Mass Effect 3

[mimartin]

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Well it makes no sense if you try to put our science onto the Fictional Mass Effect universe, but neither does Mass Effect fields or Lightsabers for that matter. Please describe what a Geth looks like in the Mass Effect universe? Wait, don’t bother and Geth are 1 and 0. The physical form is merely a platform, so they can look like whatever platform they install themselves into. In the more intelligent platforms, such as Legion there are 1,183 Geth programs in that body.

So what do Reapers look like? They are AI too and far more advanced than the Geth and we are told over and over the Cycle repeats itself, so it doesn’t take a leap to figure out Reapers look like 0 and 1 too and they can look like whatever platform they are housed in.

Why does ME2 look like a giant baby terminator? They explain that it is being built with Human DNA and the also explain both in ME2 and ME3 that it is merely the skeleton. However, I just think they choice that form because of it functionality for the final boss battle in ME2. There is no need for it to look human since it purpose is only to store data on the dominate species of the cycle and destroy organics in this and future cycles. My biggest two question is 1) how did Cerberus get their hands on the remains of the skeleton (I destroyed the base and the System Alliance had control of the only ship that could get there, well besides the reapers themselves) 2) Why are humans considered the dominate species of this cycle?

The 2nd question is pretty welled answered in both Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3. Mordin goes into depth about how humans are superior genetically to the other races. I would have still said the Asari, but it is repeated that depending on other species for reproduction is a weakness , not sure why that matters to a Reaper, and the Asari were cheating with the technological superiority as seen with their hidden Prothean Beacon on Thessia.

Sorry humans were not merely picked because your Shepard was a bad ass (although really humans were pick because of Shepard just the writers had to justify it by giving all the other races weaknesses that the humans did not have).

[DarthParametric]

So what do Reapers look like? They are AI too

No they aren't. The squid bodies are merely a vessel for an organic super-collective consciousness. Hence the whole "each a nation" line that Sovereign gives you in ME1 on Virmire. It was hinted at throughout the series and Legion tells you directly in ME2:

 

[youtube=hd]CqtAHNQT3-w

 

It's possible that Karpyshyn or one of the other writers was a fan of Evangelion or Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (which Anno cited as an inspiration for Evangelion's central plot device that deals with the merged consciousness concept).

[mimartin]

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No they aren't.

Hybrid, but still data stored....Still ones and zeros. Controlled by the AI on the citadel or Casper as you would say. Just like Javik and the Prothean Beacons show, the data can be stored in any form.

So I mis-typed what I meant...Forgive me. The roll eyes are at me for being so stupid....

I would submit Reapers are closer to AI, at least in function than organics.
Plus if they were true organics they would have to destroy themselves.

[DarthParametric]

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Hybrid, but still data stored....Still ones and zeros. Controlled by the AI on the citadel or Casper as you would say. Just like Javik and the Prothean Beacons show, the data can be stored in any form.

 

So I mis-typed what I meant...Forgive me.

 

I would submit Reapers are closer to AI, at least in function than organics.

Plus if they were true organics they would have to destroy themselves.

I would say they are more analogous to

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something like a supercharged giant form of Shepard. Shep is human, but it is implied (or even directly shown) in ME2 that he has a whole hell of a lot of technology holding him together. And Casper says as much in the ME3 ending. The videos you can watch on Cronos Station suggest that the fact that Shep's brain was intact was the only reason he could be reanimated - thus Shep's body is essentially just a shell constructed to house his consciousness. The shell is made of both organic and synthetic components. The Reapers in essence are the same, except they are not a singular consciousness, but the amalgamated consciousness of an entire species (the ones they managed to liquefy anyway). Sure, they have synthetic components - they are giant spaceships after all - but like Shep I wouldn't class that as their defining characteristic.

 

I would fundamentally disagree that they are just stored data - at least not in the synthetic/digital form that you seem to be suggesting. Yes, they are an archive of now extinct organic species, but they are still organic, they have just "ascended" into a new form. As for for their functional role, again I would disagree. By "closer to AI", I assume you mean not like organics. But true AIs - ones that have reached awareness/consciousness - in ME are depicted as having very organic properties in terms of their behaviour. It's really only simplistic synthetics like VIs that are in the traditional mould of robots with non-organic behaviour. Thus the only real defining characteristic of whether a consciousness is synthetic or organic is its origin. True synthetics, like the Geth, are digital creations (software). Organics are obviously derived from some meaty source. Thus as the Reapers are born from meat milkshakes, I would class them as organic.

