be my favorite class, though. Nothing like cloaking yourself and separating 2 or 3 enemies from their heads with your favorite sniper rifle.
Kekvit Irae
03-22-2012, 23:48
http://www.alienwarearena.com/giveaway/mass-effect-3-giveaway
A sniper rifle that fires electricity rounds. SP only, sadly.
OVER 9000! left in stock.
http://www.alienwarearena.com/giveaway/mass-effect-3-giveaway
A sniper rifle that fires electricity rounds. SP only, sadly.
OVER 9000! left in stock.
Thanks for the heads up! ~D
My SP is already unbalanced enough, what with being level capped and having unlocked most of the hidden power weapons. I don't need another. :sad3: If only it was MP ready i'd jump at it.
seireikhaan
03-23-2012, 02:41
Thanks for the heads up! ~D
My SP is already unbalanced enough, what with being level capped and having unlocked most of the hidden power weapons. I don't need another. :sad3: If only it was MP ready i'd jump at it.
Ditto. Maybe if I played sp on insanity I'd go for it, but I'll just let others have it. As it is, I'm having entirely too much fun superheroing sp on normal with my vanguard without using my weapons.
also, I approve of the KS meme pics.
Ditto. Maybe if I played sp on insanity I'd go for it, but I'll just let others have it. As it is, I'm having entirely too much fun superheroing sp on normal with my vanguard without using my weapons.
As much as I loved the initial SP balance, it gets really skewered once you unlock some of the better weapons. I was playing on Insanity like it was absolutely nothing before news of the retcon DLC became known. Its really surprising, since Insanity in ME1 and ME2 were pretty frustrating, here its almost trivial. All you have to do is buy one or two weapon upgrades and suddenly the power weapons cannot be stopped.
The M-37 Falcon is the most heinous example of an OP gun: rapid fire grenades turn Brutes into mulch. This is likely the reason its fire rate got nerfed pretty significantly in MP.
The Grail Spike Thrower (one of my favorite weapons) is unfortunately also pretty overpowered. I can headshot anything, instantly, from any range with this beast. Its hilariously good fun, but also too easy. I think I might completely wipe my save and just start again from whatever level i imported in from ME2. Wiping out entire hallways in an instant on Insanity just doesn't feel right. :no:
also, I approve of the KS meme pics.
I finished that up about three weeks ago. Charming VN and really enjoyed the characters. ~:)
seireikhaan
03-23-2012, 05:26
As much as I loved the initial SP balance, it gets really skewered once you unlock some of the better weapons. I was playing on Insanity like it was absolutely nothing before news of the retcon DLC became known. Its really surprising, since Insanity in ME1 and ME2 were pretty frustrating, here its almost trivial. All you have to do is buy one or two weapon upgrades and suddenly the power weapons cannot be stopped.
The M-37 Falcon is the most heinous example of an OP gun: rapid fire grenades turn Brutes into mulch. This is likely the reason its fire rate got nerfed pretty significantly in MP.
The Grail Spike Thrower (one of my favorite weapons) is unfortunately also pretty overpowered. I can headshot anything, instantly, from any range with this beast. Its hilariously good fun, but also too easy. I think I might completely wipe my save and just start again from whatever level i imported in from ME2. Wiping out entire hallways in an instant on Insanity just doesn't feel right. :no:
Hmm. Guess I could try it. Beating ME2 on insanity was an excercise in tedium, never even tried on ME1 because of watching a roommate spend seemingly 10 hours grinding through immunity spam. Never really tried most of the weapons in SP- once I got my hands on the particle rifle from the Ashes dlc, I was so much in love with its "ME1-ness" that I just stuck with it for my adept. Want them to make it a possible prize for a weekend competition so bad. Then imported my level 30 vanguard to SP and was amazed by how badly I ripped stuff up. Didn't fire a bullet until Pahlaven's moon. Overpowered? Yes. Fun? Absolutely.
I finished that up about three weeks ago. Charming VN and really enjoyed the characters. ~:)
Aside from the main character, I'd agree.
edit: retcon DLC?
edit: retcon DLC?
Whatever it is Bioware is obviously planning for future content. (http://blog.bioware.com/2012/03/21/4108/) It was linked before but there's a paragraph in there that promises the team is hard at work on story based DLC to "provide closure," whatever that's supposed to mean. I've stopped my NG+ play through to wait and see what they're up to.
Aside from the main character, I'd agree.
No, I obviously wasn't including Hisao among that statement. :laugh4:
Geez, I've got a long way to catch up to you two. :laugh4:
Got up to the final mission in SP. My war forces bar has been full for half the game now and I'm sitting at "even" chances (which I think is as high as it gets), but I still want to get my galactic readiness up to 100%. So I'll be playing a lot of MP in the next few days...
What this movement now needs is some celebrity support. Does Kim Kardashian play video games?
Forbes article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/21/bioware-co-founder-apologizes-to-fans-for-the-mass-effect-3-ending-sort-of/) on Ray's most recent statement. Makes for an interesting read as it questions the bit about 'constructive/destructive criticism'.
Kekvit Irae
03-23-2012, 19:01
New MP operation available: http://blog.bioware.com/2012/03/23/operation-fortress/
tl;dr: Because of the amount of brutes were killed last time, they will spawn less this time. Also, +25% exp bonus.
This (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/116484-Mass-Effect-3-Outrage-Causes-Unrelated-Game-to-Change-its-Ending) is probably the first of the many future 'in-game' references to come, regarding the ending controversy.
Finally finished the game.
My thoughts on the ending:
I went into the endgame with knowledge of what was being said about the endings, but not actual details on what they were. So I tried to keep an open mind about it and see if I could catch something BioWare put in to make sense of it all.
My honest opinion? The ending comes out of left field. The sequence is completely unlike any other part of the game. You go from a fight against 5 Brutes, a Harvester, and a wave of Banshees and Marauders into- oh well, the laser beam hits you anyway, you have no idea what happened to your squad, and you're up on the Citadel alone with Anderson and the Illusive Man.
(Also, was disappointed on the final speech check- seems like you needed absolutely 100% Paragon or Renegade to get it, because I had about 90% Paragon and it was no dice. But then, I was able to make every single Renegade check in the game besides that one, despite having 10% or less Renegade. Kind of odd.)
That would be all fine if the endings were something worth it, something profound. But they're really not. Shepard dies no matter what, and the ending sequences are virtually the same, save for the color of the laser beam the Crucible shoots and maybe some robot-leaves for the merge ending. And the game doesn't save afterwards, so it's not like it makes a difference which one you pick. And it seems like the whole war effort, the whole "war readiness" questline is also for nothing, because in the end the entire game is reduced to "you pick one of three endings".
It feels almost uncannily like Deus Ex: Human Revolution - which was a good game on the whole, but kind of made weaker by the fact that you just press one of four buttons for the endgame (it goes: truth, exaggerate, lies, and "I'm just gonna blow the whole damn thing up").
Also- what's up with making the Illusive Man's Renegade ending blue and Anderson's Paragon ending red? That confused the hell out of me, especially in an already-confusing scene. Even if it was a stylistic shades-of-gray thing.
So I can see where a lot of the criticism comes in. You put in all that effort crafting a unique story for your Shepard, and then you get to just choose one of three endings and be the same as everyone else. The after-credits scene even states: well, Shepard is just a legend, anyway. We lost a lot of the details that don't really matter- such as, well, every choice you ever make. The only part that's important is that he/she stopped the Reapers.
So... I'm not gonna go demanding that BioWare change the ending. But you might say that I would welcome something a little more personalized than what they provided. Going into it, I was expecting the ending to be more of a "level of success" choice than a "pick your poison and btw all the mass relays are destroyed". Maybe a choice between destroy the reapers and control/make friends with the reapers, and depending on how many forces you put together determines how much gets destroyed in the process. Because I had well over 7000 war score and almost everyone still got killed.
Of course, if BioWare does put out a DLC ending, they will almost certainly charge me for it...
Eh. I've said my peace. I enjoyed the rest of the game immensely, and I'm still enjoying multiplayer. The only reason I'm hesitant about playing with my Renegade file is I get stuck with those endings to pick from. I might go up to Kai Leng, do all the final conversations with people on Earth, and then stop right there before doing the Brute-dance-gauntlet.
Chaotix
Because that isn't the real ending. This will get you understanding why (though there are a couple of things I disagree with in the video) - Greyblades' Earlier Link (http://angryjoeshow.com/2012/03/indoctrination-theory-proof-of-me3-ending-dlc/)
So you quote: "see if I could catch something BioWare put in to make sense of it all." you missed it!
Chaotix
Because that isn't the real ending. This will get you understanding why (though there are a couple of things I disagree with in the video) - Greyblades' Earlier Link (http://angryjoeshow.com/2012/03/indoctrination-theory-proof-of-me3-ending-dlc/)
So you quote: "see if I could catch something BioWare put in to make sense of it all." you missed it!
Joe tends toward sensationalism in a lot of his work, here though he makes a bit of sense. I'm still not sold to be honest. I'm rocking back and forth between "it's a rush job" and "it was intentional" and cannot decide fully one way or another. I'm interested in where they are going, of course, but it doesn't seem their style to do it on purpose. It would be much easier to accept if it didn't come out of left field, as Bioware is not the kind of company that does the mind-:daisy: ending competently, or at all.
I'm still not sold to be honest.
I have to be honest, I came to the same conclusions as the theory before I heard the theory, and I picked the Red ending because I didn't believe a single word of the nonsense. Plus otherthings which I have mentioned more previous.
Chaotix
Because that isn't the real ending. This will get you understanding why (though there are a couple of things I disagree with in the video) - Greyblades' Earlier Link (http://angryjoeshow.com/2012/03/indoctrination-theory-proof-of-me3-ending-dlc/)
So you quote: "see if I could catch something BioWare put in to make sense of it all." you missed it!
Perhaps so.
I know I caught that something wasn't right with the ending sequence- as in, it made no sense, what with the ghost child and the three choices out in open space on top of the Citadel.
It definitely crossed my mind that Shepard could have been indoctrinated, but I didn't seriously consider it.
All the evidence in the video is enough to confirm it for me, though. Especially the bit about the "seeing ghosts" and the rachni queen talking about "oily shadows", which fits perfectly with his dream sequences.
Thanks for that link, Tiaexz.
In my mind, this would make it a brilliant penultimate scene to the game- IF they weren't going to charge me another $10 for the REAL ending. Right now, the game's incomplete, and that's not what was advertised on the box, especially not the "collector's edition" box.
So I'm annoyed that BioWare is once again playing me for the sucker, but the "ending" as it is satisfies me with the promise of a real one soon.
I have to be honest, I came to the same conclusions as the theory before I heard the theory, and I picked the Red ending because I didn't believe a single word of the nonsense. Plus otherthings which I have mentioned more previous.
Yes I went Red as well for much the same reasons you did...
I decided to replay the Arrival DLC on a hunch.. and wouldn't you kinow it? Some stuff really jives with what the star-child tries to convince you of. Dr. Kensoth is completely indoctrinated and tries to stop you from nuking the Alpha relay, taken from one of her audio logs is her reasoning:
"I'm not convinced the Reapers mean doom for the galaxy. Legends say the Reapers came through before, but life still exists."
Sound familiar? There's also a lot of audio logs from the indoctrinated crew which directly reference weird dreams they've been having.
Add to those two things everything else brought up in spoilers and.. I don't know. Maybe it's wishful thinking but you guys might be onto something.
gaelic cowboy
03-26-2012, 10:43
The problem with the Sherphard indoctrinated theory is that Red nor Blue are none of them safe choices, they were given to you by Reapers when indoctrinated if you follow the logic.
They can show you visions of whatever they want you to think so you believe you are controlling/destroying the Reapers, thats why the ending needs ambiguity otherwise we always pick the same colour.
If you ask me none of the endings are real after all the citadel is a mass relay and it didnt blow up, I say let Bioware due a Bobby Ewing and have Shepard come out of the shower
Yes it annoys me that might mean DLC for a new ending but thats the way the world is
SwordsMaster
03-26-2012, 11:51
Well, I, for one have decided to have an opinion on the endings.
As some of you, I had my first playthrough and was disappointed, as some, I had the second one after revisiting Arrival, Overlord, and ME2 suicide mission, and have come to some different conclusions:
The 'child' is an attempt to indoctrinate Shepard. Clearly the lure of survival (Saren) and power (Elusive Man) alone wouldn't do it for him, and both those agents had spent two games trying. Hence the child appealing to the soft side, a 'new' era, of bio-synthetic life. Hence Shepard's dreams, also part of the indoctrination process, and the only way to break with them is do what you came to do, destroy the Reapers. Anything else is giving in.
Or, you know, the gasp of breath at the end could be the Shepard at the bottom of the Normandy crash site in ME2. And it all could have been a dream.
If you ask me none of the endings are real after all the citadel is a mass relay and it didnt blow up, I say let Bioware due a Bobby Ewing and have Shepard come out of the shower
I have to admit that i'd laugh really hard if they did that, and promptly never play the game again :grin2:
gaelic cowboy
03-26-2012, 12:07
Or, you know, the gasp of breath at the end could be the Shepard at the bottom of the Normandy crash site in ME2. And it all could have been a dream.
I have to admit that i'd laugh really hard if they did that, and promptly never play the game again :grin2:
I'm telling you season eight Dallas for sure.
I'm telling you season eight Dallas for sure.
We'll see come April I guess. That's when Bioware is supposedly going to come out with more info on this stuff. I'm thinking they are saving whatever it is for a PAX announcement.
Well, I, for one have decided to have an opinion on the endings.
As some of you, I had my first playthrough and was disappointed, as some, I had the second one after revisiting Arrival, Overlord, and ME2 suicide mission, and have come to some different conclusions:
The 'child' is an attempt to indoctrinate Shepard. Clearly the lure of survival (Saren) and power (Elusive Man) alone wouldn't do it for him, and both those agents had spent two games trying. Hence the child appealing to the soft side, a 'new' era, of bio-synthetic life. Hence Shepard's dreams, also part of the indoctrination process, and the only way to break with them is do what you came to do, destroy the Reapers. Anything else is giving in.
Or, you know, the gasp of breath at the end could be the Shepard at the bottom of the Normandy crash site in ME2. And it all could have been a dream.
I don't get the dream vibe, especially after playing some of the Mass Effect 2 content retroactively along-side a number of points raised in this thread.
It could still all be wishful thinking in a chaos of bad writing of course, so i'm prepared to accept either reality. :yes:
Greyblades
03-26-2012, 16:43
Ugh, this mass effect debacle has been making me think about quite afew things I would rather not.
I've been watching several reactions to this mess from movie bob, spoony, penny arcade and others. I've found myself disliking them afterwards when they disagree with my viewpoint, (admittedly, spoony's "get over it, there's worse endings out there and we didnt complain about it that much" wasn't exactly pleasant). Even though I had found myself really enjoying thier work before now I find it hard to stomach it. Its disturbing, scary and even disgusting how my opinion of a person can be so changed just because I dont agree with thier viewpoints, I really shouldnt be so put off by one stupid point that dont matter in the great scheme of things yet I still feel it. Human nature sucks.
Also I've noticed that alot of the retake mass effect detractors have been saying that this is a huge overreaction. Maybe it is, but I find it hard to believe that they expected better from the internet of all places.
Ugh, this mass effect debacle has been making me think about quite afew things I would rather not.
I've been watching several reactions to this mess from movie bob, spoony, penny arcade and others. I've found myself disliking them afterwards when they disagree with my viewpoint, (admittedly, spoony's "get over it, there's worse endings out there and we didnt complain about it that much" wasn't exactly pleasant). Even though I had found myself really enjoying thier work before now I find it hard to stomach it. Its disturbing, scary and even disgusting how my opinion of a person can be so changed just because I dont agree with thier viewpoints, I really shouldnt be so put off by one stupid point that dont matter in the great scheme of things yet I still feel it. Human nature sucks.
Also I've noticed that alot of the retake mass effect detractors have been saying that this is a huge overreaction. Maybe it is, but I find it hard to believe that they expected better from the internet of all places.
It is really a matter of how much a person got involved in the game. I've noticed that most of the people who're neutral/OK with the ending are also people who aren't much bothered about what happens to the companions and stuff like that.
Similar is the case with the 'professional' reviewers who're being criticised badly a la Colin Moriarty of IGN for giving ME3 good scores and not mentioning the ending at all (and in Colin's case actually making fun of the people who want a change...man would I like to get my hands on that guy) , I think they did not really play the game as we common gamers do. They played it like a thousand other games which they had to review, with no attachment.
What I am really concerned at the moment is that things are finally running out of steam. Most people finally seem to be getting tired of yelling, and are accepting the ending as such. Maybe it's going to hurt BW in the future, but for the moment it seems they'll come up ahead.
What I am really concerned at the moment is that things are finally running out of steam. Most people finally seem to be getting tired of yelling, and are accepting the ending as such. Maybe it's going to hurt BW in the future, but for the moment it seems they'll come up ahead.
Mass Effect 2 was pretty much "Blue Ending, you destroyed collector base", "Red Ending, you gave it to the Illusive man", except with "if you failed, your team dies".
Mass Effect 2 was pretty much "Blue Ending, you destroyed collector base", "Red Ending, you gave it to the Illusive man", except with "if you failed, your team dies".
True, but that was only one aspect of the ending. Like you said yourself, if you fail, your team dies. No matter what happens, you kill the Collectors, but you get a varying feeling of success depending on how well you did on the suicide mission. Getting every single person through that mission alive feels very different from losing some or most of your team along the way, and I feel that had more of an impact than your decision to save or destroy the base itself.
Likewise with ME1, your perception of the ending is shaped by what happens before it. Did Wrex make it through Virmire? Is Ashley or Kaidan standing next to you? Did you sleep with him/her or was it Liara? That's just as important as whether or not you saved the Council.
Above all, there's the impact of your outcome to each of these games on the sequel - every player's playthrough of ME2 and ME3 will be subtly or vastly different.
Right up until the end. In my opinion, this is where ME3's ending has trouble, whether it's a dream/indoctrination sequence or the real deal. There's no promise of "your choices will affect the sequel" because there is NO sequel and there won't be one. This means that a flat Blue/Red/in between ending doesn't work any more. If you make everyone's ending a choice between three invariant (mostly, besides the life/death feature of the red one) endings, it diminishes the significance of all that originality that your game had before it.
Honestly, if they leave the endings as they are, I don't really care which of them my Shepard picks, because no matter what Liara is on an uncharted planet thousands of lightyears away with no mass relays to connect them. Being alive but buried in a pile of rubble on a post-apocalyptic planet with no way out isn't so different from being flat-out dead, and if any three of the choices make the future happy, I don't really give a crap which one it is because Shepard's not able to take part in it anyway.
As they are, all the endings are sad for Shepard and happy for the universe, and therefore they might as well all be the same choice.
Greyblades
03-26-2012, 19:05
As they are, all the endings are sad for Shepard and happy for the universe, and therefore they might as well all be the same choice.
Happy for the universe? Methinks not considering space travel is gone and earth is now home to a battle fleet of billions of troops they cant hope to feed and allmost every faction's leaders are at earth with no way home so chaos is likely to ensue on thier planets, assuming they havent been destroyed by the relay explosions. taking it at face value, the only ending I can see as good is the control one and that's only because I can easily imagine my shepard will use the reapers to build more mass relays.
Ugh, this mass effect debacle has been making me think about quite afew things I would rather not.
