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[Domenique]

I'm not saying that it's immature to give a thorough ending, it's just (in my opinion) immature to yap about not knowing what happened if the writers made such a choice, and I was saying that because usually kid movies give that, not that adult stuff shouldn't do it. They made the ending  more about the general storyline (which was fully answered) rather than the companions (which wasn't) because the story in the first place was more about the battle vs. reapers than having sex with aliens (i'm just hyperboling). That's just my opinion, feel free to judge it.

Maybe they'll be making a new trilogy and the ending will change some things a little, though I am expecting the usual "all the endings are correct" thing, though it would be weird with all life being synthetic.

[fenrif]

You'd be forgiven for thinking the games are about companions when the entire second game was basically friendships in space, and the majority of the major dramatic beats in the third game (30 hours in so far) are to do with companions. Oh and out of the 3 or 4 major decisions in the first game that carried over to the other games, 2 of them were about companions.

As has been said, having narrative closure has nothing to do with maturity or the lack thereof. Suggesting that discussing or deconstructing an unsatisfying ending also has nothing to do with immaturity. If people have a problem with the ending, repeatedly insinuating they're being childish doesn't really accomplish anything. I've not got to the ending yet, but theres a difference between a narrative having an unfulfilling or unfinished ending, and one that is intentionally left enigmatic. I'm betting my money on Bioware being unable to craft a proper dénouement.

By the by, speaking of continuation (through spin-offs or otherwise), didn't some Bioware guy mention that you might wanna keep your ME3 save? Like they were already planning to bring in more ME stuff ahead of time?

Gotta keep milking it somehow!

[Tilla]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sorry, but this isn't about maturity or closure: this is about the ending not being anything Shepard would ever, ever fucking go with - no matter which of the three, copy-pasted branches you choose. My Shepard would NOT just take a stupid ghost-god-robot-whatever Deus Ex Machina tell him what to believe and accept it at face value. My Shepard would get mad, and start yelling this stupid bullshit down. Shepard has objectively seen that the Catalyst is /wrong/ and that Organics and Synthetics can co-exist just fine. If she can  get the Quarians and Geth to stop fighting and work together, she is not going to agree with anything the Catalyst has to offer.

Most insulting though is that the endings are copypasted with a recolor. That is the laziest way you could possibly end a franchise. And that this snuck past dozens of producers, writers, animators, etc and nobody raised some major plotholes: like what happened to all the now-stranded aliens fighting over earth, since with the Mass Relays gone they can't make it home.

I won't be here for a sequel, Bioware squandered their chance. The ending should have fit with the tone of the game, and it definitely did not. It soured not only this game but the rest of the series for me.

Also: yes it is like Deus Ex HR: but I wasn't invested 120 hours into that storyline and didn't really care about any of the characters, so I didn't give a fuck that it was complete shit.

Also Domenique, you are DEFINITELY barking up the wrong tree with your condescending sneering attitude about this.

[Domenique]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also: yes it is like Deus Ex HR: but I wasn't invested 120 hours into that storyline and didn't really care about any of the characters, so I didn't give a fuck that it was complete shit.

Also Domenique, you are DEFINITELY barking up the wrong tree with your condescending sneering attitude about this.

I'm not trying to be sneering, it's just my opinion, even if I don't state that in every sentence. I'm not trying to play mature or anything, I am just trying to understand why people are unhappy that the developers left some things in the ending for your imagination, and I remember how I used to feel frustrated about those things myself, until i've started reading more books, I started to understand why it happened so. Let's just cut this here.

The endings sure felt rushed, but in the writing perspective they were not bad.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You are arguing that the choices didn't reflect your Shepard, but it wasn't she who dictated the choices, she only had to pick one of the three, and in my opinion controlling the reapers works for your Shepard very well. If you ask me, the Deus Ex Machina in the end was surprising and added depth for the game's universe, I don't see why it was stupid.