 

As for control, well yes there is, unfortunately, no argument there. Casper, whatever it is, explicitly states that it controls them. Presumably it created them as well, given the line about them being its "solution".

 

Edit: As for destroying themselves, that's kind of stupid. As you yourself point out, they are under the control of Casper. Its reasoning for harvesting is purely to prevent synthetics from rising up and destroying all organic life. The Reapers are the solution, not part of the problem.

[mimartin]

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Edit: As for destroying themselves, that's kind of stupid. As you yourself point out, they are under the control of Casper. Its reasoning for harvesting is purely to prevent synthetics from rising up and destroying all organic life. The Reapers are the solution, not part of the problem.

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Humor usually is somewhat stupid... I was making a attempt at a joke.

[DarthParametric]

Might want to fix that spoiler in the quote so that it is hidden.

[igyman]

Soooo, I finished the game yesterday and can now share a more complete impression. I'll start with the story...

 

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In terms of story/narrative I think the game is more or less OK. To be more precise, the main premise, shown in the two prologue missions (Earth, Mars), is really really bad - badly written and badly presented. After seeing the endings, I can completely understand and agree with most of the rage about them too - they were also very, very bad (for many reasons already stated by others). The short and abrupt epilogue didn't help matters. However, the game is filled with many other well written moments and subplots, mostly related to specific characters (current and former squadmembers). Mordin's sacrifice, Grunt nearly dying, Samara nearly committing suicide, Thane dying, Liara preparing Reaper-related data for future generations, etc - those scenes, I thought, were well written, well directed and emotional. Unfortunately many dialogs and moments related to the main story were badly presented and filled with idiotic one-liners. Shepard seems to shout a lot in this game, which I found sort of out-of-character, compared to his behaviour under fire in the two previous games.

 

In terms of gameplay, the biggest issue for me is, as I've stated previously, the limited character interaction, especially with the main cast. Hell, I've had more conversations with some minor characters than I had with my past and present crew. The lack of options in those conversations that are there and their degree of automatization are likewise serious issues, but I did get used to them after a while. It's not something I would want to see in any Bioware role-playing game, but I managed to get past them in this one. One other unrelated gameplay design decision that bothered me to no end was the inability to save in certain areas. Most notably during the final mission, where I couldn't even save in certain non-combat areas and was actually forced to Alt-Tab out of the game in order to backup the finale autosave, because of it.

 

The action is better and I'm glad I can actually stay out of cover for some time during firefights, instead of being forced to always use it or die, like in ME2. The heavy melee is, however, useless in most situations, because it can very easily miss its target. Too bad the heavy weapons were removed from the regular setup and instead given as a one-hit-kill option in some situations where you need to take out one of the more difficult enemies (Atlas, Harvester, Banshee...), otherwise the shooting was fine. I also didn't like that they used the universal cooldown timer for abilities, but the downside can be minimized by managing your weapons' weight.

 

In terms of visuals the game could definitely use a high res texture pack, or something. As it stands, the visuals vary from location to location, with most of them looking bad due to low res textures and lack of post processing effects, but there were a few great looking ones too. There is a similar issue with the characters in that their faces use nice, sharp textures and generally look good, while their bodies use low-res textures that look bad even from a distance.

 

The music was pretty good, as was the voice acting and sound effects, not much more to say about this aspect.

 

Overall, I'd say the game was OK. It's not game of the year material, but it's not boring either. Unfortunately, due to the horrible endings, I don't really have much motivation to play through it with my second ME2 import.

[DarthParametric]

In terms of gameplay, the biggest issue for me is, as I've stated previously, the limited character interaction, especially with the main cast. Hell, I've had more conversations with some minor characters than I had with my past and present crew.

I said back when ME2 came out that they had painted themselves into a corner with the "everyone can die!" suicide mission central mechanic and it was going to come back and bite them in the ass in ME3. It instantly relegated the entire ME2 cast to small throw-away roles in ME3 to minimise dialogue that might never be seen by players or would need to be duplicated by a stand-in character. Only Tali and Garrus got any sort of reprieve in that regard. Garrus because he seems to be both a Bioware and fan favourite and Tali purely on the strength of fan love alone. As I noted in a previous post, the Virmire Survivor got particularly short shrift which is somewhat baffling after being virtually left out of ME2 (to much fan derision) seemingly to save them for a starring role in ME3. The same was the case with Liara, although she fared much better in ME3. There were a lot of great moments with the squad members, but as you allude to the ambient-style dialogue for the most part instead of proper conversations was a bit of a letdown.