I've been watching several reactions to this mess from movie bob, spoony, penny arcade and others. I've found myself disliking them afterwards when they disagree with my viewpoint, (admittedly, spoony's "get over it, there's worse endings out there and we didnt complain about it that much" wasn't exactly pleasant). Even though I had found myself really enjoying thier work before now I find it hard to stomach it. Its disturbing, scary and even disgusting how my opinion of a person can be so changed just because I dont agree with thier viewpoints, I really shouldnt be so put off by one stupid point that dont matter in the great scheme of things yet I still feel it. Human nature sucks.
Also I've noticed that alot of the retake mass effect detractors have been saying that this is a huge overreaction. Maybe it is, but I find it hard to believe that they expected better from the internet of all places.
I guess I could return the same sentiment to you, Greyblades. You expected better from talking heads behind a monitor? Most of those folks are paid for their opinion, or if not paid for it, feel quite high and mighty when it comes to what they have to say. Spoony is a prime example, dude's been on the internet for years and hasn't changed since day one. He's right, you're wrong, and he's better than you because of that (or at least in his opinion). Its part of his charm/repulsion, depending on how you feel about him.
Personally I think both sides are entirely tiresome in how they view one another. I said this before, and thank god it's starting to calm down now, but for a while there it was impossible to engage on discussion for this game without one side throwing around gross exaggerations and hyperbole. It got old. Fast.
What I am really concerned at the moment is that things are finally running out of steam. Most people finally seem to be getting tired of yelling, and are accepting the ending as such. Maybe it's going to hurt BW in the future, but for the moment it seems they'll come up ahead.
I'm actually glad that people are wearing themselves out from shouting. 90% of what was said in the initial firestorm was absolutely drivel anyway for the reasons i said above. How can you get any discussion out of someone when they either: 1); claim you have an entitled attitude or 2); are stupid for disagreeing with them. Maybe now they can climb down off the soap box and join the rest of us here on the ground.
I doubt it though! If you want my advice: don't take it personally.
edit: present company accepted, of course. Don't make me post more KS image macros. :grin2:
Greyblades
03-26-2012, 20:16
I was more commenting on my own reaction than thiers; because of one video my entire view on moviebob has become soured and I cant even push myself through his latest video, even though his entire repetior used to appeal to me, whereas spoony's a jerkass anyway so the effect is limited. Still I really dont like how my opinion on someone is swayed so negatively just by taking the opposing "side" on this pretty benign issue. I dont know I just feel I should only get these feelings of anymosity over an issue if the person turns out to support the KKK, not this.
gaelic cowboy
03-27-2012, 09:38
Happy for the universe? Methinks not considering space travel is gone and earth is now home to a battle fleet of billions of troops they cant hope to feed and allmost every faction's leaders are at earth with no way home so chaos is likely to ensue on thier planets, assuming they havent been destroyed by the relay explosions. taking it at face value, the only ending I can see as good is the control one and that's only because I can easily imagine my shepard will use the reapers to build more mass relays.
Well seeing as the citadel is a relay they can easy make up some plot device that says "Hey look we found this targetting device so we can all go home" and bobs your uncle the plothole is fixed. Then if you need to you can add in some bit about finding plans for mass relays in the rubble blah blah or discover the tech thats beyond relay travel that the reapers didnt want you to use in the first place. Nothing is ever final or set in stone in sci fi thats why it's set in the future.
Excellent blog on Wall Street Journal about the ending controversy.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/03/26/why-the-ending-of-mass-effect-3-started-a-furor/
Excellent blog on Wall Street Journal about the ending controversy.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/03/26/why-the-ending-of-mass-effect-3-started-a-furor/
Yes, excellent in showing how to miss the whole point.
There is a problem with gamer entitlement, and while there are certainly voices in the ME3 backlash who sound very immature, most have by now settled on reasonable stances. I don't think entitlement has a big part to due with this any more than I did at the start of the backlash. If you listen to the complaints of the reasonable fans (not the crazies), its not hard to understand the other side of this. Drawing parallels between the Mass Effect reaction and the Sopa/Pipa protests is :daisy: stupid and completely misses the mark. They are not products of the same movement nor of the "growing consciousness" in people who play games.
This sort of thing happens every time a fan base (in their majority, not counting the minority) finds disappointment in a sequel. It isn't unique to Mass Effect and I wish people would stop acting like it is. The article seems to think people are upset because Shepard met with a rough end, but that's not really the crux of the issue and it never was. For some it might be, but most people seem to be upset that the game ends on a really weird moment that is ambiguous as all hell. Even if the indoctrination theory turns out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors, that still leaves us with a very open ending that could use an expansion to answer the numerous questions raised. Even someone like me who initially welcomed the ending has to concede the point that the ending is wide open. People went into this thing expecting it to be the end, they didn't expect to come out of the other side still wondering what in the world is going on.
OH GOOD GOD MONK'S GONNA USE A ARTISTIC COMPARISON! SHIELD YOUR EYES!
It would be like if at the end of Return of the Jedi, Lando was piloting the Falcon into the depths of the death star and fired off the kill shot. The Death Star is exploding, Luke and Vader are stumbling on board trying to get out while Lando is gunning it through the guts of the station. All of a sudden the camera cuts to the outside and the death star blows up. We see Han, Leia and Chewy on Endor looking up at the explosion and then the credits roll...
Lando and the Falcon are nowhere to be seen. We don't know if Luke got out alive, and now the remaining rebels are stranded in Ewok City. Did the rest of the Rebel fleet get away from the explosion? (remember, they were at point blank range!) we don't know! That, among other things, is one of the big reasons people got so upset.
Personally, i feel some people in the outcry went way too far in their disagreements, and all in all, I didn't have much of a problem with the ending at first. Though now I'm curious as to just what Bioware really meant, now that word is out they're working on new content.
A friend joked that the game’s name should really be Choice Effect 3: Galaxy of Choices.
Oh god. Why. Why why why why why.
https://i.imgur.com/Wywuq.jpg
gaelic cowboy
03-27-2012, 15:09
Some journo who prob hasnt a clue about games no doubt.
I read a review in a local paper once for that Underworld Evolution movie which was actually a review of the first movie.
I don't think he meant to focus all that much on why the ending was bad but rather on why/how did it end up birthing this movement, and how Bioware brought this about themselves.
Drawing parallels between the Mass Effect reaction and the Sopa/Pipa protests is :daisy: stupid and completely misses the mark. They are not products of the same movement nor of the "growing consciousness" in people who play games.
This sort of thing happens every time a fan base (in their majority, not counting the minority) finds disappointment in a sequel. It isn't unique to Mass Effect and I wish people would stop acting like it is.
Also I beg to differ. This furor is one of a kind. I do not recall so many people coming together to protest so vehemently against any one single game......loud enough to actually make the developers (and not just any developer, Bioware....Bioware of EA) back off....even if it was just one step back.
As far as drawing parallels with the SOPA/PIPA protests is concerned I think you're missing the point. While that was an infinitely more serious issue, dealt by serious people, there too the collective bullying of the Internet played a part.
And while the early protests were immature and too extreme with people simply shouting and not listening, IMO that bit of a protest is just as important as the eventual civilised discussion that leads to some sort of solution. Do you think the devs would've listened or responded as well as they are doing now, if all that happened was a bunch of people posting their views on the game?
The first thing required was to make sure they listened to what was being said. And IMO that immature shouting in the beginning served it's purpose well.
And IMO that immature shouting in the beginning served it's purpose well.
I'm gonna have to disagree with you there.
I am of the (probably outlandish) belief that BioWare had their own "true ending" DLC planned well in advance of the outrage that occurred when the game was released. And even though they were going to charge me $5-10 for it, I bet it was perfect and gave answers to just the right amount of ambiguity while leaving the right things open-ended.
If this whole thing changed their original plans for the worse, I'll be pissed.
That, and no matter what it perpetrates the bad rep that gamers have been getting recently.
Also I beg to differ. This furor is one of a kind. I do not recall so many people coming together to protest so vehemently against any one single game......loud enough to actually make the developers (and not just any developer, Bioware....Bioware of EA) back off....even if it was just one step back.
I don't see it as being unique at all. The only thing unique about it is the scope, which is largely due to how the internet has expanded. Within the last 10 years (heck, you could argue the last five ) ordinary, run of the mill people have been given intimate access to the people from whom they buy products. Social media is out of control to the point that, if you want to throw stones at a politician, company or anyone for that mater all you need is a computer and a twitter account. It's really not so much the intensity of the rage but more the scale by which people can share it that has led to the current level of media coverage, and the reaction from Bioware/EA.
A good comparison would be the DX: Invisible War backlash. People still have hard feelings about that game but the fan reaction couldn't move mountains due to how disconnected the masses were from the minority back then. Now days? Forget about it.
And while the early protests were immature and too extreme with people simply shouting and not listening, IMO that bit of a protest is just as important as the eventual civilised discussion that leads to some sort of solution. Do you think the devs would've listened or responded as well as they are doing now, if all that happened was a bunch of people posting their views on the game?
The first thing required was to make sure they listened to what was being said. And IMO that immature shouting in the beginning served it's purpose well.
I'm never going to give credit to the act of being an immature idiot by saying the end justifies the means, because it doesn't. All it really does is justify the label that people throw onto gamers as entitled idiots who will throw a tantrum if they don't get their way. It gives smug, self-satisfied journalists an excuse to dismiss the entire argument in condescending articles like the ones you find on Kotaku and Destructoid. It might have helped in the short term, but in the long term it's done its own damage. It hurts the discussion and it hurts the perception of the market and the people who inhabit it, and that is something I really don't approve of.
I don't see it as being unique at all. The only thing unique about it is the scope, which is largely due to how the internet has expanded.
Agreed. But size does matter. And it is impressive. At least to me.
Also this is (AFAIK...correct me if I am wrong) the first time such a movement achieved some degree of success. That is what makes it unique.
I'm never going to give credit to the act of being an immature idiot by saying the end justifies the means, because it doesn't. All it really does is justify the label that people throw onto gamers as entitled idiots who will throw a tantrum if they don't get their way. It gives smug, self-satisfied journalists an excuse to dismiss the entire argument in condescending articles like the ones you find on Kotaku and Destructoid. It might have helped in the short term, but in the long term it's done its own damage. It hurts the discussion and it hurts the perception of the market and the people who inhabit it, and that is something I really don't approve of.
I must say that while your point is valid, from a more general perspective, shock value is required to make people pay attention. And the immature people IMO opinion, provide that. The drama, and shock. I don't say that I like it or that I condone it. But in this case if it helped in getting the job done, then so be it.
And you did not say....do you think the devs would've reacted in the same manner had it all just been civilised discussions on BSN, free of controversy?
Edit:
Although I am sure that the civilised charity that was started did a lot more to gather attention than any amount of immature yelling did.
I'm gonna have to disagree with you there.
I am of the (probably outlandish) belief that BioWare had their own "true ending" DLC planned well in advance of the outrage that occurred when the game was released. And even though they were going to charge me $5-10 for it, I bet it was perfect and gave answers to just the right amount of ambiguity while leaving the right things open-ended.
If this whole thing changed their original plans for the worse, I'll be pissed.
That is a pretty bleak, and I agree, outlandish perspective (although I confess that before Ray's latest statement I too wishfully clung to something akin to it). But I really really doubt that BW would've stayed quite about their wonderful plans to surprise fans once people started abusing them.
Greyblades
03-27-2012, 20:42
...:daisy: bob.
(http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5525-Mutants-and-Masses)
...:daisy: bob.
(http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5525-Mutants-and-Masses)
MovieBob goes into detail about the difference between artists and fans.
OH BOY HERE WE GO. I'm not even gonna press play, i know nerd-baiting when i see it and he should be ashamed. But then that's what the Escapist does best, isn't it?
And you did not say....do you think the devs would've reacted in the same manner had it all just been civilised discussions on BSN, free of controversy?
Edit:
Although I am sure that the civilised charity that was started did a lot more to gather attention than any amount of immature yelling did.
I think you answered the question for me, there. ~:) Look I won't deny the possibility of the crazies contributing to the end result, but the damage they ultimately did to their own argument far out weighed their contribution imo, that's all I'm saying.
That is a pretty bleak, and I agree, outlandish perspective (although I confess that before Ray's latest statement I too wishfully clung to something akin to it). But I really really doubt that BW would've stayed quite about their wonderful plans to surprise fans once people started abusing them.
It's an interesting question! Personally.. I don't know. It's hard to say one way or another with the amount of PR dancing Bioware has done since release. They've been dropping hints since day one that they've got a "plan," but then that facebook post goes up claiming they've "not decided anything." Days later the announcement is made the ME3 team is back to work on new, single-player content. It's a merry-go-round of deception that'll make your head spin.
My best theory still revolves around Bioware running out of time and being unable to conclude their work ontime. So they decided to end ME3 on a cliffhanger, which would then be continued after launch and finalized in some kind of DLC package.
Who knows if that actually happened or not, but its my best guess.
Saying it with cake. (http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/320429/20120327/mass-effect-3-ending-protest-fans-cupcakes.htm)
Fans of the "Mass Effect" franchise who were disappointed in the new title's ending have found many outlets for their anger at Bioware and the game developers who they say phoned in the ending to the video game space-opera. The game players have found a number of ways to express their fury. The newest, and perhaps most creative, protest came in the form of 402 cupcakes delivered to Bioware's offices in Edmonton, Alberta.
The cupcakes, which came from a local Canadian bakery, arrived with a short note to Bioware developers: "As fans, we want Bioware to do right by us, and fix the endings for Mass Effect 3. But we also want to let Bioware know, that we trust them, and have faith in them. Bioware has been slammed by negativity from all sides in the last few weeks. This is our way, as fans, to drive our message home, but in a (literally) sweet way. We want Bioware to add some more 'sweet' to their 'bittersweet' ending. What better way to do this than with CUPCAKES :-D."
The next N7 challenge Operation: Raptor is announced - http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/324/index/10731456 . March 30 - April 1
Instead of kills its based on promoting. Promote 2 characters to earn a commendation pack. Community goal is 150,000 characters promoted to the single player campaign to earn a Victory Pack. Personally I've only promoted two, but this looks like a good incentive to finally make me promote my bruiser Krogan and re-level him.
Expect to see a lot of low levels playing silver again because they've promoted their star character and don't want to slum it on Bronze.
Greyblades
03-29-2012, 00:22
Heh, I just played through the game again today, seeing what javik does for a play through and when I got to Wrex's speech, it crashed! Even the game didnt want me to see that ending again.
Heh, I just played through the game again today, seeing what javik does for a play through and when I got to Wrex's speech, it crashed! Even the game didnt want me to see that ending again.
Wait... you played through the entire game in a day?
He makes a slightly depressing speech about how
He's going to commit suicide.
Speaking of which, (Question about DLC dialogue)
Does anyone know if there's any additional dialogue for Ashley/Kaidan if they are taken to Eden Prime on the mission to 'retrieve' Javik? (Because to do that one would be required to postpone doing the DLC mission till after Priority Citadel II mission and I haven't done that till now in any playthrough.)
He makes a slightly depressing speech about how
He's going to commit suicide.
Only if you make him watch the memories again. Otherwise he decides to explore the galaxy
Speaking of which, (Question about DLC dialogue)
Does anyone know if there's any additional dialogue for Ashley/Kaidan if they are taken to Eden Prime on the mission to 'retrieve' Javik? (Because to do that one would be required to postpone doing the DLC mission till after Priority Citadel II mission and I haven't done that till now in any playthrough.)
It's possible, but doubtful. They might say something about the Prothean beacon but Liara pretty much covers that anyway. And I think everyone has a different take on the "dinosaurs" joke.
I guess I'll try it the next time around.
BTW it's funny how a paragon option makes Javik give the depressing speech and how not making him look does not.
Greyblades
03-29-2012, 08:32
Wait... you played through the entire game in a day?
Uh, no, sorry poor wording on my part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5ZcNFZAaWk&
Priceless.
From the creators of Minecraft comes Mars Effect (http://www.marseffect.net/)
The game is still very early in development, but here is a list of things we hope to include:
Hard science fiction.
Lots of engineering.
Fully working computer system.
Space battles against the AI or other players.
A game ending that makes sense.
Abandoned ships full of loot.
Waist high walls.
Seamlessly landing on planets.
Advanced economy system.
Mining, trading, and looting.
- Notch
tibilicus
04-02-2012, 00:53
Priceless.
From the creators of Minecraft comes Mars Effect (http://www.marseffect.net/)
Good job I remembered what the date was..
gaelic cowboy
04-02-2012, 11:44
Priceless.
From the creators of Minecraft comes Mars Effect (http://www.marseffect.net/)
Stil doesnt reach the level of win that is Mass Effect the 80s style cartoon, on the Awesome scale it's clearly William Shatner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOqHUa2LfNY
I nearly wish it wasnt an April Fool so they would make this
Saw that. Bioctic Amps. :laugh:
Surprised I'm the first one to get to this, but here it is:
http://blog.bioware.com/2012/04/05/mass-effect-3-extended-cut/
Set for release this summer, and it's free. Provides "closure" on the endings but does not "change" anything.
And so we get an extended cut DLC. (http://blog.bioware.com/2012/04/05/mass-effect-3-extended-cut/)
On the upside, it's free. That's about it.
On the downside, I doubt it'll be a lot better than the wide variety of fanfic and fan-made text-based ending closures. Infact I'm pretty sure that the added cutscenes won't be of very good quality. And the glaring inconsistencies in the story will probably remain.
But what irks me most that they still have the :daisy: gall to mention twice how they are proud of their endings and the artistic vision. So everyone else who's been criticising the endings for being subpar this last month is, in their opinion, stupid I guess.
Edit:
Chaotix beat me to it while I was typing :D
And so we get an extended cut DLC. (http://blog.bioware.com/2012/04/05/mass-effect-3-extended-cut/)
On the upside, it's free. That's about it.
On the downside, I doubt it'll be a lot better than the wide variety of fanfic and fan-made text-based ending closures. Infact I'm pretty sure that the added cutscenes won't be of very good quality. And the glaring inconsistencies in the story will probably remain.
But what irks me most that they still have the :daisy: gall to mention twice how they are proud of their endings and the artistic vision. So everyone else who's been criticising the endings for being subpar this last month is, in their opinion, stupid I guess.
Edit:
Chaotix beat me to it while I was typing :D
It's a PR post and nothing more. We know, exactly, nothing more or less than we did on April 4th the day before this news broke. All we know is that there will be an ending DLC and that it's going to be free, but we've heard rumors of that for months anyway. "closure" and "not changing anything" can mean just about anything.
On one hand, the DLC could be nothing more than an epilogue ala Dragon Age: Origin style (closure, and not changing anything) that explains what your squad and the galaxy did after the boom.
On the other hand, it could mean a continuation of the game beyond the endings we already have, and that the current RGB simply locks you into your ending path (closure, and not technically 'changing' anything).
So who knows. Personally I'm tired of the whole conversation so I probably won't post much in this thread anymore. Expect speculation to still be running rampant until the very day of release.
seireikhaan
04-06-2012, 19:08
Oh lawd. Finally. Reapers on gold. Technically vanquished. Even with a durdly soldier holding us back. Got smashed inwards at literally the last second by a pair of banshee blasts that kept me from getting personally extracted.
http://screenshot.xfire.com/s/122749170-3.jpg
seireikhaan
04-06-2012, 19:46
So there is confirmation of a free DLC coming out next weekend for MP. I got two words for you: Krogan Vanguard.
Linky (http://www.neoseeker.com/news/18780-mass-effect-3-multiplayer-getting-new-races-in-resurgence-pack-dlc/)
So there is confirmation of a free DLC coming out next weekend for MP. I got two words for you: Krogan Vanguard.
