So does this mean the Mass Effect trilogy could be considered the western equivalent of the Xenosaga trilogy?
ME1 = Epic. Do want.
ME2 = More epicer. Moar!
ME3 = Epic until final 30 minutes, which makes you go: [color=red]FFFFFUUUUUUUU-[/color]
[size=1]Results may vary. Use as directed. Do not drink. Keep away from children. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Twincest is Best!! Rawr.[/size]
No, I wouldn’t say that. They really haven’t got much of anything in common other than a lot of people that weren’t happy with the end result. Personally, for example, I think that Xenosaga 3 is clearly the best, and Xenosaga 2 is very clearly the worst, with 1 being decidedly mediocre. Then the way that the two series’ gameplay evolved over time was quite different. But perhaps the biggest is that Xenosaga was finished after the creator was fired, and the series was cut short.
In contrast, Mass Effect clearly set out from the get to to build up to what happens at the end. It fits too well thematically and they clearly laid the groundwork in the first two. I just really really thought the Reapers’ entire plan was ridiculous. I basically hate every part of it, from the unwholesome racist vibe given off by the entire plan, to the introduction of art major biology in an otherwise-very-hard-sci-fi setting, to the sheer illogic of the entire thing.
The thing is, in ME1 and ME2 there’s very little of that. ME3 has to deal with that because it’s the end of the series. So a bunch of stuff that they’d never brought up before, and which I personally think is 100% bullshit, comes up at the very end. That’s not anything like the problems that Xenosaga had.
My dislike of ME3 extends past the ending, although the ending does typify the problems with the game as a whole. I didn’t have a problem with the gameplay apart from the massive reduction in enemy variety (although it came with more advanced individual enemies and I’m not complaining about THAT)- I just felt the narrative as a whole was lacking, even if some of the individual parts were powerful (Rannoch was all great). ME1 and ME2 were more about consequences for actions- choices you make affect things in the future; it always makes sense and it often has a significant effect on the narrative. ME3 had to take so much of that into account, both in terms of incorporating outcomes from previous games and in leading things to a strong conclusion that would carry the indelible mark of the player’s decisions. BioWare instead decided ‘fuck it’, created a narrative with many elements that were made so generic they were able to play out in the exact same way regardless of earlier decisions made and even whether important characters are alive or not.
BioWare did state, very clearly, the importance of past decisions made on the ending. In the end everything you did across three games was all just added up into a single number that gave you slightly more scope to choose which colour explosions you want in the very unambiguously bad ending you get no matter what.
It is partly about expectations, though. I looked forward to ME3 more than I’d looked forward to anything since G-Senjou no Maou. I really thought it would be amazingly good. It ended up being pretty mediocre and betrayed the series it ended.
If BioWare released DLC to turn ME3 into a good game, I’d still buy it. Because I love Mass Effect more than I hate BioWare even though I really hate BioWare now. I don’t think BioWare will do that, though. The only DLC they’ll be releasing after their fix-the-ED video patch is going to be more stupid bullshit for the multiplayer. I am never even going to have a look at the multiplayer.
For me, looking back, the point where it really sank was just after the Illusive Man’s base, when you learn that the Citadel has been moved to the Sol system. Just like that. Bam. Alarm bells should have been going off in my head at that. It doesn’t make sense and nothing after it works. Although I didn’t realise quite how much of a landmine it was until after replaying the final mission and trying the other endings. And finding out online that there were no more endings, I’d already seen everything on offer and it’s all exactly the same.
I thought they did a fantastic job at making you feel as though choices from the previous games had an impact on most of the story details in the Third game. Yes, the major points still happen, but they are somewhat different and they don’t have the same emotional impact as they do if you are dealing with situations and people you know your actions have influenced up to this point. (the Genophage storyline was particularly powerful because I had both Mordin and Wrex alive in my playthrough and had to make some very serious, very agonizing choices for the greater good, that cost me dearly in the offing) So, while the big events don’t change, the feeling of those events certainly does.
The end … I was fine with the end, even the Citadel thing, until that last ten minutes with the god child. For the most part I just sweep that under a rug in my head and try to pretend it never happened. I thought the rest of the game was handled very well and cannot even fathom why they made the choice they did with that … actually, I can … I can only assume they ran out of time and said “screw it, tack on a generic ending and send it to print”. It reminds me a great deal of what happened with another company and the ending of Kotor 2.