[logan23]

I'm wondering if Me3 is an example that Bioware has reached the budget ceiling which is determined by EA.

 

They could of added more dialogue or even more levels but then the budget would get even bigger and I'm guessing EA won't allow it.

 

I wish they moved some of the money used for marketing to the actually game development. Everyone knew this game was going to sell.

 

Can Bioware make a game bigger then ME3 or Dragon Age Origins?

Has the budget ceiling been maxed out?

[Taak Farst]

My squad is currently Javik and EDI. The weapons I use are the N7 Valkyrie Assault Rifle, the M-300 Claymore shotgun and the M-92 Mantis sniper rifle, which I believe to be the best sniper in the game with mods to be honest. All weapons are at X/10 level. I'm a soldier and have Barrier as my extra power and use Cryo Ammo.

 

Atrium on Insanity = EASY. Faceroll!

[mimartin]

I actually thought there was more conversations in ME3, than ME2...At least I love there was more interaction within missions, so I was happy.

 

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The bro day out with Garuss and the Garrus, Tali acknowledgement at the end made the lack of meaningful conversations moot for me. Those two and the mission banter, talks were perfect and enough for me.

Maybe if all game companies made bad endings we could solve this world's problems.

 

Mass Effect...no they are not going to ruin your Shepard (so they say now)

[logan23]

There is more dialogue but due to all the variables what we see more is instead of a foot long sandwich of dialogue we see more of a 2/3 that length but there are loads of more toppings that makes the sandwich wider. That's why it seems there is less choice dialogue wheel interactions.

 

If there were less variables to check during the dialogue leading to so many different versions- we would have more dialogue wheel moments and choices.

[igyman]

I said back when ME2 came out that they had painted themselves into a corner with the "everyone can die!" suicide mission central mechanic and it was going to come back and bite them in the ass in ME3. It instantly relegated the entire ME2 cast to small throw-away roles in ME3 to minimise dialogue that might never be seen by players or would need to be duplicated by a stand-in character. Only Tali and Garrus got any sort of reprieve in that regard. Garrus because he seems to be both a Bioware and fan favourite and Tali purely on the strength of fan love alone. As I noted in a previous post, the Virmire Survivor got particularly short shrift which is somewhat baffling after being virtually left out of ME2 (to much fan derision) seemingly to save them for a starring role in ME3. The same was the case with Liara, although she fared much better in ME3. There were a lot of great moments with the squad members, but as you allude to the ambient-style dialogue for the most part instead of proper conversations was a bit of a letdown.

 

Agreed. Though I expected past characters to return simply in a cameo fashion, so I wasn't really disappointed with that aspect. However, the lack of full conversations with the current squad was disturbing. Liara did indeed get more attention than the rest, simply because she's "safe" - I don't recall there ever being a possibility to kill her off in the previous two games. As for the Virmire Survivor, I don't understand why they handled them the way they did either, but at least the VS was handled better than the Surviving Sibling from DA2.

 

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The bro day out with Garuss and the Garrus, Tali acknowledgement at the end made the lack of meaningful conversations moot for me. Those two and the mission banter, talks were perfect and enough for me.

 

Those and other similar instances were, IMO, the best moments in the game in terms of story/narrative.

 

Interestingly, there is a wild theory going on about the current endings (link to Bioware Social thread - it even has pictures!). I don't think the people speculating about this are anywhere near right, but it is an interesting theory.

 

On a side note, yet related to one of the endings and too funny not to post:

 

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i4.photobucket.com/albums/y133/aimlessgun/bestblue.jpg

 

EDIT: Thanks, mim. Btw, I was just lurking around Bioware Social some more and stumbled upon a thread with a youtube link that made me LOL some more (again related to the endings, thus spoiler tags):

 

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm82gjZDIDU

 

1. Take a good long look at the at the time of upload

2. Watch the static picture and the shiny changing colours

3. Listen to/Read the lyrics

4. Enjoy

 

 

Thread link: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/9993946

 

Also, if you google images for "space winter", you'll see something embarrassing.

[DarthParametric]

I'm wondering if Me3 is an example that Bioware has reached the budget ceiling which is determined by EA.

I don't think that is the problem. A lot of people seem to be trying to rationalise the endings as something other than just piss-poor writing, and one of those rationalisations is they ran out of time/money. That's not the case. You can see from the script leak and that new Final Hours app that was released that these were the intended endings for a long time. They just tried to be edgy and artistic and instead fell flat on their face.

 

Can Bioware make a game bigger then ME3 or Dragon Age Origins? Has the budget ceiling been maxed out?