Linky (http://www.neoseeker.com/news/18780-mass-effect-3-multiplayer-getting-new-races-in-resurgence-pack-dlc/)
An important thing to note is that, aside from the maps, most media is reporting that the new characters will be released LOCKED. If you guys and girls want to get your hands on these things day one then i suggest stocking up on some missles and equipment before saving every last credit from this day on.
The more credits you save, the higher odds you'll get the new stuff you want. Good hunting :bow:
New from the PAX Panel. (http://kotaku.com/5899880/liveblogging-the-pax-mass-effect-panel)
Greyblades
04-08-2012, 00:19
On the downside, I doubt it'll be a lot better than the wide variety of fanfic and fan-made text-based ending closures. Infact I'm pretty sure that the added cutscenes won't be of very good quality. And the glaring inconsistencies in the story will probably remain.
But what irks me most that they still have the :daisy: gall to mention twice how they are proud of their endings and the artistic vision. So everyone else who's been criticising the endings for being subpar this last month is, in their opinion, stupid I guess.
I dont understand what the problem is for Bioware, from what I've seen they has a perfectly reasonable ending, yet they threw it out for something that is completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the games and even 99% of the same freaking game. And when 90% of the fanbase rebells they still have the nerve to not even consider changing anything , just make it longer... Gah! I thought I got over it but the pains still as fresh as ever! How do they go from Dragon age: Origins to this Rot?!
easytarget
04-08-2012, 01:08
The way they went from DAO to ME was incredibly easy, because it's a short journey from bad to bad (and both do nothing but tarnish the name of bioware and the term rpg).
Greyblades
04-08-2012, 01:26
Well thats a matter of opinion on DA's quality but I didnt compare them on quality of the games I was comparing the quality of the endings, say what you like about the game but DA:origins range of endings was leagues above ME3
Greyblades
04-08-2012, 03:58
I feel better once I found this fan made ending maker:http://www.writing.com/main/interact/item_id/1856999-Mass-Effect-Ending-Generator/map/1
I feel better once I found this fan made ending maker:http://www.writing.com/main/interact/item_id/1856999-Mass-Effect-Ending-Generator/map/1
Nice, going to check this out.
I tried this one (http://shannon.users.sonic.net/masseffect/) a few days back, and it tries to provide with a happy conclusion.
The way they went from DAO to ME was incredibly easy, because it's a short journey from bad to bad (and both do nothing but tarnish the name of bioware and the term rpg).
Would I be right in assuming that you preferred DA2 to DAO?
frogbeastegg
04-10-2012, 19:19
Since my family doesn't really do the chocolate egg or religious thing, I was given a copy of ME3 for Easter. I finished it this afternoon. That was underwhelming.
Don't get me wrong - there was a lot of good in there. Good voice acting, good scenes, some good jokes, a few good areas. Nice to have weapon upgrades back. Glad ammo is more common if they insist on having it in the game. Good cameos and links to the prior games. Mix and match weapons are good. Being able to run faster and for longer is great. Plus: Garrus, as always! It's just totally undermined by a bunch of stuff which I didn't go for. If you don't want to read assorted whinging and nitpicking with the occasional spoiler, ignore the below.
It's a short game. ME1 took me about 40 hours to finish the first time. ME2 30-ish, and I remember being surprised that the game ended so abruptly when you went on the suicide mission. ME3 took me a slender 22 hours, including all N7 missions and a bunch of planet scanning. I launched my final assault thinking "That's it?! That's a big war to decide the fate of the galaxy?! Defeating Saren took more work!" Doesn't look like I missed any non-scanning missions either.
Out of all of my Shepards, the game only detected one. One. Out of four. Insanity Shep, the sentinal I used to complete ME2 on insanity difficulty. Her face was completely mangled, to the point where she looked nothing like my character! My CannonShep is amongst the MIA casualties so I can't complete my 'proper' story.
Adding rolls and cover swaps overloads the already stressed 'A' button, and makes for more of those "No! I didn't mean that!" moments where I get shot in the head. The increased freedom to move about on cover seems to mean my Shep detaches herself and stands up to get shot because I accidentally tapped too far left or right when trying to shuffle. I am so looking forward to playing insanity with this.
Grenades. Ugh. Not enjoyable IMO, either to use or face. The team won't dodge them, and half the time when I try to evade I get hung up on scenery or on a squad mate. They are a one-hit kill from full health and shields, which makes getting blown up by factors outside of my control very annoying.
Cerberus soldiers are not enjoyable to fight. Too attached to spamming the same couple of moves over and over whilst shouting in their nasty voices which for some reason the game always plays at top volume instead of factoring in distance and position.
Enemies who can kill you in a single hit are not much fun, particularly when they are melee types and run straight at you. I thought we'd learned that after ME1.
What's with all the bugs? I encountered invisible gun turrets (there was no model at all, bullets were spawning from thin air as I watched), and had multiple occasions where cutscenes lacked any character models. Garrus kept vanishing during conversations. My squad vanished out of battles entirely a few times, not dead, just simply not there. I got stuck in the ceiling whilst speaking to EDE, twice. I had active quests which I had completed, and could not speak to the relevant person to end them. Dialogue repeatedly cuts out or fails to play - I had to enable subtitles.
Speaking of side missions a) that journal is horrible! It doesn't update with mission status, it doesn't give much useful detail, and each time I open it the game opens to the codex section and then forces me to scroll through my entire completed quest list in order to reach the new stuff. b) the N7 missions are pretty darn poor. MP maps with lame wave attacks by Cerberus soldiers or husks. Also, all of those tedious scanning missions need to go. c)There are hardly any side quests. Aside from the N7 ones there's, what, 4? 5?
Collectable objects do not highlight from a distance now. That means I have to comb the map tediously, instead of being able to take a quick look about and be certain whether I was missing anything or not. Activating objects or conversations is very fussy, if I don't stare directly at the tag whilst still and stood at precisely the right distance, it won't activate.
Ugly graphics. Not ugly as in bad, ugly as in poor colour choices and nasty character designs. Lots of very dark areas too, where I had to pump contrast high in order to see anything. Certain squad mates are pretty indistinct from Cerberus forces; I lost count of the number of times I tried to shoot James and Ashley during heated fights.
Level design remains pretty boring, with obvious combat zones I can spot from a mile off. The combat areas often feel cluttered with too much cover, too many things to get hung up on when trying to move. ME1's long race areas are still MIA; I miss sniping people from halfway across the map.
Loading screens. The Normandy now has important areas like the armoury a load screen away from CIC, and research another load screen away from that. What I used to be able to do quickly in ME2 now takes 3 different loading sessions and a lot of running about. Also, it's nice that characters move about. It's not nice that the game doesn't tell you where they have gone.
That small delay as I pass through the security scanner from the comm room gets absurdly irritating for something so small.
"Hi. We built our big-bads up to be so big and bad that we need to introduce a lame plot-bob so you can defeat them." Ugh. Do not like the whole Crucible thing.
People keep complaining at Shepard about Cerberus. That's exactly the sort of thing I was saying myself during ME2 and why I resented being forced to ally with them. I found it immensely annoying to have to sit through all of this recrimination and complaining, for something I never wanted to do. Especially Ashley and her constant harping on. What does my Shepard do? Wail, "But I thought they were good people!" and "Oh I made such a terrible mistake!" whenever she's out of my direct control. Argh!
Certain plot situations made me roll my eyes and go "This again?".
That ending. There's nothing I can add to the masses which have gone before: even if you accept the Reaper's purpose it does not make sense because of the way the scenes and dialogue play out. In my 'eye' the game ends with Shepard and Anderson dying side by side watching the battle over earth, as the Crucible melts the Reaper AI cores or something.
And why does blowing up the Reaper's controlling plot-bob cause the Geth to die?!
So I'm talking to the first Reaper I kill. It says the usual line about "Our purpose is beyond your comprehension" and then tells me "We're killing all advanced organics so you don't create synthetics which kill all organics". What's incomprehensible about that? It's stunningly simplistic. If simplistic is the best you can offer, best to keep the secret.
Too easy to get everything right. Based on a good playthrough of ME1 and ME2, and with much spamming of the paragon options, I basically saved everyone, made rainbows appear, kissed kittens, and handed out chocolate. Two people died (Mordin, Thane), both of whom I believe were unavoidable. I even managed to talk the Illusive Man down at the end.
So I overloaded a big, powerful reactor right next to the human proto-reaper. Kaboom! Barely any station left. Yet the Illusive Man has managed to retrieve most of Skeletor? Shouldn't it be vaporised?!
Why is there a techno-ninja in my game? Make it go away. Yes, I know who the character is, No, I still don't want him there. Also, hated the boss battles he was part of. Especially the second one.
We've still got fuel on the galaxy map? Oh goodie, I was afraid that aspect wouldn't be tedious enough. I love returning to the citadel and sitting through lots of loading screens in order to refuel, just as I love risking life and limb scanning for stuff only to find I'm dodging Reapers because I located another fuel pocket.
Actually, that whole Reaper pursuit thing. It's dumb. So you fail to dodge them? You get returned right where you were prior to any system scanning. This means you can repeat your scans to pick up the material without inviting the Reapers to party. So what's the point of the whole thing? It's null and void gameplay - you'd get exactly the same result if the game never spawned Reapers.
Horrid slow-mo child dreams need to go away. Also, if I could cut that nauseating, manipulative scene with the brat at the start I would.Yes, I'm aware of the indoctrination theory and how it applies to these dreams. No, I don't find the theory fully convincing. Yes, I'd still dump the dreams even if the theory were true. They are not good gameplay - rework them to use a character my Shep might care about, and to involve more than running s-l-o-w-l-y through bland scenery.
Disc changing. Look, I'm a veteran of the days when PC games came on 6 CDs, or 4 floppies, or whatever. I'm no stranger to disc swapping, nor do I object to it in principle. ME3 seems to arrange its content randomly. I had to swap discs repeatedly, often on a mission by mission basis, because the designers didn't split the content up via plot progress like they did in ME2 and like most companies in the last 10 years who developed a multi-disc game. Bad design.
Please stop ruining my favourite class after each title! The soldier was my favourite in ME1, and ME2 destroyed most of what I enjoyed about it when it removed weapon mods, long range open combat, added ammo, and changed the abilities. Changes to class powers and combat styles means the sentinel now feels boring and lacking that fun something, whereas in ME2 it felt versatile and enjoyable.
Three games into the series and the squadmate AI remains pitiful. They stand out in the open, take cover on the wrong side of walls, and stand in spots where they can't attack before proceeding to blissfully stare into space whilst I do all the work. The game still fails to offer sufficient tools to manage them, e.g. a control list like the one in Dragon Age: Origins.
Melee attacks still stink. The quick attack is pathetic. Sometimes the heavy attack refused to work and I was left quick-punching the enemy repeatedly, and that usually lead to my death. When charging the heavy attack, I ended up punching to the side of my target far too frequently. Enemies easily interrupt the charging phase with unavoidable attacks of their own. Net result: I avoid melee wherever possible.
Why can't I move the camera whilst running? If I need to make a semi-sharp turn or navigate around obstructions, I have to slow down, twiddle with the controls, and start running again. That's caused me to eat rockets more than once.
Cerberus. :sigh: Could they be any more Generic Evil Villains of Nastiness if they tried? Maybe if they stapled devil horns onto their helmets. Why do we even need them as a leading adversary? Aren't the Reapers and their whole 'cyclic extinction of all advanced races' shtick enough of a threat to overcome? All of the interesting things Bioware could have done with Cerberus, passed over for lolevilz.
Just wanted to get that off my chest. I am not sufficiently engaged by the game to want to discuss it. As I said, whinging and nitpicking. Hmm, I'm starting to realise that with Bioware games after ME1 it's less a question of which one I liked best, and more a question of which one I complained about least. :sweatdrop:
I used that free iOS app to get the 100% galactic readiness. Very boring, and very unnecessary. The whole MP->SP link is dire. I went with the red ending, and got the rubble scene and the snowy scene. I think that means the full ending.
So IMO ME1 remains the best in the series, despite its problems and despite certain improvements made in the sequels. I'll play ME3 again to complete it on insanity, since it's a series tradition. After that, all bets are off. I might return to see what the new ending DLC does, I might not.
Off topic but... how in the world did you get 40 hours out of ME1? I did nearly every side-quest i could find and topped out at 18. :|
frogbeastegg
04-10-2012, 19:33
Off topic but... how in the world did you get 40 hours out of ME1? I did nearly every side-quest i could find and topped out at 18. :|
I did all of the side quests, explored all of the planets, and talked to everyone using all of the available options without fast-forwarding the dialogue. Because I didn't follow a guide I had to do some redundant checking here and there to ensure I missed nothing. I always do that with my first run of an RPG.
EDIT: And that's made me realise I'll be able to trim out a large number of hours from my ME3 replay. Lots of wasted time going to see if people will talk, running around locating scanner missions and handing the goods in, etc. That will definitely leave it as the shortest game in the series by a wide margin.
Greyblades
04-10-2012, 20:14
Well, there we are, they made such a cruddy ending to draw attention from the rest of the problems, fortunately for the most part my PC version didnt encounter all that many bugs.
As for the certian samurai git, well in a world with cybernetics and biotics it seemed like about time someone tried to pull a shadowrun street samurai on it, still thought it was a bit out of place, my shep allways had a helmet on so I usually imagine shep having a great "WTf is that dumbass doing" grin when he first sees kai leng.
Has anyone noticed that cerberus seems to resemble the empire of the rising sun from RA3 in this game?
I would say that the game is relatively shorter because EA indoctrinated Bioware with their greed, but that's just too cliche right now.
The game definitely has been dumbed down (the conspicuous lack of a neutral dialogue option is evidence enough) and there are several bits of the plot (besides the ending) that could've been better written and handled, but nonetheless the game isn't all that bad. I've focused mainly on the ending in this thread but that aside I liked the game.
Like Greyblades mentioned, most of those bugs don't appear on the PC, so it was a smoother overall experience.
Also I'm pretty sure that once they release all the DLC with complete edition, most probably by this time next year, it's going to be the game it should be right now.
Since my family doesn't really do the chocolate egg or religious thing, I was given a copy of ME3 for Easter. I finished it this afternoon. That was underwhelming.
Don't get me wrong - there was a lot of good in there. Good voice acting, good scenes, some good jokes, a few good areas. Nice to have weapon upgrades back. Glad ammo is more common if they insist on having it in the game. Good cameos and links to the prior games. Mix and match weapons are good. Being able to run faster and for longer is great. Plus: Garrus, as always! It's just totally undermined by a bunch of stuff which I didn't go for. If you don't want to read assorted whinging and nitpicking with the occasional spoiler, ignore the below.
It's a short game. ME1 took me about 40 hours to finish the first time. ME2 30-ish, and I remember being surprised that the game ended so abruptly when you went on the suicide mission. ME3 took me a slender 22 hours, including all N7 missions and a bunch of planet scanning. I launched my final assault thinking "That's it?! That's a big war to decide the fate of the galaxy?! Defeating Saren took more work!" Doesn't look like I missed any non-scanning missions either.
Out of all of my Shepards, the game only detected one. One. Out of four. Insanity Shep, the sentinal I used to complete ME2 on insanity difficulty. Her face was completely mangled, to the point where she looked nothing like my character! My CannonShep is amongst the MIA casualties so I can't complete my 'proper' story.
Adding rolls and cover swaps overloads the already stressed 'A' button, and makes for more of those "No! I didn't mean that!" moments where I get shot in the head. The increased freedom to move about on cover seems to mean my Shep detaches herself and stands up to get shot because I accidentally tapped too far left or right when trying to shuffle. I am so looking forward to playing insanity with this.
Grenades. Ugh. Not enjoyable IMO, either to use or face. The team won't dodge them, and half the time when I try to evade I get hung up on scenery or on a squad mate. They are a one-hit kill from full health and shields, which makes getting blown up by factors outside of my control very annoying.
Cerberus soldiers are not enjoyable to fight. Too attached to spamming the same couple of moves over and over whilst shouting in their nasty voices which for some reason the game always plays at top volume instead of factoring in distance and position.
Enemies who can kill you in a single hit are not much fun, particularly when they are melee types and run straight at you. I thought we'd learned that after ME1.
What's with all the bugs? I encountered invisible gun turrets (there was no model at all, bullets were spawning from thin air as I watched), and had multiple occasions where cutscenes lacked any character models. Garrus kept vanishing during conversations. My squad vanished out of battles entirely a few times, not dead, just simply not there. I got stuck in the ceiling whilst speaking to EDE, twice. I had active quests which I had completed, and could not speak to the relevant person to end them. Dialogue repeatedly cuts out or fails to play - I had to enable subtitles.
Speaking of side missions a) that journal is horrible! It doesn't update with mission status, it doesn't give much useful detail, and each time I open it the game opens to the codex section and then forces me to scroll through my entire completed quest list in order to reach the new stuff. b) the N7 missions are pretty darn poor. MP maps with lame wave attacks by Cerberus soldiers or husks. Also, all of those tedious scanning missions need to go. c)There are hardly any side quests. Aside from the N7 ones there's, what, 4? 5?
Collectable objects do not highlight from a distance now. That means I have to comb the map tediously, instead of being able to take a quick look about and be certain whether I was missing anything or not. Activating objects or conversations is very fussy, if I don't stare directly at the tag whilst still and stood at precisely the right distance, it won't activate.
Ugly graphics. Not ugly as in bad, ugly as in poor colour choices and nasty character designs. Lots of very dark areas too, where I had to pump contrast high in order to see anything. Certain squad mates are pretty indistinct from Cerberus forces; I lost count of the number of times I tried to shoot James and Ashley during heated fights.
Level design remains pretty boring, with obvious combat zones I can spot from a mile off. The combat areas often feel cluttered with too much cover, too many things to get hung up on when trying to move. ME1's long race areas are still MIA; I miss sniping people from halfway across the map.
Loading screens. The Normandy now has important areas like the armoury a load screen away from CIC, and research another load screen away from that. What I used to be able to do quickly in ME2 now takes 3 different loading sessions and a lot of running about. Also, it's nice that characters move about. It's not nice that the game doesn't tell you where they have gone.
That small delay as I pass through the security scanner from the comm room gets absurdly irritating for something so small.
"Hi. We built our big-bads up to be so big and bad that we need to introduce a lame plot-bob so you can defeat them." Ugh. Do not like the whole Crucible thing.
People keep complaining at Shepard about Cerberus. That's exactly the sort of thing I was saying myself during ME2 and why I resented being forced to ally with them. I found it immensely annoying to have to sit through all of this recrimination and complaining, for something I never wanted to do. Especially Ashley and her constant harping on. What does my Shepard do? Wail, "But I thought they were good people!" and "Oh I made such a terrible mistake!" whenever she's out of my direct control. Argh!
Certain plot situations made me roll my eyes and go "This again?".
That ending. There's nothing I can add to the masses which have gone before: even if you accept the Reaper's purpose it does not make sense because of the way the scenes and dialogue play out. In my 'eye' the game ends with Shepard and Anderson dying side by side watching the battle over earth, as the Crucible melts the Reaper AI cores or something.
And why does blowing up the Reaper's controlling plot-bob cause the Geth to die?!
So I'm talking to the first Reaper I kill. It says the usual line about "Our purpose is beyond your comprehension" and then tells me "We're killing all advanced organics so you don't create synthetics which kill all organics". What's incomprehensible about that? It's stunningly simplistic. If simplistic is the best you can offer, best to keep the secret.
Too easy to get everything right. Based on a good playthrough of ME1 and ME2, and with much spamming of the paragon options, I basically saved everyone, made rainbows appear, kissed kittens, and handed out chocolate. Two people died (Mordin, Thane), both of whom I believe were unavoidable. I even managed to talk the Illusive Man down at the end.