For what it’s worth, the multiplayer co-op is actually very good. I am not a fan of multiplayer games, not at all, but since there was encouragement to go that route to achieve the “breath” ending, I tried it out and was very pleasantly surprised. It is fun, fast paced, encourages cooperative gameplay and skill, without putting too much emphasis on elite builds and does not encourage bad behavior from your teammates. (of course you’ll get some elite jackasses in any game, but at least on PC I haven’t run into that problem very often)
The end was crap. But I enjoyed the rest of the experience enough not to regret making the purchase … and that is even with money being very tight for me this year.
Except that it wasn’t something they just pulled out of their asses. They had clearly intended for the Reapers to have the motivations and goals that the Star Child talks about from the get go. There aren’t a lot of hints, because in 1 and 2 you don’t really get a lot of direct encounters of Reapers or evidence of what they actually want, but everything that WAS there fits with the Star Child. You’d expect an ass-pull to feel inconsistent with what came before, and it’s not. If you go back and watch Sovereign’s taunts from ME1, for example, or the whole way in ME2 they were processing humanity into a Reaper - it fits too well with the Star Child for me to buy that it was a last-minute asspull.
Basically, the Mass Effect series turns out to be rotten at the core. Most of the fruit is still perfectly edible and delicious, but it’s rotten at the deepest part.
I’ll buy that it fits with the human Reaper in ME2, (although ME2 also had the dark energy subplot which was clearly supposed to be important but went nowhere), but there’s no way they were thinking this in ME1. I can’t see how it fits with Sovereign’s taunts. He says that the Reapers are beyond our comprehension, but according to the Star Child, their purpose is very simple: kill organics so that organics don’t create synthetics that kill them. It’s monumentally stupid, but it’s far from incomprehensible. But more to the point, the existence of the Star Child basically invalidates the whole plot of ME1, which was to stop Saren from taking over the Citadel for Sovereign. But if the Star Child is the Citadel, as he claims, why the hell would Sovereign need Saren to take over the Citadel? Why wouldn’t the Star Child just do it himself? I don’t think they had a clue what the Reapers were in ME1, other than big and scary. Only when ME1 did well enough to guarentee a sequel did they realize they were going to have to actually come up with something.
The problem was, I think they were really afraid to leave the Reapers as incomprehensible space cthulhiods - which is what they should have been. They could have made more suggestions and hints toward parts of a vast and unknowable motivation, but it should have largely remained beyond human comprehension. The Reapers have been around for hundreds of thousands of years - perhaps millions - they should be as unfathomable to us as we are to a fly … we can get glimpses of them, see their effect on our world, effect them in minor ways, but ultimately only be able to perceive them on the vaguest, most abstract of levels. Instead they gave us a terrible premise and three buttons to choose from. Horrible, horrible, design choice.
And, yeah, they completely dropped the ball on that dark energy thing, the plot about the sentient race that had digitized itself, and there was another one about a weapon that killed a Reaper at some point in the first game iirc. (some remains found on a planet - it was a side thing that I never got into but have seen mentioned in many places)
Well, the extended ending DLC has been dated.
One thing, since I’ve only played a little bit of 3 I can’t help but wonder if by the end of the events of 2 the Reapers acknowledge Shephard could mess things up for them why not just wait several decades (which to them would probably be the equivalent of an hour) and invade when Shephard’s either dead of old age or too old to fight them?
Because the Reapers were so ungodly powerful and numerous, Shephard and friends were more of a speedbump than a true threat. They didn’t directly achieve victory… it was more of a legacy… and even then, that legacy was creating the chance to have an audience with the thing that could stop them.
It was literally a text book example of Deus ex machina. :roll:
Regardless of whether it fits their cinematic vision, I think most people would have been happier with a far-fetched way of achieving an actual victory (with some associated gameplay, since the final stage was kind of weak), even if you need to have set things up in ME, ME2 and ME3 just perfectly for it to happen. Just changing the outcome based on actions taken throughout the series would have pleased a lot of people.
I doubt ME3: Extended Cut will change my verdict from ‘extremely disappointed’ but nonetheless I’ll give it a look!
Wow, you’re right, now that I think of it. Complete with a rising platform, no less!