I would say they will never again make a game with as long a development cycle as Origins. That was in development for over 5 years - it's extremely unlikely you'll ever see that again. By the same token, hopefully they learned their lesson with short dev cycle of DA2. ME3 had pretty much an average AA dev cycle of about 18-24 months. That's what I would be expecting for most of their future games.

 

you'll see something embarrassing.

To be fair, while they did completely rip off the composition of a stock image in that instance, it's not as bad as the portrait debacle where they did a 5 sec Photoshop job on it. They at least recreated the scene in 3D.

 

To be honest, neither instance makes much sense when you see how much concept art is done during development. It's obvious they are not short on talented artists capable of coming up with all manner of great ideas. I'm sure they could have easily come up with something original if they wanted to. It just smacks of laziness more than anything.

[igyman]

To be fair, while they did completely rip off the composition of a stock image in that instance, it's not as bad as the portrait debacle where they did a 5 sec Photoshop job on it. They at least recreated the scene in 3D.

 

I doubt they did that. It always looked like something done in Flash to me, but until last night I thought they did all the work. Now, I'm thinking they spent a couple of minutes in Photoshop on the background and simply did the silhouettes of the old man and the kid and some additional effects by themselves.

 

To be honest, neither instance makes much sense when you see how much concept art is done during development. It's obvious they are not short on talented artists capable of coming up with all manner of great ideas. I'm sure they could have easily come up with something original if they wanted to. It just smacks of laziness more than anything.

 

Exactly. That's why it's so surprising and disappointing to see corners cut on stuff like these.

[DarthParametric]

It doesn't look like still images to me (in the foreground anyway), but its definitely multi-layered if it is to get that depth of field. Either way, it took a bit of work to do it - they didn't just spit it out of PS in 5 minutes. Which makes it all the more odd that they didn't use an original composition. Even if they were inspired by that artwork, it wouldn't have taken much tweaking to come up with something different in the same style.

[Taak Farst]

Completed my silver challenge for Operation Goliath after trying all day. It's very difficult to find competent players during the day, I find.

 

I've killed a LOT of brutes. So I think I've done my part!

[Sabretooth]

Finished a few hours ago. I liked it more and more as I played through it, but

 

 

Seriously, the endings were really amazing beyond what I'd expected from ME or BioWare.

 

[Taak Farst]

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Just a little something I threw together, rates and subs are appreciated, as I plan to do more of these

 

Spoilers, obviously!

 

EDIT: Check this out too, I laughed a hell of a lot

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[LDR]

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It's not so much the ending themselves that got me, it's that the game went down with a whimper. The whole game managed to keep this high emotional tone, seeing these well developed characters you're emotionally invested in die, having the legitimate feeling that things really might not be all right in the end, wondering if everyone you deal with is going to survive or not. The tone and writing in the game was wonderful up to the very end.

But then you get to the very end. A mad dash to warp yourself up onto the citadel, Harbinger (so I assume) comes down and blasts the hell out of everyone, leaving you in "story mode" with no epic climatic battle. Not with Harbinger, not with the Illusive Man. Nothing. There is simply no true climax to the game. You're left wanting more in a very bad way, and sit through the ending with constant thoughts of "this is it?!".

And the ending itself, at least what I watched, told you nothing about what happened to anyone. I saw Joker and EDI have an Adam/Eve moment leaving a crashed Normandy with Garrus, who despite being my Shepard's significant other, was just a footnote in the ending. What the happened to the people I took with me? What happened to the planets? Is Earth okay? Palaven? The other ones? Did the synthetic/organic merger destroy the relays? Because it looked like it did. Why would it do that? The Catalyst never told me that would happen. I chose to kill myself to prevent that from happening and hope that it would ensure relative return to status quo.

Does anyone else remember when Final Fantasy VI had a 30 minute long ending? A long revisiting of the cast of characters before ultimately ending on a very satisfying note? Yeah, why is the Mass Effect ending, a game spanning about 4 years of game time and 3 games, take only about 3 minutes to conclude?

I can appreciate some unknowns remaining. What are the Reapers? Who made them? Are they really just a rogue AI from a billion cycles back? These I am perfectly okay with being left up to the player to hash out on their own. But seriously? The characters we grew attached to not even getting footnote endings? Not even a text paragraph? That's just insulting.