So I overloaded a big, powerful reactor right next to the human proto-reaper. Kaboom! Barely any station left. Yet the Illusive Man has managed to retrieve most of Skeletor? Shouldn't it be vaporised?!
Why is there a techno-ninja in my game? Make it go away. Yes, I know who the character is, No, I still don't want him there. Also, hated the boss battles he was part of. Especially the second one.
We've still got fuel on the galaxy map? Oh goodie, I was afraid that aspect wouldn't be tedious enough. I love returning to the citadel and sitting through lots of loading screens in order to refuel, just as I love risking life and limb scanning for stuff only to find I'm dodging Reapers because I located another fuel pocket.
Actually, that whole Reaper pursuit thing. It's dumb. So you fail to dodge them? You get returned right where you were prior to any system scanning. This means you can repeat your scans to pick up the material without inviting the Reapers to party. So what's the point of the whole thing? It's null and void gameplay - you'd get exactly the same result if the game never spawned Reapers.
Horrid slow-mo child dreams need to go away. Also, if I could cut that nauseating, manipulative scene with the brat at the start I would.Yes, I'm aware of the indoctrination theory and how it applies to these dreams. No, I don't find the theory fully convincing. Yes, I'd still dump the dreams even if the theory were true. They are not good gameplay - rework them to use a character my Shep might care about, and to involve more than running s-l-o-w-l-y through bland scenery.
Disc changing. Look, I'm a veteran of the days when PC games came on 6 CDs, or 4 floppies, or whatever. I'm no stranger to disc swapping, nor do I object to it in principle. ME3 seems to arrange its content randomly. I had to swap discs repeatedly, often on a mission by mission basis, because the designers didn't split the content up via plot progress like they did in ME2 and like most companies in the last 10 years who developed a multi-disc game. Bad design.
Please stop ruining my favourite class after each title! The soldier was my favourite in ME1, and ME2 destroyed most of what I enjoyed about it when it removed weapon mods, long range open combat, added ammo, and changed the abilities. Changes to class powers and combat styles means the sentinel now feels boring and lacking that fun something, whereas in ME2 it felt versatile and enjoyable.
Three games into the series and the squadmate AI remains pitiful. They stand out in the open, take cover on the wrong side of walls, and stand in spots where they can't attack before proceeding to blissfully stare into space whilst I do all the work. The game still fails to offer sufficient tools to manage them, e.g. a control list like the one in Dragon Age: Origins.
Melee attacks still stink. The quick attack is pathetic. Sometimes the heavy attack refused to work and I was left quick-punching the enemy repeatedly, and that usually lead to my death. When charging the heavy attack, I ended up punching to the side of my target far too frequently. Enemies easily interrupt the charging phase with unavoidable attacks of their own. Net result: I avoid melee wherever possible.
Why can't I move the camera whilst running? If I need to make a semi-sharp turn or navigate around obstructions, I have to slow down, twiddle with the controls, and start running again. That's caused me to eat rockets more than once.
Cerberus. :sigh: Could they be any more Generic Evil Villains of Nastiness if they tried? Maybe if they stapled devil horns onto their helmets. Why do we even need them as a leading adversary? Aren't the Reapers and their whole 'cyclic extinction of all advanced races' shtick enough of a threat to overcome? All of the interesting things Bioware could have done with Cerberus, passed over for lolevilz.
Just wanted to get that off my chest. I am not sufficiently engaged by the game to want to discuss it. As I said, whinging and nitpicking. Hmm, I'm starting to realise that with Bioware games after ME1 it's less a question of which one I liked best, and more a question of which one I complained about least. :sweatdrop:
I used that free iOS app to get the 100% galactic readiness. Very boring, and very unnecessary. The whole MP->SP link is dire. I went with the red ending, and got the rubble scene and the snowy scene. I think that means the full ending.
So IMO ME1 remains the best in the series, despite its problems and despite certain improvements made in the sequels. I'll play ME3 again to complete it on insanity, since it's a series tradition. After that, all bets are off. I might return to see what the new ending DLC does, I might not.
Wow, froggy.
I'm getting the distinct feeling that the majority of those bugs are just for the Xbox (and PS3) version, unfortunately.
The gameplay flaws and spacebar = everything are also present on the PC, but I encountered almost none of the bugs that you mentioned. And there's no problem with disc-changing, either, even if you have the version that comes on disc. I did have to rebuild my Shepard's face, but all of my completed files transferred correctly.
Sorry you had such a sub-par experience with it.
Personally, I had a lot of fun with the game and story itself (up until the endings). Nobody likes Kai Leng, and indeed it is almost pathetically easy to get the "good" endings to every main plot point, whether you go Paragon or Renegade. In fact, I've started a "screw-up" Shepard in ME2 purely to see what happens if I make all the wrong choices and get everyone killed on the suicide mission. I have high hopes.
If you're looking for a fun class, play Adept on Normal/Veteran. It feels like they buffed Biotic explosions again, and tossing people around and blowing them up without ever touching a weapon is a ton of fun. (On higher difficulties, they've all got shields, so it's more strategy and less smashy-smashy-mind-crush)
frogbeastegg
04-11-2012, 00:25
Yes, it's not a bad game. It's a good game, even. It's just with such a high budget, famous studio, and high-profile series, I expect more than mere good. And I expect it to work properly! When I play games like Divinity II and Risen, the rough edges make me think "If only they had a bigger budget!" whereas similar rough edges in high profile games make me wonder why they didn't bother to address them. The fact that this is the third game to exhibit some of these issues is infuriating: things which were tolerable in ME1 grew irksome in ME2 and now it beggars belief that they are present a third time. Not to mention the areas where it has regressed, like the journal.
If you're looking for a fun class, play Adept on Normal/Veteran. It feels like they buffed Biotic explosions again, and tossing people around and blowing them up without ever touching a weapon is a ton of fun. (On higher difficulties, they've all got shields, so it's more strategy and less smashy-smashy-mind-crush)
One of my missing Shepards is an adept. :weeps:
That difference between smash and strategy on the higher difficulties is what I enjoy. Shooters aren't my cup of tea and I'm not very good at them. I find the higher difficulties much more engaging as they change the style of play required to survive. It's crazy, as soon as I hit insanity I stop dying and start dominating. I probably shouldn't have played ME3 on normal this time.
Think I might try my sentinel on insanity. If I take EDE's defense power as my bonus, and strip out my points from tech armour, it might feel better. That power has less impact on power cooldown, and removing it grants an instant shield refill. I miss my assault armour from ME2 so much! I used to play a lovely balance between aggression and defensive tank, spamming powers and then running for cover when my armour exploded. The new version doesn't fit my style at all; it slows my powers down, doesn't offer sufficient protection to go aggressive, and doesn't knock enemies about as effectively.
If it's no better, I'll have to reimport my sole Shep and turn her into a different class. Adept, engineer or infiltrator. Decisions, decisions.
Had some time with the researgence pack dlc, have to say i really am enjoying all of the new classes. Krogan Vanguard is just not fair with how durable it is, as some have suggested, its probably one of the only "gold worthy" vanguard classes. Crazy amounts of melee burst and survivability, but I have to be honest in that my love is captured by the Geth, as i had a feeling it might be if they ever released one.
Mirroring my experience with the Quarians in the demo, i was hoping for an infiltrator but instead got a Geth engineer. This actually worked out way better. Geth turrets can be changed into portable shield generators just like the ones from the campaign, so if I put one down I essentialy turn into the team's medic, healing up shields and making our defense point quite a bit more secure. The scary thing is Geth have a pitiful 250 health unbuffed. That's literally half the starting health of the next squishiest class. If your shields are down you are in TROUBLE. Thankfully the Geth have shield strength that rivals Krogan, combined with your support turret, your shields have some incredible resiliency. I have a feeling the "cool" factor of the geth will attract a lot of new players, but their fragile nature is gonna weed out those who can't handle them pretty quickly.
Hunter mode is nice and is the main reason I wanted an infiltrator, but Engineers get it too. It's essentially a way to see through smoke but Bioware have tooled it so that (at least at the level i have it, haven't evolved it fully) it doesn't work at long ranges reliably. It's a good way to spot Cerberus troops who've deployed smoke on you in mid range, but over long ranges its usefulness seems to be so-so. Adds a nice boost to weapon damage too but i find that negligible on Silver. The overlay it puts on the screen is really annoying and takes some getting used to, its sorta like Krogan Rage and saturates the screen in this weird color scheme. Thankfully it's toggle-able like Sentinel armor so i can turn it off when I don't need it.
Had the chance to team up with a Justicar against Reapers on Silver. Combined with her energy shield and my turret we wiped the floor with the reapers. It was touch and go in spots, but our defensive capabilities were incredible and I only went down twice due to poor weapon selection on my part. Also ran with a Batarian for a few maps and watched his net-ability in action. Really impressed with what I saw there too. We got jumped by a bad luck phantom spawn so I took out her shields with an overload and a fully charged plasma shot from myshotgun, and he netted her. Completely stunned her in place while we got out of there and he took the shot.
Still it wasn't all great. Teamed with a Geth Engineer who kept getting ripped apart cuz he couldn't handle the low health of the class. I have to admit it's really shocking how quick you will go down if you're not paying attention as a Geth. Certainly takes getting used to.. :no:
Haven't played any new maps yet. Still just doing randoms for the XP boost, once i get my engineer leveled i'll probably search for the DLC maps specifically and give em a go.
In short: Free DLC is a great thing, the new classes are really cool and have awesome new abilities. Can't wait to unlock more of them.
I got a Geth Engineer as well, first try. The turrets are a ton of fun.
The overlay for Hunter Mode is annoying, but so far the "cool factor" has far outstripped the annoyance. I love robot-vision.
seireikhaan
04-11-2012, 21:13
Oh jeez. So I went into a random on gold and found out possibly the easiest/cheesiest farming method in the game. Spoilers if you don't feel like getting free, albeit more boring, monies.
Firebase white, Geth. Everyone camp down in the bottom of the map. Engineers and infiltrators, preferably. We had 3 in the room, one hunkered down on the outside behind one of the covers. The geth won't spawn behind you. They don't have grenades. They'll go right up you to in a hail of bulletfire, overloads, and sabotages. There's no real flanking possibilities. They'll also tend to walk right up to the cover walls for easy-peasy grabs. I was parked outside and went down once the entire time. Ended up with something like 18 grab kills. Basically just leaves the objective missions where something can go wrong, but infiltrators can make quick work of the 4 devices and the slay target ones will come to you in no time. So basically, just the possibility of a hold the upload point going wrong and that's it.
Oh jeez. So I went into a random on gold and found out possibly the easiest/cheesiest farming method in the game. Spoilers if you don't feel like getting free, albeit more boring, monies.
Firebase white, Geth. Everyone camp down in the bottom of the map. Engineers and infiltrators, preferably. We had 3 in the room, one hunkered down on the outside behind one of the covers. The geth won't spawn behind you. They don't have grenades. They'll go right up you to in a hail of bulletfire, overloads, and sabotages. There's no real flanking possibilities. They'll also tend to walk right up to the cover walls for easy-peasy grabs. I was parked outside and went down once the entire time. Ended up with something like 18 grab kills. Basically just leaves the objective missions where something can go wrong, but infiltrators can make quick work of the 4 devices and the slay target ones will come to you in no time. So basically, just the possibility of a hold the upload point going wrong and that's it.
I was in a group like that, it's actually fun if you are an engie or an inf but any other class would probably find it utterly boring.
It has to due with the spawn points and path finding on firebase white more than anything, as long as everyone stays in the basement (as we called it) no one will spawn behind you or try to flank you. All enemies will file down into your kill zone.
gaelic cowboy
04-12-2012, 17:03
So after 13 pages of the OP we can safely say ME2 is the best game in the series then yes/no
the ending feels like your choice even though it also does not matter what you choose so long as you have enough to survive.
Hooahguy
04-12-2012, 18:21
So after 13 pages of the OP we can safely say ME2 is the best game in the series then yes/no
the ending feels like your choice even though it also does not matter what you choose so long as you have enough to survive.
Agreed.
So after 13 pages of the OP we can safely say ME2 is the best game in the series then yes/no
the ending feels like your choice even though it also does not matter what you choose so long as you have enough to survive.
I would say yes, but only because ME3's ending was so lackluster in comparison.
IMO the rest of ME3 is of the same stellar quality as ME2.
As for ME1: the story feels as strong as ME2's, but the the updates in ME2's gameplay and combat make ME2 superior.
seireikhaan
04-12-2012, 20:12
So after 13 pages of the OP we can safely say ME2 is the best game in the series then yes/no
the ending feels like your choice even though it also does not matter what you choose so long as you have enough to survive.
Disagreed. There's far more to evaluating the game than simply it's end. I went back to ME2 to finish a few missions with a character to import her over, and I was almost shocked at how heavy and clunky combat felt. Level layout improved dramatically in 3 as well. 2 was laughable in that department as they came up with increasingly contrived ways of creating chest high walls for the combat. Also, dat scanning was the most boring, idiotic idea they could have come up with for finding resources. Mako > scanning. 1 also didn't rely on cover based shooting, which is a significant thumbs up from me. In spite of it's ending, I still put 3 as the best- the gameplay is simply the most enjoyable, followed by 1's. I put 2 in last because combat gets boring and tedious and regenerating health is a dumb idea.
Besides, I don't feel like ME2 had a very stellar plot as is. Send the best hope humanity has against the reapers on a suicide mission to take out their butlers? Right. Not like we're all screwed for trying to beat the reapers then if Shep and all the best of the best you could find to accompany him/her die on what is an acknowledged suicide mission.
Plot-wise speaking ME1 was the best game. It actually had an interesting story. ME2 and ME3 were more like small bits and pieces thrown together to make a story, while the player rushed towards the final goal (specially in ME3 where the outcomes of of those bits and pieces don't matter much in the ending itself).
Combat on the other hand is the smoothest in ME3. I don't particularly like shooters but I enjoyed playing ME3 and the challenge.
Dialogue and stuff is generally excellent in all three games. Although I preferred ME2 a little over ME1 because it had a more cinematic feel to it. ME3 takes the cinematic thing too far by removing the neutral option and reducing player input.
Sidequest-wise, again, I preferred ME1, then ME2. ME3's sidequests are just dull chores for War Assets.
All in all, ME3's good. ME1 and ME2 were a tad better overall.
Hard to compare the two since ME1's length and the sheer amount of exploration sets it apart from ME2. It has a very different feel to it. Liked both of them.
Sidequest-wise, again, I preferred ME1, then ME2. ME3's sidequests are just dull chores for War Assets.
As much as I loved ME1 I am not sure how you can say that. The sidequests in ME1 were all largely the same. Fly to an uncharted world, land on a barren planet (that looks similiar to other barren planets), go into a building that looks the same as every other building on uncharted planets, shoot guys and repeat ad nauseum. The side quests were by far the weakest part of the experience in ME1. The combat was also completely broken with cover not doing anywhere close to enough, especially considering what the game expected you to do. That's why I rolled overpowered adept squads and just juggled everything into oblivion. The one great thing about ME1 was its story, but its still cliche sci-fi at its core. It's also surprisingly short in comparison to later games. I did my first play through hitting only 8 hours (no i never skipped dialogue), and as i said, the most i could ever get out of it was 18. ME2 and 3 offered much larger experiences in that regard.
ME2 had the best side-quests in my opinion, unfortunately they were so good they detracted from the main story. Instead of feeling like impending doom was coming, ME2 felt like a weekly sci-fi series where the heroes conqueror personal problems. You know the kind where at the end of each episode Shepard and the crew have a good laugh at the expense of the mission's focus, the screens freeze and the credits roll. It's combat was a marked improvement over 1, in so much as it actually worked as intended, but looking back it's the clunkiest thing in the world.
ME3 has the best combat and a workable story experience. The biggest detraction i found in ME3 was what I said on like page 4 - the stripping down of dialogue options in favor of a more "cinematic" experience. Absolutely hate that, I also hate that I can't talk to my crew whenever I want. It was brought up before that "well they will just run out of things to say." but I never had that problem in ME1 or ME2 - after every mission everyone always had something new to say and a new conversation arch that let me find out more about them. That's not really the case in ME3. Getting one off comments from my crew in line of "Wrex is a badass huh? Sure would love to hear some of his stories." offers zero character development.
I felt the story experience was hurt overall by that very lack of interactivity. I enjoyed the experience but at every twist and turn of the plot, i just couldn't help but feel the game was missing something. That something was my input - for the first time in the series I didn't feel like I had total control over Shepard. ME2 suffered this problem in small doses as well, but it always found a way to make up for it in other situations. In 3, not so much. :no:
I'd rate them 3 > 2 > 1 but it's splitting hairs. I enjoyed the trilogy for what it was and found each game to be good in its own way.
Disagreed. There's far more to evaluating the game than simply it's end.
+1.
seireikhaan
04-13-2012, 05:15
Unlocked the Krogan Vanguard.
....
Oh my. He's a beast. If you can keep away from banshees, I think honestly, the rest of the mp is at your mercy. Played a few rounds on silver. Charge + melee destroys almost everything. Soloing geth primes is quite fun. As is two-hit combowing a phantom into the dirt. Having 1600 shields that can be recharged every 5 seconds is nuts.
I concur that the combat was broken, but the side quests certainly had more 'narrative' (for the lack of a better word) variety.
Check out the wiki page. (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Assignments)
Obviously if you count in ME2's squad mate quests then balance changes a bit, but I always saw them as an integral part of the game, rather than ordinary sidequests.
gaelic cowboy
04-13-2012, 12:19
@ Monk
Well the reason for the lesser interactivity in ME3 is down to the sucide mechanic in ME2, essentially Bioware would be irresponsible as a company to write vast dialogue for 14 or 15 characters that might be dead.
Thats why I laughed when I saw the campaigns for characters to be in ME2 the mass effect fans themselves stunted the interaction in ME3. If Bioware hadnt stuck to there guns about Ashley (anyone actually keep kaidan) and Liara the game would have been infinitely worse third time around.
ME2 has better side missions ME3 ones are tedious and little more than a :daisy: new mining mechanic, think about it arrive in system and send pluse looking for loot.
Bioware have since ME1 been incapable of getting rid of two tropes that hold RPGs back
Dungeon looting mainly in ME1 consisted of 20 planets of exactly the same boring construction.
Resource collection in ME2 was infuritating and distracting.
Somehow in ME3 they managed to make the side quests into a combination of looting and mining while reducing the effectivness of the journal in it's ability to assist.
Story and Choice thats all they needed.
skills points = fun but not as required
looting/finding minerals/asari writing = fun for a while but eventually made boring due to lack of variation
mining/probes/fuel = never fun
Side Quests I agree reached the high point in ME2 now I understand the idea about side quests being distracting in ME2 so why not eliminate them altogether and insert more priority missions in ME3 instead.
Essentially your previous two games should have given you your war assets through your choices, your missions in ME3 should merely have been about convincing races to join up consequently they should all have been priority missions.
By inserting multiplayer and sidequests for war assets they didnt make that element fun at all and essentialy made every major and some minor choices up till then completely irrelevant.
@ Monk
ME2 has better side missions ME3 ones are tedious and little more than a :daisy: new mining mechanic, think about it arrive in system and send pluse looking for loot.
Bioware have since ME1 been incapable of getting rid of two tropes that hold RPGs back
Dungeon looting mainly in ME1 consisted of 20 planets of exactly the same boring construction.
Resource collection in ME2 was infuritating and distracting.
Somehow they managed to make the side quests a combination of the former two while reducing the effectivness of the journal in it's ability to assist.