The whole Eden analogue at the end also makes it a ‘shaggy god story’. It’s just bottom-of-the-barrel SF writing! >_>
Honestly, BioWare brought it on themselves, by invoking Lovecraft too much… the Reapers are just technological Great Old Ones.
The whole point of the Cthulhu Mythos, is that there’s no shred of hope for the lesser races. Everything will be consumed and corrupted. It always has been, it always will be. You can’t stop the Great Old Ones, anymore than you can stop the Universe from having been born. That’s exactly what makes it Lovecraft horror… we’re all fucked, and the best we can do, is kill ourselves before the End Times come.
So BioWare did an exact carbon copy of that, with the exception of making them techno-nightmares instead of cosmic-nightmares… same end result: all life in the Universe dies, Great Old Ones go back to sleep out of boredom, civilization rebuilds, and the cycle just starts again.
Except ME3 is supposed to bring some sort of happy ending… which completely breaks down the entire Cuthulu Mythos setup. There’s no logical way to defeat a Lovecraft horror… except through a vastly more powerful Lovecraft horror… and that’s like putting out a tree fire with a solar supernova.
Unless of course, the Old Ones are like Nyarko-san. In that case, sleeping with her might solve a few problems… or using a fork. 
Well, the Extended Cut was released today (or yesterday for X360 owners) and I’ve just finished it, savescumming a bit to see the multiple endings without having to replay the final mission.
It’s an improvement on the original, certainly helps to clarify the ending. That said, it doesn’t perform the (admittedly, impossible with just a patch on the ending) task of making the ending good. It’s still a pretty lousy ending, and if you were hoping for more clarification of the Destroy ending you get with 5000 EMS you’ll be disappointed. So yeah, it makes ME3 better but it doesn’t make it good. That would require a substantial recreation of the game.
But hey, I’m glad they at least added a ‘fuck you’ ending upon shooting the Star Child. It’s not actually any sort of good ending but I still found it pretty cathartic.
It should be the canon ending IMHO. That’s exactly how a Lovecraft story should end. :twisted:
It’s not that I’m against a happy ending, its just as I said previously, they wanna use a Cthulhu setting, they should end like one. Hope is only a false promise that causes you to delay an inevitable destruction. Those without it die first, and those with it last until the final hour… but that’s your only reward for having it: living a few moments longer than the rest of the insignificant Universe. Everyone still dies.
Out of the (4) endings, I actually like “Refusal” the best, then the 5k EMS Destroy comes in second. The synthesis ending is still absolutely horrible (I saw a post concerning a Surviving Son reuniting with HuskMom, HuskDad, and HuskSister and started cracking up. Yes, Synthesis is the ideal ending! Everlasting testament to how your family was fucked over by the Reapers and now you get to be friends with them! AMAZING) and control is pretty meh.
I mean, I kinda get WHY synthesis is supposed to be ideal, but understanding doesn’t eliminate conflict, and I don’t see galactic peace stemming from it. Also, rewriting the ?DNA? / ?MATRIX? of all beings and making everything conform is kind of a shitty thing to do, but OVERALL, I’m happy with the Extended Cut, since my major issues with ME3 in general were fixed. (IE, How did my companions get to the Normandy & Why the fuck is Joker high-tailing it the hell out of there without Cmdr Shepard?, Also the epilogue slides were nice.)
And of course, I’ll blame the 2GB file size limit the Xbox has for free DLs for any persistent problems the game may have, just for fun.
Sythesis just screams Reaper victory ending. It’s exactly what the Catalyst wants. How is that any different from being processed into one of them? It’s not. :roll:
Destroy is dumb. Why would the Catalyst let itself be destroyed, when it obviously has an overwhelming self preservation? It killed it’s own creators!
Control is for all the evil, God complex, and Batman wannabes. :twisted:
And of course Refusal continues the true spirit of the Reaper’s intentions… and the most (IMHO) realistic outcome.
Just finished playing the Leviathan DLC and I have to say it was a fun 3-4 1/2 hours. Did manage to pull off a bit of a surprise concerning the title character wasn’t expecting to meet actual Great Old ones/Elder Gods
Will say Bioware did a good job with the character dialogue in this. In fact one of Liara’s comments after beating the mission pretty has me sure now that someone at Bioware plays eroge 