Mass Effect 3

[killemoff]

They said from the beginning the endings wouldn't change, they would just get... Well... Extended.

if the "extensions" disappoints, i will just uninstall all 3 games and probably won't touch them any time soon.

It saddens me that what was once such a highlight for me has fallen to such disarray, i still love you though, Mass Effect 1!

Edited June 24, 2012 by killemoff

[Yong]

They might as well not even bother. I would rather have D:LC where I am just fighting the war than this bullshit. In my mind, the reaper war never ends and Black Power Shepard just continues to kick ass and fuck Liara on the way. That's all folks.

So in other words multiplayer DLC. Oh wait, people hate that too.

The Lame 2001 Reference only admitted that his solution wouldn't work anymore. He never said he was wrong about the assumption that lead him to create his solution. I'm willing to give him some slack if Shepard can at least point out that it's possible for synthetics and organics to coexist, even if the Shiny Transparency Map just says that: "Yeah, well, maybe you're right. Maybe I assumed it just couldn't work because I'm an AI and I think harvesting organics is a super awesome idea, so I just assumed that all synthetics would reach the same conclusion. Boy is my face red. Anyway, there's only these 3 choices if you want to stop the Reaper army now."

I'm kidding, but I think that made more sense than what we've been given.

I guess it would've been fair for Shepard to have at least mentioned that. Then again as I've been saying it's pointless to argue with the Catalyst over why it was wrong. It would be a literal beating of a dead horse cause you didn't think it was dead enough.

[Neon]

The Extended Cut is up on XBL and I'm presuming American PSN and Origin too.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Mass-Effect-3-Extended-Cut/3d5e7463-20d5-4860-890d-15c90899ec78?cid=SLink

*sigh*

Let's get this shit over with...

[Nix]

>Gets choice to tell the Starchild to piss off.

>Tells the Starchild to piss off.

>You lose.

Edited June 26, 2012 by Pinkamena

[Candescence]

So, I'm hearing the Extended Cut improves very, very little at all. No actual substance, like the Deus Ex: Human Revolution endings.

>Gets choice to tell the Starchild to piss off.

>Tells the Starchild to piss off.

>You lose.

[Emmett L. Brown]

It's not all bad. The Mass Relays are no longer destroyed in every ending, which means you actually CAN save the galaxy without fucking up galactic civilisation for centuries to come. That also means your crew won't starve to death, Earth won't be overpopulated by alien races that inevitably all get out-competed and eaten by Krogan, and every planet within solar distance of a Mass Relay won't be rendered uninhabitable.

Imagine how the initial ending would've been if Casey Hudson actually read the freakin' codex.

Edited June 26, 2012 by Grumpy Old Guy

[turbojet]

So in other words multiplayer DLC. Oh wait, people hate that too.

Ha. No. As far as I'm concerned, we still have to help Aria regain her base(that could have been DLC) and Bioware could could do a lot with storyline DLC since, I don't know, it made them a shit ton of money with Mass Effect 2. I would be a-okay with just doing a bunch of random missions with Shepard and his crew that do something for the war without having to ever get to the ending or clear winner of the war. The Protheans fought the Reapers for centuries. Let me fight my war a little over a month before I take back Earth and deal with Deus Ex rip-off later.

I guess it would've been fair for Shepard to have at least mentioned that. Then again as I've been saying it's pointless to argue with the Catalyst over why it was wrong. It would be a literal beating of a dead horse cause you didn't think it was dead enough.

The damn thing shouldn't exist period. It shouldn't streamline players into 3 specific endings when the developers promised us that same exact thing wouldn't happen. It should at least make sense within the scope of the universe that they presented us in and it should have reflected our decisions throughout the course of the series.

Here is your fourth ending.

Edited June 26, 2012 by turbojet

[RidersDX]

Here is your fourth ending.

I was laughing the whole time because I was shooting that kid with no idea that this ending existed. I imagine it would be a much bigger slap in the face if you actually argued with it.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I was laughing the whole time because I was shooting that kid with no idea that this ending existed. I imagine it would be a much bigger slap in the face if you actually argued with it.

Guess the folks at Bioware didn't like how a number of people would have loved to empty their clips on the kid after what they gave us.

[turbojet]

Guess the folks at Bioware didn't like how a number of people would have loved to empty their clips on the kid after what they gave us.

I spent 10 minutes shooting the fuck. You'd think it would have gotten a hint...

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Gotta say, Synthesis makes the sacrifice seem like it was worth it now instead of being vague. Not the ending I would've initially liked, not the ending I would have expected. But it was ideal enough that it makes you proud for your character to have sacrificed himself so that others may live...alongside the Reapers no less! (should I have spoilered that?)

Now if only this shit didn't happen in the first place...had they did this from the get go, they could have sidestepped a lot of this mess.

Edited June 26, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[turbojet]

Gotta say, Synthesis makes the sacrifice seem like it was worth it now instead of being vague. Not the ending I would've initially liked, not the ending I would have expected. But it was ideal enough that it makes you proud for your character to have sacrificed himself so that others may live...alongside the Reapers no less! (should I have spoilered that?)