To be clear: when you say "side-quest" in regards to ME3 you're talking about artifact scanning/retrieval right? Because if so I wholeheartedly agree. I only do one or two of those before ignoring the rest each time i've played through singleplayer. I'm not really sure what they were going for here and to be honest it makes me miss the Mako from the first game, a part of the game i loathed 100%.
Well the reason for the lesser interactivity in ME3 is down to the sucide mechanic in ME2, essentially Bioware would be irresponsible as a company to write vast dialogue for 14 or 15 characters that might be dead.
Thats why I laughed when I saw the campaigns for characters to be in ME2 the mass effect fans themselves stunted the interaction in ME3. If Bioware hadnt stuck to there guns about Ashley (anyone actually keep kaidan) and Liara the game would have been infinitely worse third time around.
I'm not sure I follow you on the first point. I agree it would be a nightmare to attempt to incorporate every ME2 squad member as a returning recruit-able, but they dealt with that quite well in a way that wouldn't affect interactivity. The entire ME2 cast (excluding Garrus and Tali) are not recruit-able and only show up for cameo missions. They exist within their own set modules, only showing up once certain conditions are met, and then disappearing again once different conditions are fulfilled. Because they are so highly contained in such a way their inclusion (or exclusion if they are dead) in no way impacts the potential interactivity I could have with other plot threads through the game.
The three squad members who can affect that should be obvious, but it still doesn't explain the limited interactivity with everyone else. If it were confined to Garrus, Tali, and Ashley/Kaiden I'd understand since, as you say, any one of them could be dead by ME3. However it permeates every conversation and dialogue sequence with everyone you meet through the game. Every major or minor character can only be interracted with in very limited ways and the freedom to investigate certain people is sorely limited, almost exclusively saved for the cameo missions i mentioned. This isn't even approaching the subject of auto-dialogue and the huge amount included. A good way to think of it is in ME1 and 2 you chose a sentence to say, maybe two (rarely three when it was time for a big speech) for every choice you clicked on. In ME3 you are choosing a paragraph every single time you click an option to speak. And I really dislike that.
As far as Ashley/Kaiden, and this will probably earn me some hate from their fans, but there's no difference between the two. Both of them are blander than bland and Ashley really toes the line towards being completely unlikable in the prologue. Liara wasn't much better in ME1, though she's gotten better as the games have gone on.
gaelic cowboy
04-13-2012, 12:50
I picked Ashley because of those opinions I always felt Liara and Ashley were the paragon and renegade side of my femshep.
Also on the point about you pick an option and Shepard says a paragraph, I think it might have something to do with all the people who apparently just skipped dialogue and conversation trees. Bioware were told or at least divined from the data from the fans playthroughs that people liked the story ie they wanted it told to them hence the paragraphs.
Also the other reason is that they need to end the story and more dialogue options means it becomes even harder to end the story. Essentially I think Bioware failed in getting across the fact that this is the end and your choices are made, they needed to remove that idea because of people may never have played ME1 and ME2.
Essentially those people are mad but they are out there, although likely most people opted in at ME2.
Essentially no one will ever do this ever again and I applaud Bioware for it, in the harshness of the ending row we have forgotten this is essentially a concorde or bugati veron moment.
It's not just that EA wont let them do it anymore it's that it would probably daft and highly risky to do it in the first place as the bar is too high now. Considering all the challenges due to the fact the game essentially went through 3 differing cloud systems a change of management and a port to a new system tis a wonder they pulled any of it off.
Greyblades
04-13-2012, 15:31
Considering the ending, its arguable they didn't pull it off.
frogbeastegg
04-13-2012, 15:37
The following is all strictly IMO and based on highly personal Stuff(TM). I make no pretence that it applies to anyone who is not a frog.
ME1 has something neither of the sequels possess IMO: a sense of exploration and mystery. The way the galaxy is presented, humanity's place within it, and the way the various game quests are handled all help this. Then you have specific moments where you uncover details which suddenly widen the scope of the universe, like Vigil. We visit quite a few colonies, places early on in their development so there's an atmosphere of being a pioneer. Finally, there's the air of mystery: what happened to the Protheans and what are the Reapers? In the other two games everything feels settled. Humanity is accepted and powerful, we're not discovering much, and we know pretty much everywhere. We've met most of the alien species by now too. Technology feels settled, the places we visit are mostly developed to a higher level of comfort. We 'drive' our spaceship around the galaxy, and that makes space travel feel mundane. By the end of ME2 we know about the Reapers and Protheans and IMO the revelations make them a lot less interesting. Then 3 comes along and applies a shotgun to whatever was left. That air of exploration and the sense of larger things playing out above Shep's head is very attractive to me.
ME2 does have the best characters. Whilst ME1 did not develop the characters much, the lighter portraits did feel attractive enough to make them tolerable ... except for the irritating Liara. Who could forget Wrex? I've spent two games wishing I could have him back, same as I've spent two games glad Garrus signed on for the trip. ME2 actively made me like characters; Jacob is the only true dud on the crew. ME3, I like Garrus, you can keep the rest, and if I can drop Ashley out of an airlock so much the better. I liked EDI better in ME2.
In terms of plot, I still lean towards ME1 despite it being creakier in the telling. I found that simple and predictable tale more moving than ME2's A Team or ME3's whistle-stop tour of destruction scenes. That said, all three games have their moments. A certain exploding tower with mention of seashells, for one. An abandoned Reaper trip with mysterious sniper for another.
Incidental conversations in ME3 are better. More to overhear, and frequently more interesting. I particularly liked overhearing Doctor Chakwas talking to someone in the crew quarters about her nightmares. It was nice of them to recognise that the plot should have had big impact on her. There was more emotion contained in the incidentals than the main plot IMO, stories like the soldier who will lose his leg.
Shepard's dialogue. Whilst the writing has improved a little, there are far more moments where I am in disagreement with what Shep says. More "No, I didn't mean that!" moments when I select my dialogue from the wheel, more "That's way out of the character I've established!" moments when she's talking without my input. :sigh: But what can Bioware do? The longer the story continues, the harder it is for them to cover all angles.
Combat. I've already said two things which pretty much decide my view here: I'm lousy at shooters, and I miss the long-range sections ME1 had. I really enjoyed those areas where I could whip out my sniper rifle and start taking down enemies from a mile away. I enjoyed the variety it brought to the game, whereas in the other two all encounters take place at the same range. Reduced predictability. If you are good at games like Gears of War, and enjoy that style of gameplay, then I can see how the later games improve the combat. It doesn't help that I find ME3's enemy selection so dull to engage.
Squadmate gameplay balance: all games have useless squaddies and superior squaddies. This is all regardless of my own class. Kaiden in ME1 was good at everything and thus nearly always secured a place on my team. ME2 ... selecting from Miranda, Grunt, Thane and Zaeed made life easy, choosing anyone else made life much harder. Very bad balance. ME3, smaller squad so again it's harder to mess up. All the same, James, Garrus, Liara and EDI are easily more useful, whereas Tali, Javik and Ashley struggled to contribute whenever I took them along.
Sidequests: I preferred ME1's. Yes, the gameplay was ... nope, sorry, I can't do it. I cannot say that those repetitive maps were inferior to the re-purposed MP maps with wave attacks in ME3. Instead I must say that they were equally poor. ME1 has the plot advantage - stories like Cerberus existed almost purely in the side quests. Some people are classing missions like the Grisham Academy in ME3 as side quests. Whilst I agree that they were good missions, I do not think that they are quite side quests. More like inessential plot missions. ME2 didn't have side quests worth the name; I class the loyalty missions as inessential plot missions. ME2 and ME3 both have more of the pointless 'runabout' quests, where you locate an object and return it to the owner for a quick line of dialogue and dose of XP.
I've said I like playing on the harder difficulties. IMO ME2 does that best. ME1 on insanity became tedious, enemies were simply too hard to kill when they activated immunity and similar abilities. It was a bullet-slog. ME2 was tough but usually fair. With the right team and the right abilities, I could tackle the hardest areas without dying and without needing to spend 6 hours shooting at the same enemy. Judgement on ME3 is reserved.
Minigames. ME3 wins hands down because it doesn't have any! :balloon:
Weapons. I like ME3's selection and weight system, and ME1's customisation options. Ammo powers are not the same.
Music. All three games have nice tracks. It's mostly forgettable though IMO. I did find quite a few occasions in ME3 where a particular theme started playing and I immediately recognised it from the first game.
Boss fights. Hmm. Can I vote for them all being terrible? From Benezia to Kai Leng, didn't enjoy a one regardless of class and difficulty setting. The best I can say is that I seldom died and thus didn't have to spend as much time on them as I otherwise might have.
Setpices. ME1 has more memorable ones for me. Going to meet Liara for the first time: that long Mako assault followed by a foot battle with awesome music. Storming Novaria. Walking outside the citadel. Ilos. I'm trying to think of a few similar examples from the other games, so far unsuccessfully. Gah!
(anyone actually keep kaidan)
He's alive in most of my games. Going back made more military sense than heading onwards, he was assigned to the mission-critical objective.
Also the other reason is that they need to end the story and more dialogue options means it becomes even harder to end the story. Essentially I think Bioware failed in getting across the fact that this is the end and your choices are made, they needed to remove that idea because of people may never have played ME1 and ME2.
Sigh. But it doesn't. Again, it's not just one part of the game it's everything. Even the quests which begin completely in ME3 and have no basis in the other games are limited this way. These quests are not bogged down by ties to the other games and yet are still limited by what you can say and how you can act.
Considering the ending, its arguable they didn't pull it off.
https://i.imgur.com/9J3Me.gif
He's alive in most of my games. Going back made more military sense than heading onwards, he was assigned to the mission-critical objective.
Kaiden died due to accute lack of personality for me. Good riddance. ~:)
Greyblades
04-13-2012, 16:07
https://i.imgur.com/9J3Me.gif
:laugh4:
frogbeastegg
04-13-2012, 16:14
Kaiden died due to accute lack of personality for me. Good riddance. ~:)
Depends which gender your Shepard is. Ashley and Kaiden both lose dialogue when your Shepard is the same sex as them. For female Shepards, Ashley has less personality than Kaiden. Not that either is bursting at the brim with Gilbert and Sullivan, whichever Shepard you play!
Depends which gender your Shepard is. Ashley and Kaiden both lose dialogue when your Shepard is the same sex as them. For female Shepards, Ashley has less personality than Kaiden. Not that either is bursting at the brim with Gilbert and Sullivan, whichever Shepard you play!
Bioware seems to have trouble with the human squad members in general. All the aliens tend to have that "I'm an alien, therefore I am interesting" quality to them, especially the ones which are the only representatives of their race, i.e. Garrus, Mordin, Legion, Javik.
As for humans, there's really only 4 that they gave personality to: Miranda, Jack, Kasumi, Zaeed. 5 if you count Joker. And two of those are DLC-only. Kaidan, Ashley, Jacob, James, and Diana are all pretty bland. Traynor and Cortez aren't much better, but they do provide more diverse romance options.
IMO Kaiden seems to have been done better then Ashley...expression-wise atleast.
But I believe what happened was that they got so busy in putting Liara in that they forgot about others. She probably has the maximum amount of dialogue for any squadmate, all three games put together. Her ME3 interactions alone are atleast double the number you can have with anyone else.
Edit:
Diana Allers was shameless fan-service. And that with a weird looking model and gait. I never take her onboard (the Normandy).
Depends which gender your Shepard is. Ashley and Kaiden both lose dialogue when your Shepard is the same sex as them. For female Shepards, Ashley has less personality than Kaiden. Not that either is bursting at the brim with Gilbert and Sullivan, whichever Shepard you play!
Female Shepard is really the only way to go due to the voice actress being world's better. But Kaiden is just... well, maybe its because he has the same VA as Carth from kotor. Couldn't separate them so i enacted my kill fantasies out in the only way I could.
I like to imagine I took the crew out for ice cream after Virmire to celebrate.
Female Shepard is really the only way to go due to the voice actress being world's better. But Kaiden is just... well, maybe its because he has the same VA as Carth from kotor. Couldn't separate them so i enacted my kill fantasies out in the only way I could.
I like to imagine I took the crew out for ice cream after Virmire to celebrate.
You'll probably love this then.
(Warning Kaiden rejection vid)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCupNwzNguQ&feature=related
This was IMO the romance which could be rejected with the least feeling of guilt.
Also one of my favourite bits of the game.
Incidentally, you'd better be buying now.
frogbeastegg
04-13-2012, 18:18
Bioware seems to have trouble with the human squad members in general. All the aliens tend to have that "I'm an alien, therefore I am interesting" quality to them, especially the ones which are the only representatives of their race, i.e. Garrus, Mordin, Legion, Javik.
As for humans, there's really only 4 that they gave personality to: Miranda, Jack, Kasumi, Zaeed. 5 if you count Joker. And two of those are DLC-only. Kaidan, Ashley, Jacob, James, and Diana are all pretty bland. Traynor and Cortez aren't much better, but they do provide more diverse romance options.
I think it helps that the aliens get more humour and less angst. Or a better balance of the two, in some cases. Garrus in particular gets a tonne of funny lines, so when he starts talking about his squad it feels less like he's using Shepard as an emotional dumpster.
Jack is rather annoying, for reasons outside of the game narrative. If you are female Shepard, her line of conversation literally stops dead midway through. While she's not a likeable character, she is interesting and I wanted to see the rest of her growth arc. I couldn't. She tells me to comeback and talk some other time, and that's it, nothing more for the final 1/3 of the game.
There was one thing I liked about Cortez: they are very matter of fact about his sexuality; he's just a man who has loved and lost. As a female Shepard that whole story arc is presented in a very matter of fact way, no fanfare or playing on the fact he's gay. As such he feels more like a character and less like a showcase.
Diana Allers was shameless fan-service. And that with a weird looking model and gait.
Her face, it scares me. Doesn't help that she threw herself at me despite my avoiding anything which looked remotely romantic. Not subtle at all.
Traynor, and Liara both tried to romance me, again despite my avoidance of anything which looked like a romance initiator, but they were somewhat more tactful in their approach. James flirted constantly and kept calling me Lola, something of a cheeky sex pest despite my beating the daylights out of him in a bare-knuckle fist fight and telling him to watch his step. When Garrus suggested I become a "One Turian kind of woman" I thought, "Yes! Yes - it should end the parade of characters trying to romance me! Hand over the ring, pronto!"
Female Shepard is really the only way to go due to the voice actress being world's better. But Kaiden is just... well, maybe its because he has the same VA as Carth from kotor. Couldn't separate them so i enacted my kill fantasies out in the only way I could.
The actor doesn't even try to sound different.
Kaiden was marginally better than Carth IMO. Less clingy, needy and whiny. Some of the things he said about biotics and his training were interesting. Then I met him again in ME2. There needed to be renegade punch interrupts for every single line of dialogue he had in that game. Imagine ME3's Ashley's obnoxious, aggressive scepticism, but condensed down into a 2 minute long scene where he also tells you that he's found a new love so your being alive is inconvenient. Then he sends you an email telling you he will consider taking you back if he feels like it, maybe. If I manage to import a Shepard where he's still alive, I hope there's a way to tell him to drop dead.
Speaking of returning voice actors, did anyone else spot the female voice actor for Dragon Age 2's Hawke? She's the scientist Jacob is protecting. She sounds different enough that she's not immediately recognisable, and will probably be missed if you haven't heard Lady Hawke recently.
If I manage to import a Shepard where he's still alive, I hope there's a way to tell him to drop dead.
There actually can be a severing all ties kind of scene with both Kaiden and Ashley after Priority Citadel II, if;
You use renegade speech responses with them most of the time before that, and they still survive the scene with Udina. After that when they request permission to come back aboard the Normandy Shepard can brush them off in a fittingly cold manner, telling them that it ain't going to happen. Interestingly, if you're in romance with them at that point, Shepard goes out of his way to tell them how not coming back on the Normandy is good for them.
There actually can be a severing all ties kind of scene with both Kaiden and Ashley after Priority Citadel II, if;
You use renegade speech responses with them most of the time before that, and they still survive the scene with Udina. After that when they request permission to come back aboard the Normandy Shepard can brush them off in a fittingly cold manner, telling them that it ain't going to happen. Interestingly, if you're in romance with them at that point, Shepard goes out of his way to tell them how not coming back on the Normandy is good for them.
Or you could just kill them.
Threaten to shoot them when they refuse to move away from protecting Udina during Priority: Citadel. Don't take any of the persuade options, then use the renegade interrupt to put them down hard, and finally do the same for Udina. Ignore Shepard as she tries to act all teary eyed that she had to kill her friend. We both know little miss human surpremicist/first world biotic problems boy had it coming.
After that, all of the Reapers suddenly shut down and go derelict throughout the galaxy. Turns out Ashley/Kaiden's life force was anchoring a nexus of Dark Energy to the galaxy that the reapers used for power and pan-galactic communication. Their death destroyed it and ended the war. Credits roll. Everyone can go home and no one will miss those stupid characters!
Problem solved. ~D
Okay.. maybe i exagerate a little bit. But most of that was true. Some of it.
frogbeastegg
04-13-2012, 18:56
Should my renegade Shepard make it over she's going to be very busy ...
I told Ashley to shut up about her paranoid ravings a couple of times and she always agreed, apologised, and started back with it in the very next conversation. Then, when I visited the hospital, I found my idiotic Shepard apologising to her and saying that her suspicion was understandable. Gah! By the time I reached her request to rejoin the Normandy I thought the "Go away!" option was a fake-out. IIRC I told her she could come aboard provided she dumped the suspicion gig. Worked for a while, then later, back to the "Oh Shepard, I'm so relieved to see you aren't part of this latest Cerberus experiment!" Grrrr! Look,female dog person, I was the unwilling subject of one of their experiments - an experiment which has left me some sort of cybernetic undead freak no less! - and was then forced by lame plot and circumstances to work with them despite protesting every step of the way and wanting to blow up their bases, ships, and everything else of theirs I saw. I did not need you hassling me over it back then, and I definitely don't need it now, so kindly shut up and permit me to forget your existence on my ship!
Huh, the Jack reunion was almost as bad. One minute I'm thinking I like what they've done in maturing her, the next I'm being punched in the face and screamed at because I trusted Cerberus. :sigh: No. No, I didn't. I even told her that with the few, pitiful dialogue lines they allowed me in the last game. Heck, I told the Illusive Man to go fish when his interests conflicted with Jack's, and gave her access to all of the restricted files. But no, punch to the face and yet another lecture about Cerberus, and my idiotic Shepard agrees that Jack is right. Renegade Shep is going to punch back if possible.
In fact, anyone bothering me about Cerberus will be renegaded wherever possible. Which will be not nearly often enough.
It stinks. I didn't mind Ashley or Kaiden in the first game, and Ashley was the less obnoxious of the pair in ME2. But in 3? Gah! The Virmire duo got quite the raw deal.
Considering how creepy Ashley's new look is, I wouldn't be surprised if Monk's joke were true. :yes:
https://i.imgur.com/Ikg4Q.jpg
This has been making rounds on the BSN.
Don't know whether it's real or not, but if it is, it's pretty stupid on their part to advertise it like this.
Hooahguy
04-16-2012, 13:49
I think its funny.
Vladimir
04-18-2012, 13:48
You'll probably love this then.
(Warning Kaiden rejection vid)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCupNwzNguQ&feature=related
This was IMO the romance which could be rejected with the least feeling of guilt.
Also one of my favourite bits of the game.
Sorry but, that's really weak. Is all the dialogue like this?
Sorry but, that's really weak. Is all the dialogue like this?
Well it's not The Godfather grade stuff, but then they did not have Mario Puzo writing it for them.
It's pretty good for a game anyhow. And if you think that this is weak you need to see some of the other stuff.
