Just beat Mass Effect 3

Can someone please explain to me why the ending was so bad? I actually quite enjoyed it. Explain people.

 

3 games of making choices and each choice meaning something substantial.

Spoiler

The last game ends in a "PICK-YOUR-ENDING!" where each ending is practically the same thing with a different-colored ending light and huge plot-holes left with no explanation, not to mention the introduction of some kind of God-Reaper-Child thing.

If it were to end at the Crucible control panel, with Shepard sitting with Anderson, watching the Earth either be saved or destroyed by the Crucible, none of that quasi-philosophical BS, it would be A-ok.

 

Mystical mumbojumbo crapp.

 

Oh well done Chris, now they'll never shut up about it B|

 

What? You're crazy if you think that Mass Effect has had substantial choices, it has ALWAYS been an extremely linear game where most of your choices lead to exactly the same result. I destroyed the entire Quarian race, does this ever come up again? Nope, not once. Just to use an example. The ending is very much like the rest of the series, just that it is a tad bit more obvious about your choice.

Care to elaborate on the plotholes? I caught a couple, like why the Catalyst appeared as a human boy, but not really that many huge ones. And I quite enjoyed it, I was allowed to destroy the reapers and most technology and Shepard died in the process. It wasn't bad for closure. And Garrus and Laria populating an entire world is pretty hawt.

They started it, by saying a not-too-bad ending to a mediocre game is the worst ending of all time :c

 

No you didn't. You beat it last night. Stop lying Chris.

*leaves thread to avoid spoilers forever*

 

I admit ME is kind of linear, but this was the problem. Mass Effect 3 kind of just threw all your work in your face

Spoiler

Ended a war between Quarians and Geth? WELL MACHINES WILL ALWAYS TURN ON US, SO YOU GOTTA DESTROY EVERY ELECTRONIC THING EVER. BECAUSE IT MAKES TONS OF SENSE THAT I CREATED A MACHINE LIKE RACE TO PURGE ORGANICS BECAUSE THEY WILL MAKE MACHINA LIKE RACES or whatever.

Ended the genophage? WELL THE VERY KROGAN THAT WOULD TRY TO KEEP THE KROGAN IN CHECK IS TRAPPED ON EARTH LOL WHOOPS

Destroyed every Mass Relay? LETS IGNORE THE FACT THAT THEY SUPPOSEDLY DESTROY ENTIRE SYSTEMS WHEN THIS HAPPENS

lets not forget all the aliens stranded on Earth cannot even understand what any other race is saying since their translators don't work now.

Want to do Synthesis?? GOOD JOB SAREN

Remember that pilot who is always in the fight?? WELL HE IS RUNNING AWAY LOL AND YEAH YOUR FRIENDS ALL DIE ON A JUNGLE PLANET.

then again most of these things i say happen if you choose the destroy ending

I don't think the ending is as horrible as the everyone says, I was not expecting a happy ending but they put too many loose ends.

 

How could they implement the very minor choices you actually have into the ending? I mean, should Benezia have just showed up if you decided to not kill her, and attack the Catalyst? How would the involve the genophage? Would tons of krogan children have showed up and conquer the universe? The thing is, Mass Effect was full of stupid choices that don't make for good ending material.

You've gotta make sacrifices, you might have already saved the Geth, but to save the universe from the Reapers it's worth it to throw them away. Truth be told, I don't actually fully understand what your point is here, I'm sure there is something I am missing, care to elaborate?

I sabotaged the genophage in mine, like any smart person would do, so this doesn't really apply on my end. Serves him right though, Wreav is an absolute ass.

Can't explain this, maybe it was a more controlled explosion, since it was Reaper tech that destroyed the relays and they were just a tad bit more familiar with how they worked? Honestly don't know though,

They'll find some way to communicate, or build some new tech eventually. I mean, they already knew how they worked, so they should be able to, right?

Elaborate?

My interpretation was that he heard Shepard had died, since they radioed in that he had died. Joker had thought this was the last hope of defeating the Reapers, and while he is usually all about the fight, he wanted to save his love and his friends, so he swooped down, got the team mates and fled. They might not die though, they could easily rebuild. Make loads of Asari babies.

That's the one I picked, although I spent most of my game just being renegade, so our endings were pretty different when you think about it.

I like loose ends, there are way too many series' that end boringly just because they want to make sure everyone gets a proper ending. As it stands, I quite enjoyed the ending, more than the experience of the game for sure. My biggest fear was that they would cave in to the fans and let Shepard survive. Now that would have been a terrible ending.

 

The reason why we expected Mass Effect 3 to have different endings and not have the same ending result like the first two games did is because the developers of the game said that we would have different endings based on the decisions in the previous two games.