The cinematic was just a color-coded wave of light with no change based on choices you made, it didn't follow up on the stories of people you met, it destroyed the mass-relays (which, when destroyed, wipe out solar systems, and even if not, strand people there. Which means that entire fleet will starve away from their homes on a broken Earth), the Normandy is stranded on SOME planet for some reason, which means they had fled the battle before it was over, and chances are that Garrus and Tali will die, or everyone else will die because they can't eat the same foods and few planets have both dextro and levo amino acid foods in abundance, the three choices it gave you were out of nowhere and without explanation regarding that Star Child or the choices, you didn't get a conversation wheel, and after all the cooperation you fostered, the Citadel is destroyed, fleets are abandoned, and every system is isolated again.

Galactic Reset Button much?

[Salzella]

might want to spoiler-tag that all up sharpish.

[igyman]

It's not so much the ending themselves that got me, it's that the game went down with a whimper.

 

Indeed. For me personally, there are two main problems with the ending(s):

 

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Number One is the existence of the Starchild AI/Casper, the Genocidal Ghost/whatever you want to call it. The existence of this thing completely breaks any consistency the plot might have had. This thing says the Citadel is its home and that the Citadel is a part of it. What that statement means is that Sovereign's role in the first game is meaningless. If this thing controls the Reapers, is stored on the Citadel and is a part of the Citadel, then it should be no problem for it to activate the Citadel's relay by itself, without needing a Reaper "vanguard". Also, if this thing controls the Reapers, then they are not individuals, or "each a nation, independent", so when a Reaper identifies itself as an independent entity (Sovereign, Harbinger), or says how another Reaper mentioned something to it (yes, I'm referring to the dying Reaper on Rannoch), it's just the Starchild AI trolling Shepard. Hmmm, I guess the Starchild AI was the one "assuming control" back in ME2, since Harbinger is nothing more than a starship controlled by it.

 

Problem Number Two of the ending(s) is their epilogue sequence. So even if I were to buy into the major plot hole and inconsistencyfest that is the Starchild AI and Shepard's conversation with it and proceed to choose an ending, what I get is, well, not much. The epilogue is always the same, even if these three options implied vastly different outcomes. I remember people complained about the endings of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I found each of those endings excellent, because they were significantly different from each other and each of them truly gave a different outcome and a different world, based on Adam Jensen's final choice. ME3 doesn't do that. Each time the presentation is identical (with insignificantly small variations), so I as the player don't get that sense of "this choice brought these consequences to the galaxy/galactic fleet/races". It would have also been nice to know what happens to the major characters, nothing too detailed mind you, but a short frame of each of them fighting/dying/doing the victory dance/whatever during that ending, or epilogue sequence would have been better than what we got, which is nothing.

[jedi_consular16]

 

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This thing says the Citadel is its home and that the Citadel is a part of it. What that statement means is that Sovereign's role in the first game is meaningless. If this thing controls the Reapers, is stored on the Citadel and is a part of the Citadel, then it should be no problem for it to activate the Citadel's relay by itself, without needing a Reaper "vanguard".

 

Hmm..you know I hadn't made that realization myself. But now that I think of it, it just adds more fuel to the fire that the ME3 ending was really not that good. Or rather, it at least did not measure up to the rest of the game.

[Achilles]

Hmm..you know I hadn't made that realization myself. But now that I think of it, it just adds more fuel to the fire that the ME3 ending was really not that good. Or rather, it at least did not measure up to the rest of the game.

I don't think it's that much of a stretch. They make it fairly obvious that the Keepers are necessary for up-keep, etc.

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Clearly, they made an effort to establish that there were some processes it was not capable of doing on its own and needed a symbiotic life form to assist with

Is it clean? No. But it's consistent with its own logic.

[Salzella]

Ending-wise:

 

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I find myself becoming more and more convinced by the 'Indoctrinated' interpretation. I don't usually buy into this sort of thing, and it may well be that I'm a) giving Bioware more credit than they perhaps deserve and b) rationalising it all away because I don't particularly like it/can't satisfactorily explain. I still find it compelling though. The reasons (and they're good ones) were made very clear in that social.bioware thread so I won't go through them again, but the single most important bit for me is that the 'Destroy' ending seems to be (correct me if I'm wrong (or don't because it casts the interpretation into doubt...)) the only one where we get any hint that Shepard is alive, with sufficient military strength. Also, it's on Earth, which lends further credence to the theory because otherwise (barring some sort of controlled-explosion scenario), the relays cannot have been destroyed.

 

If all this is true and they do indeed explain it all through DLC or somesuch, then that's despicable and dirty and horrible etc etc etc. But damn, as well as being something of a relief it would be a hell of a coup on their part. They might not even have originally intended it, but it would make sense for them to say they did even if that's the case. Whatever, I like the theory.