Kekvit Irae
04-18-2012, 17:57
Her face, it scares me.
The biggest problem I have with her is that I'm scared that her Botox will gain sentience and try to kill us all.
easytarget
04-19-2012, 00:57
Well it's not The Godfather grade stuff, but then they did not have Mario Puzo writing it for them.
It's pretty good for a game anyhow. And if you think that this is weak you need to see some of the other stuff.
Let's not kid ourselves, most of what passes for story or character development in games is just bad, I mean really bad. This clip features the sort of insipid dialogue you'd witness in movies competing for Razzies. And it's the reason I can no longer bring myself to buy RPGs, they're insultingly stupid.
The only games that don't destroy immersion are those that feature emergent game play and rely on your agency to tell the story.
It's good enough for a game, that is what I'm saying. What do you expect?
Mongoose
04-19-2012, 06:55
I recently unlocked the Drell Vanguard. I love the back flips and the ninja kicks, but I also tend to die really frequently and not do very well. Anyone else have the Drell Vanguard? If so, how do you play it?
And yeah, I agree on the dialogue. I think the worst is the intro.
Raqpoot, that is a valid point - Mass Effect is hardly the worst offender out there. But how much of the game is dialogue? The game has hours of conversation. Any entertainment medium with as much conversation as Mass Effect needs good dialogue. Or at least dialogue that isn't cringe worthy.
Oh, how I regret saving a certain squadmate.
seireikhaan
04-19-2012, 07:23
I recently unlocked the Drell Vanguard. I love the back flips and the ninja kicks, but I also tend to die really frequently and not do very well. Anyone else have the Drell Vanguard? If so, how do you play it?
And yeah, I agree on the dialogue. I think the worst is the intro.
Raqpoot, that is a valid point - Mass Effect is hardly the worst offender out there. But how much of the game is dialogue? The game has hours of conversation. Any entertainment medium with as much conversation as Mass Effect needs good dialogue. Or at least dialogue that isn't cringe worthy.
Oh, how I regret saving a certain squadmate.
Drell vanguard kinda depends on difficulty and who you're playing against, but generally, he's not... very good. Using pull on an unarmored target, then charging it is reasonably effective because it causes a combo explosion. But against armor and shields, it'd be better to have another teammate who has warp or reave, and just charge whoever they hit with it. You need to be causing combo damage to do really well. Also, cluster grenades are awesome. Don't skip them. I'd max that skill out, personally.
Greyblades
04-19-2012, 10:18
And yeah, I agree on the dialogue. I think the worst is the intro.
Oh yeah, especially when the admirals ask shepard what to do and paragon shep goes, "we need to work together" it kinda fell flat. Renegade shep's "we fight or we die" wasnt very inspiring either.
Raqpoot, that is a valid point - Mass Effect is hardly the worst offender out there. But how much of the game is dialogue? The game has hours of conversation. Any entertainment medium with as much conversation as Mass Effect needs good dialogue. Or at least dialogue that isn't cringe worthy.
TBH this is one reason that I preferred a silent protagonist. For instance DA2 never gave the player as many options in dialogue as DAO did.
But eventually it will all get better. AFAIK a voiced protagonist is still relatively new in RPGs, and these recent BW games are the first ones to have so much voiced dialogue. Gaming already has some excellent writers who are capable of producing semi-decent to decent pieces of fiction (atleast when they're not being driven by money hungry publishers), once the industry grows even more better talent will come.
Until then I'll take what I can get, because it is the best that is out there in it's class.
frogbeastegg
04-19-2012, 13:41
I'm halfway through the game on insanity now. There's a much-mocked line at the start of the game which sums it up well: "This isn't about strategy or tactics! This is about survival!" Enemies no longer gain extra protection so there's no added layer of tactics. Instead everyone does massive damage and has a bit more health. Result is that it feels like a shooter instead of a hybrid. Gears of Effect or Mass of Gears?
The balance isn't great either. Actually, it's terrible. Most enemies don't have shields so Liara's singularity -> my throw/warp = biotic explosion = death. We can spam these powers every 2 seconds. If it has shields, overload once to purge the shields and then bring out the biotic explosions. If there's a big nasty enemy like a brute, I order James to focus fire on it with his particle gun plus maxed explosive incendiary ammo, and watch it go down in seconds. Very, very easy game. Only problem is that the enemies do so much damage that one good shot will nearly kill me, and one grenade means Shepard puree. Easy battles, lots of repetition due to one stray bullet.
I'm in agreement with the general player opinion. ME2 was the hardest, then ME1, then ME3 in distant third place. ME2 insanity was a lot of fun, only died twice (both due to my own stupidity) but felt elated after many of the battles because victory required work. ME1 was a little tedious because enemies took so many shots to kill, but overall it wasn't bad.
Mongoose
04-19-2012, 18:37
TBH this is one reason that I preferred a silent protagonist. For instance DA2 never gave the player as many options in dialogue as DAO did.
But eventually it will all get better. AFAIK a voiced protagonist is still relatively new in RPGs, and these recent BW games are the first ones to have so much voiced dialogue. Gaming already has some excellent writers who are capable of producing semi-decent to decent pieces of fiction (atleast when they're not being driven by money hungry publishers), once the industry grows even more better talent will come.
Until then I'll take what I can get, because it is the best that is out there in it's class.
Fair enough. Part of the reason I complain about the bad lines (like the intro) is that most of lines are pretty good, so the bad ones tend to stand out more.
For instance, the Illusive Man's lines at the end on the citadel are really poorly written, in my opinion, whereas most of his lines were good.
Edit:
Drell vanguard kinda depends on difficulty and who you're playing against, but generally, he's not... very good. Using pull on an unarmored target, then charging it is reasonably effective because it causes a combo explosion. But against armor and shields, it'd be better to have another teammate who has warp or reave, and just charge whoever they hit with it. You need to be causing combo damage to do really well. Also, cluster grenades are awesome. Don't skip them. I'd max that skill out, personally.
I tried experimenting more with the Drellguard a little today. It's a really fun class, even if it isn't very effective. I find it way better if I'm playing with another biotic.
If he had some kind of cloak, he'd be way better. I know what you're thinking - that's getting too much into infiltrator territory. But if the cloak did something differently, like if it didn't boast your weapon damage but did boast your biotics and melee attacks, it would work. It would fix the main problem - you don't have a good way to get out of the situations that charge generally puts you in. The agility is nice, but it really isn't enough. Of course, the cloak would have to replace one of the other powers.
Mass Effect 3 writer distances himself from the ending (http://www.gamesthirst.com/2012/03/22/mass-effect-3-writer-distance-himself-from-game-ending-blames-casey-hudson/)
Cannot believe I missed this.
In spoilers is the original post the writer made at Penny Arcade and which was heavily edited later on. (Copied it from the article itself)
I have nothing to do with the ending beyond a) having argued successfully a long time ago that we needed a chance to say goodbye to our squad, b) having argued successfully that Cortez shouldn’t automatically die in that shuttle crash, and c) having written Tali’s goodbye bit, as well as a couple of the holo-goodbyes for people I wrote (Mordin, Kasumi, Jack, etc).
No other writer did, either, except for our lead. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft.
And honestly, it kind of shows.
Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn’t need to be peer-reviewe.d
And again, it shows.
If you’d asked me the themes of Mass Effect 3, I’d break them down as:
Galactic Alliances
Friends
Organics versus Synthetics
In my personal opinion, the first two got a perfunctory nod. We did get a goodbye to our friends, but it was in a scene that was divorced from the gameplay — a deliberate “nothing happens here” area with one turret thrown in for no reason I really understand, except possibly to obfuscate the “nothing happens here”-ness. The best missions in our game are the ones in which the gameplay and the narrative reinforce each other. The end of the Genophage campaign exemplifies that for me — every line of dialog is showing you both sides of the krogan, be they horrible brutes or proud warriors; the art shows both their bombed-out wasteland and the beautiful world they once had and could have again; the combat shows the terror of the Reapers as well as a blatant reminder of the rachni, which threatened the galaxy and had to be stopped by the krogan last time. Every line of code in that mission is on target with the overall message.
The endgame doesn’t have that. I wanted to see banshees attacking you, and then have asari gunships zoom in and blow them away. I wanted to see a wave of rachni ravagers come around a corner only to be met by a wall of krogan roaring a battle cry. Here’s the horror the Reapers inflicted upon each race, and here’s the army that you, Commander Shepard, made out of every race in the galaxy to fight them.
I personally thought that the Illusive Man conversation was about twice as long as it needed to be — something that I’ve been told in my peer reviews of my missions and made edits on, but again, this is a conversation no writer but the lead ever saw until it was already recorded. I did love Anderson’s goodbye.
For me, Anderson’s goodbye is where it ended. The stuff with the Catalyst just… You have to understand. Casey is really smart and really analytical. And the problem is that when he’s not checked, he will assume that other people are like him, and will really appreciate an almost completely unemotional intellectual ending. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it.
And then, just to be a dick… what was SUPPOSED to happen was that, say you picked “Destroy the Reapers”. When you did that, the system was SUPPOSED to look at your score, and then you’d show a cutscene of Earth that was either:
a) Very high score: Earth obviously damaged, but woo victory
b) Medium score: Earth takes a bunch of damage from the Crucible activation. Like dropping a bomb on an already war-ravaged city. Uh, well, maybe not LIKE that as much as, uh, THAT.
c) Low score: Earth is a cinderblock, all life on it completely wiped out
I have NO IDEA why these different cutscenes aren’t in there. As far as I know, they were never cut. Maybe they were cut for budget reasons at the last minute. I don’t know. But holy crap, yeah, I can see how incredibly disappointing it’d be to hear of all the different ending possibilities and have it break down to “which color is stuff glowing?” Or maybe they ARE in, but they’re too subtle to really see obvious differences, and again, that’s… yeah.
Okay, that’s a lot to have written for something that’s gonna go away in an hour.
I still teared up at the ending myself, but really, I was tearing up for the quick flashbacks to old friends and the death of Anderson. I wasn’t tearing up over making a choice that, as it turned out, didn’t have enough cutscene differentiation on it.
And to be clear, I don’t even really wish Shepard had gotten a ride-off-into-sunset ending. I was honestly okay with Shepard sacrificing himself. I just expected it to be for something with more obvious differentiation, and a stronger tie to the core themes — all three of them.
Casey Hudson. He's on the list. :skull:
al Roumi
04-27-2012, 17:21
Methinks he won't be at Bioware for long. But maybe that's the point.
I just cannot believe that someone who was a team lead in two such excellent games can suddenly be so out of touch from what an ordinary gamer feels when he's making up the ending.
And just what in the ending makes it deserving of being called an 'intellectual ending'?
AggonyDuck
04-28-2012, 14:39
Well I think moving Drew Karpyshyn, who was lead writer for Mass Effect 1 & 2, on to SW:TOR had a big impact on Mass Effect 3's writing.
easytarget
04-28-2012, 16:37
I just cannot believe that someone who was a team lead in two such excellent games can suddenly be so out of touch from what an ordinary gamer feels when he's making up the ending.
It would make more sense to you I suspect if you didn't over rate the first two. The entire series is over rated.
johnhughthom
04-29-2012, 14:32
It would make more sense to you I suspect if you didn't over rate the first two. The entire series is over rated.
In your opinion. I found the original Mass Effect to be one of the best games I've ever played, very few have sucked me in the way it did in my first play through. Sure, looking back it had many flaws, but they had little impact on my enjoyment at the time. I found the second entertaining enough, but only played it once, despite playing the first four or five times, and doubt I'll play the third.
easytarget
05-04-2012, 03:54
Yes, in my opinion. I wouldn't rank ME in the top 10 RPG's I've played, in fact, I wouldn't rank it an RPG.
And as for how I feel about how we got to this sorry state of affairs, this video does the topic just fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6TmTv6deTI
Btw, no, i've not read the previous 14 pages, if someone posted this earlier in this thread, mea culpa.
Why was Shepard never promoted?
Because he kept making inappropriate jokes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjQ68lFHdv4&feature=relmfu
I was replaying the Priority Horizon mission when I realised that I did not have the Extended Barrel V for my assault rifle. All my other mods are tier 5 but this one is at tier 4. I was pretty sure that I picked up everything and bought everything through out the game, so I fired up a different career and even in that just this one mod was at tier 4 while all others were at 5.
So does anyone know where can I find the extended barrel V? Or is it just a bug?
What no knows about the extended barrel? :(
Anyway, Mass Effect 3 rejected endings comic (http://www.dorkly.com/comic/37907/rejected-mass-effect-3-endings). Quite funny.
And in other news, voice actors including Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer are recording for the extended endings. Yay!
What no knows about the extended barrel? :(
Anyway, Mass Effect 3 rejected endings comic (http://www.dorkly.com/comic/37907/rejected-mass-effect-3-endings). Quite funny.
And in other news, voice actors including Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer are recording for the extended endings. Yay!
Nope. Personally never bothered with upgrades that weren't for guns I regularly used. I'm pretty sure you can buy them at the stores, though, no?
Good to see Bioware actually putting effort into their ending DLC, though.
al Roumi
05-15-2012, 15:53
What no knows about the extended barrel? :(
I don't think upgrades are numbered as such, rather they are to an extent ordered by your encountering them in the game. So e.g. you could buy capacity upgrade 1 from a shop and then do a mission, picking up capacity upgrade 2. Or, you could do the mission, pick up the capacity upgrade (which would be level 1) and then buy level 2 upgrade from the shop.
I reckon you'll have missed an upgrade in a mission rather than from a shop (never mind rushing througha reas to save the galaxy, it can wait a little longer) though so maybe you should check the locations - i'm sure someone will have posted them in the internet, maybe on the wiki. http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_Wiki
seireikhaan
06-22-2012, 21:30
Well, looks like that extended cut that's been in the works for a while is finally going to ship out on the 26th.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/extended-cut-for-mass-effect-3-hits-tuesday-june-24/
It'll be a while before I get the chance to play it, but I'm reasonably hopeful it will at least be less offensive than the regular ending.
johnhughthom
06-22-2012, 21:38
Offensive? :laugh4:
seireikhaan
06-22-2012, 22:46
Offensive? :laugh4:
:tongue:
Oh, fine. They were generally confusing, lore-inconsistent, and poorly explained.
They sure dropped this one as suddenly as a bomb.
I cannot deny that I've been waiting for this, and despite knowing that it probably isn't much I've still somehow built up hope that this will salvage the ending.....
Truth is it probably won't.....just a bunch of cutscenes. Either way I hope it brings an end to the Mass Effect shaped hole and allows me to finally uninstall the game.
Edit:
OK nvm. This EC is most probably going to be some bits about squadmates and how they 'end up'.....this podcast puts it plain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y7xk1_x8ko&feature=player_embedded#!
They sure dropped this one as suddenly as a bomb.
Intentional in my opinion. The situation has calmed down, the gaming media as a whole moved on and the more radical elements of the HTL movement simmered to more reasonable levels. Announcing a date a month ago would have been akin to setting the timer on a time bomb. This is a great PR move on Bioware's part imo. By the time shock wears off from the announcement people will already have the DLC in hand. So to speak.
Unfortunately, I think it's safe to say that unless this new ending cures every ailment suffered by the person who witnesses it, there's no way everyone will be satisfied. It's now a victim of its own hype and mythos. However, i'll be playing it. And i'll try very hard to keep an open mind.
Either way I hope it brings an end to the Mass Effect shaped hole and allows me to finally uninstall the game.
I agree 100%. It's been hard to do another play-through knowing that the ending i got was somehow.. incomplete. As someone who enjoyed just about every moment with ME3 (faults and all) its still hard to accept playing it knowing that I'm somehow missing out. One way or another I am looking forward to that feeling being gone. I'll see you guys on the other side.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
06-25-2012, 22:46
Yeah... they're not going to fix it though, are they?
The ending has been fairly well deconstructed as... not making sense.
My favourite gripe - why is Joker piloting the Normandy through a Mass Reley and not fighting in the Battle for Earth?
My second - how come my squad mates on Earth ended up suddenly back on the Normandy for that final scene.
Unless they're lying and it actually is the indoctinated theory, they won't pull it off.
Kudos to BIOWARE for doing what I though was impossible - burning up all the credit they got for making KotOR.
Greyblades
06-26-2012, 01:39
Hmm. afew more hours, still kinda hoping they were stringing us on and they actually are going to use indoctrination.
A tweet from Gamble put it around noon PST, which means around 7 pm GMT....and 00:00 my time.
But since Bioware isn't really known for putting their DLC up on time, and the time it will take for me to download it, I probably won't be playing it till tomorrow afternoon/evening.
Time enough to get ice cream and liquor just in-case the ending is still depressing.
Hmm. afew more hours, still kinda hoping they were stringing us on and they actually are going to use indoctrination.
No matter what, I think the ending will still be vague enough that it's open to interpretation.
Personally I love the indoctrination theory, it fits perfectly (in my mind). If the extended ending they put out isn't quite satisfactory and doesn't disprove it, I'm still gonna go ahead and say the ending is just a dream sequence.
OK just finished playing it.
The most important difference I found was that the starchild is now modeled after Casey Hudson and you get an option to push him off the Citadel. He lands on top of Harbinger (who looks kind of like Mac Walters). Then they both explode.
Edit:
On a more serious note -
The new refusal ending....
I really really hate these guys now. It's like they're saying so you're too uptight to accept the piece of art we gave you. Well you fail. We'll wait till another player comes along who can accept our :daisy:
Edit2:
JFR it isn't out for PC yet, I watched this on youtube.
Greyblades
06-26-2012, 13:47
Refusal ending: ....Go f*ck yourselves bioware. You are joining my new pirate to spite list.
I cant only hope the other endings are worth waiting but if this is any indication it's not going to be.
I borrowed the game from a friend of mine and played it for about 2 hours then got bored because it was somehow seriously missing the whole RPG thing the previous 2 games had..
Ashley looks kinda hawt with teh long hair tho :3 xD
Edit:
On a more serious note -
The new refusal ending....
I really really hate these guys now. It's like they're saying so you're too uptight to accept the piece of art we gave you. Well you fail. We'll wait till another player comes along who can accept our :daisy:
Edit2:
JFR it isn't out for PC yet, I watched this on youtube.
I have to admit i actually laughed. Bioware to fans: TOO DEEP FOR YOU :daisy:
Hooahguy
06-26-2012, 14:49
Refusal ending: ....Go f*ck yourselves bioware. You are joining my new pirate to spite list.
I cant only hope the other endings are worth waiting but if this is any indication it's not going to be.
I saw the refusal ending and holy :daisy: that was stupid.
I mean, I get it. Shepard didnt want everyone to have to be synthetics, but if all they did was add one, Im definitly not getting ME3 until its for really cheap. And even then I dont really want to because I lost all my previous Mass Effect savegames. Over 200 hours lost in one hard drive failure. Yay.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
06-26-2012, 15:08
I have to admit i actually laughed. Bioware to fans: TOO DEEP FOR YOU :daisy:
So... Destroy ending makes even more sense now we know the kid is really just a dick. Also, everybody note how the Normandy is no longer crippled (you don't see it and she takes off at the end) and the relays are now just damaged
It's like someone's having a nervous twitch over there - they can't quite admit they screwed up, even though they want to.
For those wondering all of the endings are now on youtube. Just search "Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut" and then the ending you want to see. Destroy, Synthesis, Control, and Refuse.
I was somehow expecting more. :shrug:
TBH I don't have an issue with what they've done. I really wasn't expecting much, and destroy ends on a rather hopeful note, specially with high enough EMS.
But what really makes me angry, is that the whole Refusal ending is one big :daisy: to all the people who said the starchild was out of tune with the story. It's like BW (specifically Casey Hudson and Mac Walters) are literally telling us that sure you got the right to be mad, but you know what, we don't give a damn.