"As Mass Effect 3 is the end of a planned trilogy, the developers are not constrained by the necessity of allowing the story to diverge, yet also continue the story into the next chapter. This will result in a story that diverges into wildy different conclusions based on the player's actions in the first two chapters." - Casey Hudson

The only plot hole was why was Joker seen flying away from the explosion at the end?

(taken from wikipedia)
A plot hole, or plothole, is a gap or inconsistency in a storyline that goes against the flow of logic established by the story's plot, or constitutes a blatant omission of relevant information regarding the plot. These include such things as unlikely behaviour or actions of characters, illogical or impossible events, events happening for no apparent reason, or statements/events that contradict earlier events in the story line.

The fact that Joker has always been loyal to Shepard and always talked about being there with him to the him. Like you said, he may of heard that Shepard died and tried to leave with the crew, but how could he know that? Shepard was on the Citadel with Anderson and the Illusive Man. They both died, so it was just Shepard. The only way Joker would leave is if he either saw Shepard's dead body, or someone told him that Shepard died, which no one could've done.

The Mass Relays blowing up and not destroying a system wasn't a plot hole because I look at it like this. There are EMP explosions and there are frag explosions. Frag explosions use shrapnel and EMP explosion use electricity. An EMP blast can't destroy a building, but it can deactivate every electronic device in it. I look at the Mass Relays blowing up like a massive EMP blast that only destroys synthetics, or sends a signal to them that forces them to be controlled by Shepard.

I do agree with you to an extent. It wasn't the worst ending of all time, but I thought it was bad. I wish I could like the ending like you do, but I just can't. I didn't expect a happy ending, but it would rather a happy ending than the one we got. At least one where Shepard dies, and he actually defeats the Reapers without destroying star system travel for everyone in the galaxy.

 

Oh for... let it go people...

An excellent game overall, sure the ending is highly debatable in its execution and quality, but for Buddhe's sake, take a chill pill, this stuff has been murdered to oblivion before. They're doing Extended Cut, wait for that because they're trying to appease you, alright? Then you can moan again.

 

Jesus christ, fanboy rage all over the place.

First ME sucked huge nuts and bolts, second was the best.

Synthesis is the best ending, **** y'all i'm out.

 

Point taken, I don't generally follow news on games like these, because I feel most things are a spoiler. Understandable that it would be annoying then. Developers really need to stop saying stuff like that though, anyone remember the whole "Fallout 3 is going to have over 10000 different endings!"?

I just always expected the ending to be like the one of ME1 and 2, and it was pretty similar.

Actually, if you listen to the radio after Shepard gets hit by the Reaper laser, they are saying everyone who went down there is dead. Everyone other than Anderson thought Shepard was dead. I have no doubt that Joker was listening in to the radio, wanting to know how his squad was doing. When he hears Shepard is dead, he goes down to flee with the rest of the squad. To me it does make sense, it's not so much a plothole as it is fill in the blanks. Which was alright, because it would have kinda changed the mood if they went to everything exploding to Joker just flying down and saving the crew and leaving. Everything is arguable.

Sounds like it could make sense, but I've got no expertise on this subject, so can't say much.

We all have different preferences when it comes to endings, I've always had a very big love for downer endings where that still give hope. Which is what this ending was in my eyes. The destroyer ending, that is. It didn't really help that I thought the story as a whole became more and more **** as it went on, and that the gameplay was some of the most generic I've ever seen. By the end, I think I would have preferred to play CoD rather than this. I'm just glad the series is over, but I wish that Bioware wouldn't be such idiots, listening to their idiot fans, what with changing the ending or whatever it is they are doing.

 

This I can agree on. Sure I am not the biggest fan of the ending but the whole 'retake ME3' is dumb. Sometimes we just need to deal with the fact that it was not up to everyones standards. I hear its not really a change to the ending they are doing but something more of an epilogue, but eh idk.

But seriously fans need to understand that they cannot always get what they want.

ok this this this. I don't know much about ME1 since I am a loser and played the PS3 version, but the ME2 ending was basically a pick your color ending too, hell the majority of ME2 felt like filler, I mean we are introduced to characters in it (and some pretty important but are still replaceable) but we never even really hear about the Collectors and all that crap in ME3

 

Wouldn't be the first time Todd Howard did that.

 

After discussing it a bit more with some friends of mine, and getting shown the Indocrtination Theory, it honestly does make sense and seems to be what they were going for. I've seen some of these fan theories before, but never supported them before. However, the Indrocrination Theory has a lot of evidence behind it. I really hope that Bioware doesn't make some stupid epilouge now, the fanboys can go suck a cock.

And honestly? That's what made the game good in my opinion. I have never seen the Mass Effect story as being actually good, but the games have always had good characters. Which is why Mass Effect 2, which had barely any plot progression, is an amazing game. While Mass Effect 3 with pretty much only plot progression, is horribly boring.