You'd be forgiven for thinking the games are about companions when the entire second game was basically friendships in space, and the majority of the major dramatic beats in the third game (30 hours in so far) are to do with companions. Oh and out of the 3 or 4 major decisions in the first game that carried over to the other games, 2 of them were about companions.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It still doesn't give a reason to show what happened to them other that they've survived. I don't think that you really expected some sort of Fallout-esque ending, it's ME, not that kind of style. I think that in the end, when the faces of your companions were shown as if he remembered them for the last moment, that was more than enough. It's emotional and even tragic that you won't be spending any more time with them, I felt bad about that, and that's good, because a storyline should evoke emotions, but not frustration because you don't know what happened afterwards. You leave them when Shepard leaves them. It's just a matter of style. Now keep in mind that I am only defending the writing of the ending, not the copy/paste nature of them.

[Moghjubar]

Just finished it. Fun enough at a $8 rental, but very glad I didn't buy it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Few good moments though mostly all the same stuff of course. Ending, bleh.  Also didn't play multiplayer but thats nothing new with me and not having XBox live. At least its the end of the series, could have been worse.

[Stworca]

Just watched the trailer... '2 million dead in the first day; another 7 million in the next week'

Not everyone knows that billion is actually bigger than million. Apparently some of those people worked on the trailer to ME3.

[Darkmere]

Are you saying the reapers should have wiped out 7 Billion people on Earth in a day? Hackett says there's 11 billion on the planet, so... damn short resistance, I guess.

[Stworca]

Are you saying the reapers should have wiped out 7 Billion people on Earth in a day? Hackett says there's 11 billion on the planet, so... damn short resistance, I guess.

If we were to use ALL the nuclear weapons that are on earth right now, we would wipe ourselves out in less than a day.
So, yeah, 2 million casualties? Nobody cares, Reapers.

[umiman]

The Reapers aren't trying to genocide races Stworca. They're trying to preserve as much as possible to turn into digital soup.

So I'm sure they could probably destroy the entire planet if they wanted to. It just goes against their imperative.

[scriver]

So, forgoing this discussion of the plot which I won't let myself read, let's hear a little impressions of the gameplay, perhaps? How does it compare to ME2? Do the classes feel different? Better or worse?

[Darkmere]

So, forgoing this discussion of the plot which I won't let myself read, let's hear a little impressions of the gameplay, perhaps? How does it compare to ME2? Do the classes feel different? Better or worse?

Combat is definitely faster and more varied. Any class can carry any number of weapons (and there are more than double the amount of weapons from ME2, any DLC weapons you have carry over), but the more large guns you carry the longer the cooldown on your powers. Weapon mods and ranks are back, but in an unobtrusive way that combines ME1 and ME2's systems well. The addition of heavy melee strikes (think finishing moves from fighting games, except with your omni-tool converted into a weapon) add flavor and are fun to use. Three "evolutions" per power adds plenty of variety.

I played my sentinel first. Tech armor seems even more sturdy than before. I ended the game with a sniper rifle that can shoot through 1 meter of cover (yeah, it's fun til someone uses it against you), tempest SMG, and predator pistol. I still had +65% faster power recharge, and could 1-hit-kill in melee for unshielded threats. This was on normal, but it felt more like veteran in ME2. I've since moved to hardcore on the engineer, and it's a bit harder than ME2's hardcore was. Insanity's probably pretty brutal, I look forward to it.

This may be good or bad, but the mission structure is a bit different. All the main quests are sequential, and completing major objectives advances the war as a whole. This is good, because it makes the game feel like everything is NOT revolving around Shepard, for once. You're playing a crucial part in a huge effort. It's bad if you want to take all the side-missions at your own pace, as now there are "time limits" on some missions. If you wait too long to complete them, Reapers show up and take care of it, with various consequences. I didn't mind it, it helps break the tension of the main missions. Planet scanning was made less intrusive, and the resource system is dropped in favor of credits and nothing else.

I do miss heavy weapons from 2, now you find them scattered in random places and can't keep them with you. They feel like powerups from other games. I had more than enough new abilities so I never really felt underpowered, finding one felt exciting while the ammo lasted.