The sheer amount of arrogance leaves me amazed.
I mean they were not being forced to do anything, they could've eaisly left it out like they ignored so many other things, but to put it in in it's current form is an affront.
TBH I don't have an issue with what they've done. I really wasn't expecting much, and destroy ends on a rather hopeful note, specially with high enough EMS.
I'm in agreement. I was just somehow expecting a bit more exposition. There's a hell of a lot less implied and much more shown which is great. They also caved a bit in the bleakness of the ending which I understand but don't really agree with.
I sorta liked the idea that in order to build a civilization free of Reaper influence and the cycle, the one you currently had would need to be destroyed. But it is a rather harsh ending and I understand why they changed relays from being destroyed to "damaged but repairable." The change to the normandy's fate was also expected.
For those hoping for a full re-write though, this is gonna be a huge disappointment. I'm bracing for the next wave of internet backlash.
But what really makes me angry, is that the whole Refusal ending is one big to all the people who said the starchild was out of tune with the story. It's like BW (specifically Casey Hudson and Mac Walters) are literally telling us that sure you got a right to be mad, but you know what, we don't give a damn.
The sheer amount of arrogance leaves me amazed.
Well it's more so "end it our way or not at all" because who in their right mind is going to pick Refuse? That's an even darker ending than what the original ending implied. If language rules here we much more relaxed i'd have a few names to call the bioware writers - but i suppose i'll have to settle for pretentious, after seeing Refuse. :laugh4: Goodness, what a laugh.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
06-26-2012, 15:39
I sorta liked the idea that in order to build a civilization free of Reaper influence and the cycle, the one you currently had would need to be destroyed. But it is a rather harsh ending and I understand why they changed relays from being destroyed to "damaged but repairable." The change to the normandy's fate was also expected.
From what they've said I don't think the writers intended that - I think they just expected you to assume everybody pooled their knowledge and built new relays, which is not beyond the pale but is rather a tool order before everyone over Earth starves.
The refusal ending would not be so bad if it was in in the beginning, adding it now makes no sense though.
Also:In control one of the things "Shepard" references with those who sacrificed is apparently his own helmet, which is in the same pile of rubble as sheppard is shown covered in at the end of Destroy. Destroy is also the only one where Shepard's name isn't added to the wall, by the looks of it. So they STILL haven't explained that and the whole thing could STILL be a dream.
BIOWARE are obviously finished as an RPG studio, having been aquired by EA expect them to be wound down in five years or less. It's a shame.
Greyblades
06-26-2012, 15:43
In control one of the things "Shepard" references with those who sacrificed is apparently his own helmet, which is in the same pile of rubble as sheppard is shown covered in at the end of Destroy. Destroy is also the only one where Shepard's name isn't added to the wall, by the looks of it. So they STILL haven't explained that and the whole thing could STILL be a dream.
Weird, his name gets added to the wall in this (www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgYYYmzr7_A) destroy ending.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
06-26-2012, 16:01
Weird, his name gets added to the wall in this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgYYYmzr7_A) destroy ending.
No, it doesn't.
Watch it again. When Garrus does it he actually puts it on the wall and then changes his mind.
Weird, his name gets added to the wall in this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgYYYmzr7_A) destroy ending.
I think that varies from LI to LI.
With best EMS and destroy, LIs supposedly hesitate before placing the name on the wall. Someone on the BSN said Liara actually does not place it on the wall at all.
You guys might wanna spoiler tag your posts. At least for the next day or so until everyone has a chance to go into this, or spoil themselves in other ways. :laugh4:
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
06-26-2012, 16:06
I think that varies from LI to LI.
With best EMS and destroy, LIs supposedly hesitate before placing the name on the wall. Someone on the BSN said Liara actually does not place it on the wall at all.
She doesn't do it in the one he linked, leastwise it isn't shown.
Greyblades
06-26-2012, 16:11
Ok I just finished watching all 4 endings.
First, another screw you to Bioware for rejection.
Second, synthesis is portrayed as the best option yet again, even though all the organics seemed to have turned into Pretty-Borg (Porg?) and the synthetics don't seem to have changed. Kinda weird.
Third, the green patterns on the character models, it seems to imply that the clothes organics were wearing are now fused to their bodies, unless one of the effects of synthesis was to fuse cotton with nylon, the citadel fashion catalogs are going to become obsolete.
Fourth. I like the destroy ending, hopeful future, rebuilding the relays, Shepard is likely alive, All that jazz. It's a huge upgrade to the previous ones
Fifth. Control. Cyber Shepard: Awesome. Rather cold,though. seems somewhat bleak, in an intentional sense this time unlike Pre-DLC.
PVC: You are right, my mistake.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
06-26-2012, 16:40
Ok I just finished watching all 4 endings.
First, another screw you to Bioware for rejection.
Second, synthesis is portrayed as the best option yet again, even though all the organics seemed to have turned into Pretty-Borg (Porg?) and the synthetics don't seem to have changed. Kinda weird.
Third, the green patterns on the character models, it seems to imply that the clothes organics were wearing are now fused to their bodies, unless one of the effects of synthesis was to fuse cotton with nylon, the citadel fashion catalogs are going to become obsolete.
Fourth. I like the destroy ending, hopeful future, rebuilding the relays, Shepard is likely alive, All that jazz. It's a huge upgrade to the previous ones
Fifth. Control. Cyber Shepard: Awesome. Rather cold,though. seems somewhat bleak, in an intentional sense this time unlike Pre-DLC.
PVC: You are right, my mistake.
Synthesis still makes no sense, Control and Destroy now make sense.
With Control, listen to the music and the narration - good intentions from the Reapers, heard that before?
Remember, all the narrators are biased.
Edit: Overall still sucks though.
What I wanted was:
Marines pull Shepard out of the rubble right at the end "he's alive", and not to destroy the Geth etc.
What I wanted was:
Marines pull Shepard out of the rubble right at the end "he's alive", and not to destroy the Geth etc.
:yes:
One perfect ending. Even the darkest mythological stories had some of those. Odyssey springs to mind.
Guess it was just too much in conflict with their artistic integrity.
Kekvit Irae
06-26-2012, 17:39
My faith in Bioware has been reaffirmed!
The Cupcakes ending was a thing of beauty to behold! First it started out with the child talking smack to Shepard, which got my blood boiling until she hacked into the Citadel VI system and reprogrammed her "This is my favorite store on the Citadel" line to broadcast everywhere in the known galaxy, causing mass panic and chaos in the Reaper forces. INGENIOUS! She didn't even need to blow up the Citadel or the Mass Relays either. Once the battle was all said and done, Shepard was given a seat on the Council, and a Big Ben-sized statue on every race's homeworld with the words "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite homeworld in the galaxy!" inscribed in the plaque. Finally, the big moment arrived: CAPTAIN Shepard! That's right, the girl who saved the galaxy thrice before finally got her due promotion. In the after party, she, along with an unmasked (and clearly visible) Tali and a re-built Legion reinvent the Lazarus vector to bring back Mordin, and the four of them tour the galaxy in the broken husk of Harbringer, making pit stops to punch random reporters.
It truly was the most magical moment in gaming.
:daisy: YOU, BIOWARE/EA
Kekvit Irae
Welcome to the fold. :laugh3:
seireikhaan
06-26-2012, 19:14
Well it's more so "end it our way or not at all" because who in their right mind is going to pick Refuse? That's an even darker ending than what the original ending implied. If language rules here we much more relaxed i'd have a few names to call the bioware writers - but i suppose i'll have to settle for pretentious, after seeing Refuse. :laugh4: Goodness, what a laugh.
So I couldn't keep my curiosity in check until my next chance to play the game, so I watched the endings on youtube. Bearing in mind that I'm not seeing any content from before-hand(understanding that apparently the additional stuff kicks in before cerberus mission), I'm finding it mostly reasonable. But then, I guess my expectations weren't through the roof or anything. But for the refuse ending, I absolutely lol'd. I thought it was hilarious, myself. Because, let's be honest, if we take the star kid at more or less face value, that's exactly what should happen if you decide to do that. That it serves as a middle finger to a batch of extremely vocal and irritating fans(looking at you, BSN. Good grief, their plot section had nothing but ending stuff for a solid 2 months) only served to add to my amusement.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
06-26-2012, 20:14
:yes:
One perfect ending. Even the darkest mythological stories had some of those. Odyssey springs to mind.
Guess it was just too much in conflict with their artistic integrity.
The thing is:
It's REALLY dumb to have the "breathe" bit, this isn't a horror film and Sheppard isn't the baddy, we're told there'll be no sequal. That sequence only makes sense if being REALLY UBER AWSOME results in a final scene which establishes Shepard is not only Alive but safe. At that point you can imagine that he/she will go off with his/her love interest and make babies. I mean, I don't need to see everything, but why have just that little tease there?
I'm actually OK with Shepard dying, it sucks but it's not horrible - the problem is the choices you're given and the way they map onto Shepard character.
1. Destroy: It's dumb that you have to shoot something for this one, btw, but this is the obvious choice for most Shepards. The Child is NOT a reliable source for Shepard, even if he plays it completely straight in reality Shepard has no reason to trust him. With that in mind, there's no reason for Shepard to believe the child when he says the Geth and "synthetics" will all be destroyed. What is a Synthetic, anyway? Are we talking a synthetic lifeform, or any sufficiently complex computer? Given that Synthesis implies a hard division, Destroy should operate on the same principle. Taken to its logical conclusion this implies ALL Tech, or it means all Reaper Tech, which potentially explains why Shepard lives but EDI and the Geth croak. Even so, this is the child (your enemy's) least favourite choice, so it should logically be your prefered one. There's also the little fact that DESTROYING the Reapers has been the point for the last three years of your life.
2. Refusal: I suppose "we can't win but we'll die on our feet" makes a certain amount of sense as an ending. It's mostly the one you'll choose because Destroy will kill EDI and the Geth though - i.e. BIOWARE have given you no good choices.
3. Control: Best presented Ending, "Shepard" is now the driving impetus behind the Reapers, but "His" apparent detachment and hsi references to the Many imply the danger of A.I. Rampency, which is probably what happened to the original Reaper A.I. (it is a built thing). Eventually "Shepard" will conclude that higher-level societies are building Synthetics that he keeps having to smack down, then he will destroy the Organics capable of building such Synthetics. The Cycle has only been delayed. This is also what the Illusive Man, one of your antagonists, has wanted all along. Bad idea, then.
4. Synthesis: This is the Borg saying "become like us", as has been previously noted the visual effect sucks, but beside that it's a creepy Asimov-esque future that may or may not be your cup of Tea. The main problem with this ending is that there's no realy logical way to get from the Shepard who boards the Citidel to the one who decides this is a good idea based on the ramblings of a Rampant A.I. The reason the player will pick this is because they don't fancy "Control" for the reasons stated above and they don't want to kill EDI and the Geth.
Conclusion: Destroy is the best and most logical option, it permenantly removes the Reaper threat. The only confounding factor is the fate of the Geth/EDI - while this confuses the issue for the player it is unlikely to actually confuse Shepard, partly because of what's at stake but also because Shepard has no reason to trust the Catalyst A.I.'s information. It's worth noting that many Shepards will choose to sacrifice the Geth to save the Quarians anyway (they may have to if they lack the prerequisites) and many "Paragon" Shepards will already have watched Mordin sacrifice himself and might legitimately decide that EDI would rather be destroyed than watch the Normandy Crew and Joker die.
In other words, BIOWARE have achieved an Obsideon-level of Narrative Logic Fail.
It's worth noting that one the company's founders went back to medicine while ME3 was in development. I'm inclined to think that the ending has been changed and the bits that point towards indoctrination or somesuch are the result of artefacts left behind from a different ending. It's also worth noting how many of the effects, including the light blossom from the Crucible, have changed - as well as the addition of the "jump out" scene with the fleet and the change with the Normandy crash.
Hooahguy
06-26-2012, 20:19
Reading all the reviews Im still really annoyed that we get to choose the ending.
It should have been like in ME2 where a variety of factors go into whether you succeed or not, and even if you do succeed, to what degree.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
06-26-2012, 21:12
Reading all the reviews Im still really annoyed that we get to choose the ending.
It should have been like in ME2 where a variety of factors go into whether you succeed or not, and even if you do succeed, to what degree.
I find it pointed that Malukah wrote this as a tribute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re32xnyYP3A
Kinda makes me feel Shepard would Reignite in EA's face.
Choosing the ending would not be such a big deal if the actual choice you got was more than cosmetically affected by prior decisions.
If it's all about how well you built the Crucible...
Hooahguy
06-26-2012, 21:44
Holy hell that song is amazing.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
06-26-2012, 22:34
While we're here, lets just reflect on the lack of KOTOR3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1KM3E0emjg&feature=related
By which I mean - I want to be playing with those guys, not following 30 years in their wake. I mean, have you seen SWOTOR's box art?
Crazed Rabbit
06-27-2012, 17:55
So, if one has not bought ME3 yet, would this expansion make it worthwhile? I held off originally because of everything I heard about the terrible ending.
CR
Kekvit Irae
06-27-2012, 20:20
So, if one has not bought ME3 yet, would this expansion make it worthwhile? I held off originally because of everything I heard about the terrible ending.
CR
You should buy ME3. It's actually a really good game with a surprisingly-good multiplayer and a good storyline. Just be sure to turn the game off during the final stretch and make up your own ending.
Hooahguy
06-27-2012, 20:51
The only thing that is holding me back from ME3 is the fact that I lost all my ME 1&2 savegames. For me its like Building the walls and the interior of a house, and then have it knocked down. And then being asked to build the roof.
Isn't there a website with a whole collection of save games to pick from?
Edit: http://www.masseffect2saves.com/
Hooahguy
06-28-2012, 02:17
Yeah but it doesnt feel personal.
johnhughthom
06-28-2012, 02:20
If you couldn't be arsed to play through the first two again, clearly you don't see the series as being that good.
Hooahguy
06-28-2012, 02:24
If you couldn't be arsed to play through the first two again, clearly you don't see the series as being that good.
I had over 200 hours total on both games, and something like 10 different characters each with different motivations and backgrounds.
By the 10th time replaying it was getting pretty stale. Still a great game, Im just jaded.
johnhughthom
06-28-2012, 02:44
Played the first one four or five times myself (on 360, then PC), never felt the urge to replay the second (though I did quite enjoy my one playthrough) and doubt I'll ever play part 3.
Hooahguy
06-28-2012, 02:55
For me at least the 2nd one was more replayable, just because the combat didnt suck if you were starting from scratch.
The way I played was that I had 5 "courses," one paragon and one renegade for each "course." So I only had to start from scratch in terms of abilities and weapons for 5 times, while the other 5 times I could just load the matching character and I would have decent guns from the start.
Greyblades
06-28-2012, 13:01
*sigh* I've just played through the ending for myself and after actually being able to ask the optional questions to star child, which the videos on youtube seem to ignore, I'm... I dont know, now that I think about it, it's better, much better than the original one and I do feel more apreciatve, yet I still cant fully get over how this should have been in the game on release not DLC 5 months later. EA/Bioware's conduct hasnt exactly restored faith either. I'm bitter but somewhat contented is what I'm saying.
seireikhaan
06-28-2012, 22:51
So, if one has not bought ME3 yet, would this expansion make it worthwhile? I held off originally because of everything I heard about the terrible ending.
CR
I'd say it is, but you could probably hold out for a sale or something. The gameplay, imo, is the best of the series by a small landslide. The main downside, imo, is the on-the-rails plot. Like, even more than 2's was. The ending is what it is. If you feel strongly that it's about the journey, not the destination, it's definitely solid.
All right I finally managed to download and played the EC for myself, and aside from a few weird moments, it's a fitting end....at least after the original ending.
Closure...kind of. I'll probably write a little story for myself, about how it really ends afterwards. The star child is certainly more bearable now. It appears he started all of this by screwing over his original creators, ala I, Robot. Makes it easier to choose destroy. As far as EDI and Geth are concerned, I think there's wiggle room there, just as there is for Shepard with high EMS.
All in all, it could've been so much better had they simply gone with the Dark Energy thing, as it was supposed to be originally, but now I guess, this will do.
I was going to uninstall the game, till I heard about the Leviathan.
Why didn't Harbinger shoot the Normandy?
thefluffyone93
06-30-2012, 02:27
Top Comment on Youtube regarding the Refusal Ending
"Bioware's response to everyone wanting a "shoot the god child" ending.
Damn..now that's some professional trolling."
Couldn't agree more.
So, if one has not bought ME3 yet, would this expansion make it worthwhile? I held off originally because of everything I heard about the terrible ending.
CR
Going to be honest here: If you're going into this fresh without having seen the original endings? You'll probably be fine with the game in it's current form. :shrug: That's just my opinion though.
In case you lot aren't following koobismo and his Maurauder Shields comics (I cannot fathom why you aren't) he posted a hilarious 20 minute 'radio show' celebrating the 1 million views of his comics.
It's really worth listening to. (http://koobismo.deviantart.com/art/Marauder-Shields-Extra-The-1-000-000-Views-Party-312142874?q=gallery%3Akoobismo&qo=0)
seireikhaan
07-19-2012, 21:17
Woah. So apparently there's a new difficulty for MP, Platinum. Higher than gold. Tried it against Reapers, figuring I do pretty well against them with my Drell Adept. Wave 1, here come the Banshees and brutes. "Okay... so that's not totally unexpected," I thought, since gold starts them at 3. What I *didn't* expect was the Geth Hunters and Primes that came out of the woodworks starting in wave 3. We managed to make it to wave 5 before being utterly crushed. Apparently in the later waves, you get literally everything thrown at you. Utterly, utterly bonkers.
Phew... I'm barely competent enough to survive on Gold, I can't imagine something more difficult than that!
Slow internet means any attempt to play ME3 multiplayer in earnest will have to wait till the end of the summer for me. By then it'll probably be waning in popularity...
BTW khaan how are all the new classes? The newest ones I actually used were the Geth and Batarians... first DLC I think. Apparently they've been pumping out new classes like crazy.
seireikhaan
07-19-2012, 21:53
I just started it up again for the first time in about two months. I've got all the characters from the first batch, but only the ex-cerberus vanguard so far from the most recent two dlc's. Wasn't super impressed, seemed like a less abusable human vanguard. Seen a bunch of people playing some of the new human folks, but I'm not really sure what they all do. Do want to try the infiltrator- it seems to be like Kasumi from ME2, with Shadow Strike and cloak as abilities. Guess for now I'll just keep rolling with my krogan vanguard, drell adept, and quarian engineer as my base classes.
I just started it up again for the first time in about two months. I've got all the characters from the first batch, but only the ex-cerberus vanguard so far from the most recent two dlc's. Wasn't super impressed, seemed like a less abusable human vanguard. Seen a bunch of people playing some of the new human folks, but I'm not really sure what they all do. Do want to try the infiltrator- it seems to be like Kasumi from ME2, with Shadow Strike and cloak as abilities. Guess for now I'll just keep rolling with my krogan vanguard, drell adept, and quarian engineer as my base classes.
Most of them are melee focused or have gimmicky abilities. There's a few that have teleport, one hit kills (ala the phantoms) that can dance around the battlefield and rack up kills. So far I haven't seen anyone use them effectively and they have only reminded me of Krogan. Everyone loves them, few can play them effectively.
I haven't gotten any of the N7 characters, but I'm starting to remember why i stopped playing Me3 multiplayer. It's fun as heck but SO GRINDY. If i could grind up some credits and then select which classes/weapons to buy that would be a different story, but the random element in unlocking has to be the most demoralizing thing in the entire system. Worse even than losing out against gold reapers on the last wave.