 

Why would we hear much about the Collectors in ME3? We had dealt with them, they were destroyed, the Reapers were coming, I don't see a pertinent reason for going back to talking about the Collectors.
They did a similiar thing with the geth, a main enemy in ME1, they weren't talked about in as deep of a role as the first. I thought it was relevant to focus on the main enemy at hand in a sense of the story.

The story in ME2 involved segmented isolated stories, to deal with each of the characters you gathered onto your team, it didn't mean a main plot wasn't there, it just meant that it could better involve the crew you collect and deepen your bonds with them, knowing that they could die at the end of the game.

You shall be murdered.
Mass Effect 2 is stated above about its story progression.
Mass Effect 3 dealt with a Galaxy at War, your constantly reminded that you're fighting the Reapers, an unwinable fight against godlike aliens, and that everything you do will involve trying to take them down. That could be considered linear, but it is what two games have been leading up to, the more you've done in the past games the better story telling results you have in this one. It is biased towards people who play it as trilogy, but that just makes it better as such.
And to be honest, there was enough off the beaten track that I could spend hours not doing the main plot missions and instead search around the galaxy.

 

No way, Jose, the Geth are brought up a ton in Mass Effect 2 and 3, while the Collectors are basically only brought up in the original game they were featured in. About 95% of the game is about the characters, the last 5% are story progression. That is the definition of filler. Not that there is anything wrong with that, like I also mentioned.

And that is an incredibly boring story, y'know. It is so cliched, rallying up an army against an "unwinnable foe". And no, the story barely changes no matter what you've done in the past, and doesn't make it better in any way. Unless you really think it is that amazing to see the Reaper made Rachni queen, that is.

There is enough things to do outside the manistory, sure, but none of it has any variation. You will spend hours looking around the Citadel, which is the only city in the game and things never change. Even after the attack, it has the same feel to everything, the people are still talking about the same thing "Oh no, there's a war!". The only thing is that it looks slightly different. Then you go and scan a planet, and you go back to the Citadel to look around more. Rinse and repeat. If you like doing chores like those, then all the more power to you. But don't make it seem like the game is amazing because it has tons of the exactly same mission. You get the same experience by playing World of Warcraft as doing those missions.

 

The Geth are only featured in three instances in ME2. The inclusion of Legion, its loyalty mission and Tali's loyalty mission. Otherwise they're just mentioned throughout, otherwise. And I know in ME3 they are a much bigger part of the whole story, but not as much as the original title, since they were pretty much plastered from the first to last mission in ME1.

Story includes the side missions stories, so that includes every individual story from main missions, loyalty missions to missions like finding Mordin's assistant or helping Liara find her mole. It all adds up as part of a story being told, it doesn't have anything to do with character development, though they might chip in with something now and then, but there are stories being told all the time and quests with stories within them. Character development is just the most developed part of the game and most memorable.

Your comparing the game to World of Warcraft?
The Citadel is a hub area, like most RPGs have for example Persona or Final Fantasy, how its developed upon differs greatly from game to game, but to be honest, the Citadel in 3 was as large as the first games Citadel, which I really liked.
Mission repetitiveness is not something I care about much if it's not done well. Persona games have repetitive locations and enemies that you have to fight through to get to new areas and continue the story, but I still love the game anyway because of the reward your given after fighting through each repetitive stage. Every game has some degree of repetition, which doesn't mean its a bad game at all, just a standard to expect.
It's not like this cliché or any other cliché in this game and every other game is warrant enough to say it is of lesser quality. ME always delivers an entertaining experience.

 

It's just a game.

 

You make it seem like the whole game could be Shepard staring into TIM's glorious eyes would still be story progression.

Well yeah, the feel of Mass Effect 3 is basically just Call of Duty mixed with World of Warcraft that takes place in space.

It doesn't really matter if it's larger, if it feels like the exact same place every time you go there. There's just one city, one. In Mass Effect 2 you had at least three, more depending on your what you consider a city. It's true, they weren't quite as large as the Citadel in Mass Effect 3, but they all had a very distinctive feel to them. The Citadel and Omega felt nothing alike, and this is a very much needed variation in such a long game. Also, you didn't get a loading screen every five steps in ME2.

But that's just the thing, in Mass Effect 3 they were not done well. There are two types of missions, the first one being the standard "Go down to a planet, move from cover while shooting the same enemies over and over" and the "Go scan a planet and come back". That's pretty much all there ever was. Two mission types that never really change, for a good 20-30 hours is not a good thing. They have also removed all the "minigames" you had with hacking and the scanning is but a shell of what it used to be, there seems to be a lot less dialouge in this games as well. That means, there is no change of pace, unlike what there were in the previous games, which makes it a lot more repetitive. Yes, every game is repetitive to an extent, but I don't expect a series to get more repetetive as new games are released. Just as there are few games as repetitive as ME3 out there.

As does Micheal Bay movies and Call of Duty, doesn't mean that they are actually good.

Oh drop the act, myron.