[scriver]

So it's pretty decent as far as action games go? Also, that means I can play a engineer or vanguard with a sniper rifle? That's kind of great.

Also also, how is the area design? I mean DA2 was a disappointing mess of blatant copies (and do was ME1 when I think about it) but iirc ME2 did pretty decently with it's levels uniqueness even for side missions.

[SeriousConcentrate]

As far as gameplay goes, it's been improved over Mass Effect 2 a lot. The improved skill trees are awesome, I love heavy melee (especially for the Adept; it owns husks and even Cerberus troopers. Each class has their own and the Soldier has the worst one; barely any range or width on it at all ) and the ability to grab enemies from over thin cover and instakill them, the new weapons and weapon modifications are cool. (Like Darkmere said, AP ammo + Armor Piercing Mod + Revenant makes short work of any enemy, in cover or not.) I haven't gotten the hang of transitioning (there's some way you're supposed to tap A when running at cover to slide over it; I keep sliding into it instead) yet though.

Multiplayer is a blast if you get a team actually interested in teamwork rather than killcounts; I've had games where if I had lived we would have won (not to be a douchebag, but let's say we're on Wave 10 and the objective is find four objects and activate them. Generally I'll get two or three of them and then get killed while trying to get the fourth because no one's assisting me, and then I just watch everyone else run around like dumbasses killing enemies until they run out of time and fail the game) but I've also had games where my teammates were completely awesome. I find myself wishing the previous two Mass Effects had this gameplay.

That aside, I liked many of the missions. The environments were more varied, and the inclusion of ladders really improved the feel of each area (to me, anyway). The atmosphere was great, too. Missions in which you were dropped into a warzone felt much more frantic and realistic than other sci-fi games of a similar sort (I mean, I love Gears, but it never felt as much like an actual war as ME3 does). I like the three new party members (one I'm not going to spoil although if you've played beyond the first four missions you already have her, but still); the DLC teammate is decent although for some inexplicable reason he sounds just like Mr. Sunshine from Saint's Row 2 to me, and James is a lot less bland than Kaidan or Jacob. I like Jack's new design, although both Miranda and Jacob staying in their old uniforms is stupid considering their roles in this game.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Especially Miranda. "lol I'm hiding from Cerberus by continuing to wear the same white skintight outfit they assigned me btw let me walk into frame with the camera positioned at ass level." Don't get me wrong, she has a great ass, but lern2subtlety, Bioware, kthnxbai.

My first time through was with a Liara-romancing Adept and an assault rifle-class weapon the whole time; this time is a Kaidan-romancing Soldier with sniper rifles and I have to say I love the Viper in this game even though it sucked in Mass Effect 2. I'll probably end up playing ME3 enough to see all the different angles (still have Ashley, Miranda, Tali, Jack, Garrus, Thane, and Jacob to go through after this run, and then I'll have to build a chaste Shep for the first two games so I can try out the options in this game), even though I do have some ending-rage like others in the thread. I guess I can forgive it because the plot is awesome (up to that point >.>) and there were some actual thought-provoking decisions from me at times.

[Darkmere]

Yeah if you liked the environments in ME2, the ones in 3 are more interesting and refined. Cover looks like cover, instead of random crates everywhere. And as stated, if you choose poorly enemies can and will shoot you through bad cover. Plus they have grenades now.

My engineer is switching between a mid-grade Phaeston (lighter Revenant-style assault rifle)/regular pistol and max-upgrade Avenger/sticky bomb pistol (yes, you read that right). Between the chain-lightning combat drone and the missile-launching portable turret, she's doing just fine. I also got the defense drone for husks and swarmers, seems to do the job very well.

[SeriousConcentrate]

I loved the Phaeston so much when I started using it, but I was like 'Revenant was awesome in ME2 so I should use it here.' It'll be cool if I can get that as a random drop in the MP soon, although what I really want is a Quarian Engineer. I have like all the Krogan/Turian classes but nothing else... although I had the Asari Adept in the demo and she's awesome.