The new N7 weapons are great though, provided you can get them. The Typhoon has got to be the single greatest invention in the history of the Mass Effect universe, an assault rifle with enough punch to turn gold reapers into finely ground powder with the right characters. I recommend Vorcha with your berserker buff upgraded for 15% increased damage. :sweetheart: Come at me Harbinger.
seireikhaan
07-21-2012, 16:07
The new N7 weapons are great though, provided you can get them. The Typhoon has got to be the single greatest invention in the history of the Mass Effect universe, an assault rifle with enough punch to turn gold reapers into finely ground powder with the right characters. I recommend Vorcha with your berserker buff upgraded for 15% increased damage. :sweetheart: Come at me Harbinger.
No typhoon, but I did find a Piranha assault shotgun. Very effective, but I'm having issues deciding between it and my beloved wraith. Piranha's got a big barrel clip and has an impressive fire rate, but I'm having a bit of trouble adjusting to the style after having used my wraith for so long.
seireikhaan
07-21-2012, 22:26
Most of them are melee focused or have gimmicky abilities. There's a few that have teleport, one hit kills (ala the phantoms) that can dance around the battlefield and rack up kills. So far I haven't seen anyone use them effectively and they have only reminded me of Krogan. Everyone loves them, few can play them effectively.
I haven't gotten any of the N7 characters, but I'm starting to remember why i stopped playing Me3 multiplayer. It's fun as heck but SO GRINDY. If i could grind up some credits and then select which classes/weapons to buy that would be a different story, but the random element in unlocking has to be the most demoralizing thing in the entire system. Worse even than losing out against gold reapers on the last wave.
The new N7 weapons are great though, provided you can get them. The Typhoon has got to be the single greatest invention in the history of the Mass Effect universe, an assault rifle with enough punch to turn gold reapers into finely ground powder with the right characters. I recommend Vorcha with your berserker buff upgraded for 15% increased damage. :sweetheart: Come at me Harbinger.
After an incredible weapons-related premium spectre pack spree- black widow, Paladin, and typhoon, I can safely say the typhoon is absolutely as good as you said. Gave it a whirl with my turian soldier. Tried extended magazine + extended barrel at first, and still wasn't exactly happy with the results. Tried stability dampener + scope and suddenly it became ridiculously awesome at literally every range. Definitely worthy of ultra-rare status. Even at rank 1, it's definitely the best assault rifle I have now.
Mongoose
08-02-2012, 19:29
I just got the N7 Slayer from the victory pack - loads of fun, crazy dodge and melee stuff. Don't know how effective any of it really is, but it sure is fun to run around ... slaying people with a sword. All this sword stuff is making me wonder, though, whether the game is getting too "tech-ninja" lately. In single player, we've got Kai Lang. Then, in both multiplayer and single player, one of the more powerful enemies is the sword-wielding phantom. Now multiplayer has two additional tech-ninjas slashing people with swords - the N7 slayer and the N7 shadow.
Yeah, I realize with the biotic powers and all, especially in the first game, this was never exactly supposed to be hard sci-fi. In my opinion, however, while the biotics stuff is silly, it fit the sci-fi feel of the game a lot better than the growing sword emphasis, which feels less futuristic and cool and more just weird and out of place.
And I'm saying this as someone who is on a college fencing team.
I just got the N7 Slayer from the victory pack - loads of fun, crazy dodge and melee stuff. Don't know how effective any of it really is, but it sure is fun to run around ... slaying people with a sword. All this sword stuff is making me wonder, though, whether the game is getting too "tech-ninja" lately. In single player, we've got Kai Lang. Then, in both multiplayer and single player, one of the more powerful enemies is the sword-wielding phantom. Now multiplayer has two additional tech-ninjas slashing people with swords - the N7 slayer and the N7 shadow.
Yeah, I realize with the biotic powers and all, especially in the first game, this was never exactly supposed to be hard sci-fi. In my opinion, however, while the biotics stuff is silly, it fit the sci-fi feel of the game a lot better than the growing sword emphasis, which feels less futuristic and cool and more just weird and out of place.
And I'm saying this as someone who is on a college fencing team.
The slayer and shadow were, by the ME3 multiplayer team's own admission, based off of Kai Leng from the single-player game.. which is the root of the problem. Kai Leng is a ridiculous mary sue who, combined with the cerberus phantoms, are a type combat that just doesn't fit in the mass effect universe. It's hard to describe, but overall is just something that feels inherently off and out of place.
Whenever you blend guns and swords you have to figure out a good balance between the two within the same universe. I think, unless you take the time to establish both as accepted means of combat, you get this weird disconnect that you see in ME3. We see almost no melee combat (outside of the berserker krogans) in ME1 and 2, and then suddenly in 3 we're confronted with sword swinging psychopaths. Husks and beastial enemies are one thing, but to introduce something so radically different as the Phantoms and their archetype sissy pants, Kai Leng, without ANY build.. it feels off. They feel like they were lifted directly from another genre and crudely dumped into ME as an after-thought when someone was trying to spice up the campaign's shooty sections.
seireikhaan
08-02-2012, 21:01
I just got the N7 Slayer from the victory pack - loads of fun, crazy dodge and melee stuff. Don't know how effective any of it really is, but it sure is fun to run around ... slaying people with a sword. All this sword stuff is making me wonder, though, whether the game is getting too "tech-ninja" lately. In single player, we've got Kai Lang. Then, in both multiplayer and single player, one of the more powerful enemies is the sword-wielding phantom. Now multiplayer has two additional tech-ninjas slashing people with swords - the N7 slayer and the N7 shadow.
Yeah, I realize with the biotic powers and all, especially in the first game, this was never exactly supposed to be hard sci-fi. In my opinion, however, while the biotics stuff is silly, it fit the sci-fi feel of the game a lot better than the growing sword emphasis, which feels less futuristic and cool and more just weird and out of place.
And I'm saying this as someone who is on a college fencing team.
I don't really mind the sword thing so much. What does bother me is teleport-dodging. I'm not really sure what, if anything, is supposed to explain the ability to literally teleport. That feels way more out of place than some fancy sword play. I can sorta get the idea of swords working in Mass Effect in the sense of being an assassination method which wouldn't be affected by shields, which generally are supposed to guard against ballistics.
Mongoose
08-03-2012, 02:09
I always thought the teleport dodges were kinda like a mini "mass effect jump," like the ones star ships make. At least, that's how I like to hand wave them. Point taken about shields - I guess I hadn't thought of that. I think I will agree with you that it's less of a sword problem, and more of a "tech-ninja" problem. That style of game play appeals to me, but the way it was added over the course of the games makes Mass Effect 1 feel almost like a different universe compared to ME3.
Leviathan DLC trailer. And yes, apparently it will affect the ending. I'm guessing it'll probably just a few extra questions to ask the Starchild.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQWdfgqbHJc
Leviathan DLC trailer. And yes, apparently it will affect the ending. I'm guessing it'll probably just a few extra questions to ask the Starchild.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQWdfgqbHJc
Ah the Leviathan of Dis (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Jartar), one of the more interesting hidden aspects of the ME universe. If you did Bring Down the Sky a lot of that lore is touched on in ME3's singleplayer, but only very briefly. It will might be fun to explore that in more detail.
http://masseffect.com/downloads/leviathan/
Don't know if any of you folks noticed, or are still playing ME3, but Leviathan is now available for download as of a day or two ago.
I've just finished playing through it myself (I have yet to drag myself through the ending sequence again to see what, if anything, has changed). My thoughts:
-The framerate seems to be sort of choppy compared to rest of the game. Big disclaimer, this very well might be my own computer acting up, which it has been doing for a little while now, but I was playing the game sans-DLC yesterday and didn't notice anything different. If you decide to get it, let me know if you notice anything or if it's just my deteriorating computer.
-It seems a little short, gameplay-wise for $10. There is a LOT of story packed in there, given, but there are I think three mission sequences total. It also adds a bunch of new systems to scan for war assets (oh boy, my favorite part). So it's probably about the same amount of content as Shadow Broker or Arrival for ME2.
-The story's a good one, though. If you want more info on the Reaper mythos, this is the DLC to get it, probably even more so than From Ashes DLC or Extended Cut add.
http://masseffect.com/downloads/leviathan/
Don't know if any of you folks noticed, or are still playing ME3, but Leviathan is now available for download as of a day or two ago.
I've just finished playing through it myself (I have yet to drag myself through the ending sequence again to see what, if anything, has changed). My thoughts:
-The framerate seems to be sort of choppy compared to rest of the game. Big disclaimer, this very well might be my own computer acting up, which it has been doing for a little while now, but I was playing the game sans-DLC yesterday and didn't notice anything different. If you decide to get it, let me know if you notice anything or if it's just my deteriorating computer.
I noticed the framerate issues myself. It seems the worst when you just load a new scene but quickly stabilizes. I think more than anything it's the unreal engine starting to falter as Bioware attempts to get more and more out of it. Unreal tech has always felt a little stuttery on my setup and it shows up something fierce in leviathan. Your results might vary.
-It seems a little short, gameplay-wise for $10. There is a LOT of story packed in there, given, but there are I think three mission sequences total. It also adds a bunch of new systems to scan for war assets (oh boy, my favorite part). So it's probably about the same amount of content as Shadow Broker or Arrival for ME2.'
I actually think it's longer than Shadow Broker. SB can be completed in an hour and a half, Leviathan took me twice that to get through despite me solving all the clues and knowing exactly where to go. It took right around 2.5 - 3 hours to complete. Content wise I have to say it's really, really good. They got what seems to be everyone to come back and reprise their roles for the duration of the addon, probably had them do their voice work when they were recording for the EC. Wasn't expecting that but it's a nice surprise.
Quality, even though there's much more content I still think it falls short of Shadow Broker, but it's without a doubt the best DLC bioware has released since then. Far better than Arrival.
plot spoils
The one downside to all this is that the Synth ending gets the shaft. Again. The truth revealed to you by Leviathan paints the Catalyst AI in such a negative light that there's no logical reason to ever believe a word he says when the time comes. While a lot of this stuff was implied in the EC, Leviathan breaks it down clear as crystal. The Catalyst is trapped in a logical paradox, trying to solve an equation it finds impossible. It has lied. It has killed. It has cheated it's own creators, and for what?
"He turned the galaxy into a science experiment." ~ The Leviathan
It is the paradox in the equation. The created who destroyed his creator. Given that fact, the Catalyst then tries to lecture Shepard about what organics may or may not do in relation to their creations? Give me a break.
Why would anyone ever trust a thing this little :daisy: says about anything? Taking Synth given what we know in Leviathan makes Shepard look like the galaxy's biggest sucker.
Overall i really liked it. It shows that when Bioware puts some actual effort into their story content they know how to make a compelling experience. I hope this is a trend from them, I'd really like to see more ME3 DLC that isn't just gun packs.
The one downside to all this is that the Synth ending gets the shaft. Again. The truth revealed to you by Leviathan paints the Catalyst AI in such a negative light that there's no logical reason to ever believe a word he says when the time comes. While a lot of this stuff was implied in the EC, Leviathan breaks it down clear as crystal. The Catalyst is trapped in a logical paradox, trying to solve an equation it finds impossible. It has lied. It has killed. It has cheated it's own creators, and for what?
"He turned the galaxy into a science experiment." ~ The Leviathan
It is the paradox in the equation. The created who destroyed his creator. Given that fact, the Catalyst then tries to lecture Shepard about what organics may or may not do in relation to their creations? Give me a break.
Why would anyone ever trust a thing this little :daisy: says about anything? Taking Synth given what we know in Leviathan makes Shepard look like the galaxy's biggest sucker.
I read the summary on the wiki, still downloading the DLC.
It seems to me the information from the DLC can be used to argue for synthesis too.
Up until now, we just had the Catalyst's word that synthetics always rebel against organics, and only our own experiences with Geth to prove otherwise. With this DLC, the Leviathan himself states that all the organic races they subjugated in their time eventually created synthetics who rebelled against them, (and unlike the Catalyst who might've been lying to save his skin, we can trust the Leviathan).
So on one hand, confirmed empirical evidence from millions of years of observation, and on the other hand, one man's/woman's belief due to a few isolated incidents......
Obviously this does not mean that the Catalyst's solutions are the best ones.
Obviously this does not mean that the Catalyst's solutions are the best ones.
You had me until that part! :laugh4:
You still cannot trust the Catalyst given what it represents.
The Catalyst is the very definition of what a mad AI looks like in science fiction. Just because he speaks calmly, offers you a hand up, and proclaims Shepard is the only one who can speak for organics, does not mean it fits the definition of sanity. It is searching for an answer to a question it cannot possibly comprehend even with all its advanced construction and intelligence to help it. It has been doing this for millions of years. Alone, in the dark, calculating the destruction of billions of worlds over and over again.
Maybe it started out like Shepard does in the Control ending, being optimistic and wanting to preserve a peace, but the result of so long in isolation is pretty clear. It's bat-:daisy: insane.
The only reason it offers you Synth in the first place is because you're putting up more of a fight than any civilization that came before. It's backed into a corner and it knows the experiment is at an end. There is no benevolence in it's motives, no wish for the cycles or the wars to be at an end, it is only desperate because the order it has managed build over those millions of years is about to be shattered.
Leviathan makes it pretty clear that the Catalyst is something that cannot be trusted in any way, and viewing the Catalyst's words in the Context of Leviathan makes the AI completely untrustworthy.
Still, great DLC. Without a doubt he best Bioware has done in a while.
Greyblades
08-31-2012, 18:01
Well that was interesting, I dont have anthing to say about it that hasn't already been said, save for the bit where; apart from the last 20 minutes the voice acting in leviathan was rubbish, the regulars sounded poorly directed and by god do I hate Ann Bryson, her acting was lacklustre and man does her lines sound badly written.
LeftEyeNine
09-01-2012, 11:58
A latecomer here. \O
Got N7 Deluxe Edition and downloaded all free and purchasable ones. Leviathan is about to be downloaded completely.
But before that I got to beat ME2. ~D
seireikhaan
10-10-2012, 04:50
So, a new multiplayer DLC. I'm... not really sure what they were thinking here. Playable volus? Collector enemies?
That said, the collectors have been making a good mess of me on the times I've tried gold against them. Haven't gotten past wave 8. Praetorians and scions are as fearsome as ever.
Hooahguy
10-10-2012, 04:59
A Volus? Playable?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ekU2dVHq7k
seireikhaan
10-10-2012, 05:22
A Volus? Playable?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ekU2dVHq7k
Try four volus.
And yes, there is an adept. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y13XnpU5Jpo)
Ironside
10-13-2012, 11:46
Having played around a bit, I can say that the volus cloak (instead of melee attack) is extremely good. Anybody got a good idea for a good volus weapon though? Currently I'm using a light shotgun+cloak to get in range, since it's funny and about as effective as what I tried before that. Support class, so it's hard to do any good damage.
Possed Abominations are really nasty, but I think freezing prevents the explosion.
seireikhaan
10-14-2012, 04:30
Having played around a bit, I can say that the volus cloak (instead of melee attack) is extremely good. Anybody got a good idea for a good volus weapon though? Currently I'm using a light shotgun+cloak to get in range, since it's funny and about as effective as what I tried before that. Support class, so it's hard to do any good damage.
Possed Abominations are really nasty, but I think freezing prevents the explosion.
Been playing a lot of quarian female engineer, and I will say that the cryo + incinerate combo *does* explode them. I do know that headshotting them prevents it though.
For a volus weapon, I used a talon and a hornet. I'd just say use whatever very light weapon you're comfy with. Main thing is to be able to spam the shield regen. Locust would be good if you can score headshots, as they upped the headshot modifier for it, it's accurate and light and pretty user-friendly.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-19-2012, 23:30
You had me until that part! :laugh4:
You still cannot trust the Catalyst given what it represents.
The Catalyst is the very definition of what a mad AI looks like in science fiction. Just because he speaks calmly, offers you a hand up, and proclaims Shepard is the only one who can speak for organics, does not mean it fits the definition of sanity. It is searching for an answer to a question it cannot possibly comprehend even with all its advanced construction and intelligence to help it. It has been doing this for millions of years. Alone, in the dark, calculating the destruction of billions of worlds over and over again.
Maybe it started out like Shepard does in the Control ending, being optimistic and wanting to preserve a peace, but the result of so long in isolation is pretty clear. It's bat-:daisy: insane.
The only reason it offers you Synth in the first place is because you're putting up more of a fight than any civilization that came before. It's backed into a corner and it knows the experiment is at an end. There is no benevolence in it's motives, no wish for the cycles or the wars to be at an end, it is only desperate because the order it has managed build over those millions of years is about to be shattered.
Leviathan makes it pretty clear that the Catalyst is something that cannot be trusted in any way, and viewing the Catalyst's words in the Context of Leviathan makes the AI completely untrustworthy.
Still, great DLC. Without a doubt he best Bioware has done in a while.
You can't trust the Catalyst on basic logic - read back a few pages, I made this point before, BIOWARE pulled a bait and switch with the ending by essentially deliberately breaking immersion and presenting players with a "choice" when in reality all in-universe Shepards of pretty much every possible permutation would choose Destroy.
Anything else is nuts - I think any DLC that reinforces that is a good thing.
You can't trust the Catalyst on basic logic - read back a few pages, I made this point before, BIOWARE pulled a bait and switch with the ending by essentially deliberately breaking immersion and presenting players with a "choice" when in reality all in-universe Shepards of pretty much every possible permutation would choose Destroy.
I would not disagree with that. ~:)
Week old news but anyhow, the last two ME3 DLCs have been announced.
Citadel for SP (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/15961094)
All good things must come to an end, and that includes the Commander Shepard trilogy. However, just because it is coming to an end, that doesn't mean we can't go out with a bang. Introducing the final Mass Effect 3 single-player DLC: Citadel!
When a sinister conspiracy targets Commander Shepard, you and your team must uncover the truth, through battles and intrigue that range from the glamour of the Citadel’s Wards to the top-secret Council Archives. Uncover the truth and fight alongside your squad – as well as the cast from the original Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.
When the adventure is over, reconnect with your favorite characters from the Mass Effect Trilogy, try your luck at the Citadel’s Silver Coast Casino, blow off steam in the Armax Combat Arena, or explore and furnish Shepard’s own living quarters on the Citadel. With unique content and cinematics featuring your friends and romance interests in the Mass Effect trilogy, Mass Effect 3: Citadel offers one final chance to see the characters you have known for years and rekindle romances.
Mass Effect 3: Citadel will release worldwide on March 5th on Xbox 360, PC and PS3 (on March 6th on PS3 in Europe).
Thus comes to an end the saga of Shepard and his crew. Three games, hundreds of hours and many many thrilling, bitter and happy moments.
And despite the things that were done wrong, the games also did many things right and would always have a place on my shelf.
Greyblades
02-27-2013, 23:20
Still think Bioware should change the :daisy: ending.
Alexander the Pretty Good
02-28-2013, 03:23
Finally they're going to stop releasing DLC so I can get the game and go through it in one shot.
According to a few of the devs on twitter, the "best time" to do the new DLC is after you've locked in your romance for ME3. It's likely the dialogue for it is heavily influenced by that.
The citadel DLC is open to do any time after you deal with the Salarian Councilor's request for you to come to the citadel. For people who have played the game you know what I mean. For people like AtPG who haven't, you'll know it when you see it. ~;)
Have to say I'm a bit sad to see the DLC cycle come to an end. These free MP packs have been an awesome incentive to jump back into the game over the course of the last year. I'll miss Mass Effect: Horde Mode when it's gone, I had a lot of fun there for sure.
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