Now if only this shit didn't happen in the first place...had they did this from the get go, they could have sidestepped a lot of this mess.

Except it is hypocritical and causes homogenization which is sort of what the Nazi's wanted.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Except it is hypocritical and causes homogenization which is sort of what the Nazi's wanted.

I dunno. The Nazi's were willing to exterminate people for not looking like them, not so much interested in bringing together differences into one whole community.

That said, as much as they could have done better, it doesn't leave us asking all the questions we did before the DLC. I still would have preferred an ending where my character survived if I did well enough.

Edited June 26, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Emmett L. Brown]

You've all heard me bitch and moan ever since I first saw the ending. I was butthurt by it. Butthurt and angry. So it means something when I say that the ending I just watched was satisfying and left me wanting to play the game again. You know, basically how I felt upon reaching the end of the first two Mass Effects.

What's even more amazing is that with this new version, I actually like the Catalyst as a character. I see that Bioware's Good Talent division shoved Casey Hudson out of the way and really rubbed their brains together to mitigate the disaster of a character he'd created. When you question the glowy brat, you actually get a good sense of what it really is: A complete failure - or rather a perfect example of the Gone Horribly Right trope, since it destroyed and assimilated its own creators in order to fix the problem they programmed it to solve. The Catalyist itself IS the worst case scenario it was created to prevent, and that's delicious irony.

Even the three choices are saved from disaster by the fact that they no longer doom galactic civilisation. Even Bioware's brightest couldn't find a way to work around Casey Hudson's idiocy in destroying the very thing that makes the series function, so they retconned wholesale, and I approve of them for doing so.

Finally, there's the slideshow. I love slideshows at the end of western RPGs. There's just no better way to cheaply and effectively give closure to each of the many, many plotlines in an RPG saga. It worked in Fallout, it worked in Dragon Age, and it works here.

The rejection ending may be seen as a middle finger from Casey Hudson, but with the rest of the team doing such a great job of covering up his idiocy, I'll gladly turn the other cheek on that one. Hell, I'm just happy there's a bad ending at all now.

So I'm happy.

EDIT: By the way, I picked Control. Shepard becomes the new Catalyst, and does a much better job than the old one. The Geth don't get killed. The Citadel doesn't blow up. The galaxy is doin' fine. Happy endings for everybody except my love interest, but that's okay. Tragic love stories are good, too.

Edited June 26, 2012 by Grumpy Old Guy

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I'm satisfied, I can definitely say that. Not what I wanted, but I can actually live with this. But still, after the past two series building up to this one, what in the blue hell was going into Casey's mind regarding storytelling?

This "open to interpretation" bullcrap he said at first makes little sense considering that the others weren't open like that. Sure, we stopped Sovereign in ME1 from bringing his buddies into the galaxy, but while we didn't know how Mass Effect 2 would play out we knew that there were more Reapers to stop. Sure we did the impossible and came out of a suicide mission completely alive (if you played your cards right) and stopped the Reapers from making humans into one of them, but while we didn't know how ME3 would play out, we knew that the Reapers were coming and were about to prepare for war when they did.

So in ME3, we finally reach the end and try to accomplish the very thing we spent 3 games seeking to do, but what the hell was there to interpret after you built a whole galactic community and then show us the destruction of the very thing that enabled galactic civilization to function? Along with being given information about the other species like Quarians and Turians on how they live? Or showing us how our people are still fighting the Reapers before they stop functioning and show us the destruction of the series namesake? Players are geniusesindeed.

Edited June 26, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[turbojet]

My main issue here is that it should have never been streamlined into just 3(now 4) endings that have no effect on what the player actually did. New Vegas had multiple tidbits being integrated in the overall story ending in which every action that was done throughout the game and by extension the DLC had effect over the story and you were in complete control of it. That is what was promised and that is what we didn't get.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Don't get me wrong, as satisfied as I may be I'm still irked that that end wasn't held up to like the suicide mission of the second game. Those character's deaths and/or survivals affected the plot of ME3 so it's a wonder why they wanted to go the cheap route in the ending for this game.

[Emmett L. Brown]

My main issue here is that it should have never been streamlined into just 3(now 4) endings that have no effect on what the player actually did. New Vegas had multiple tidbits being integrated in the overall story ending in which every action that was done throughout the game and by extension the DLC had effect over the story and you were in complete control of it. That is what was promised and that is what we didn't get.

The three main cinematics won't change, but I think the slideshows will change greatly depending on whether you were Paragon or Renegade, and how you solved the various disputes throughout the series.

Like Fallout New Vegas.

Of course, I've only seen one ending for myself, but several of those slides I saw would be simply impossible if I'd done something else in the series, so I'm convinced there's a lot of content there. Granted, it falls short of New Vegas, with its mulitple different narrations for each slide, but it's still Dragon Age level of multiple ending-ness.

[Nix]

I really wish they did something after the "Shepard takes a breath" scene in the Destroy ending. The other two endings got a lot of closure and it feels odd that that particular moment is left so open ended. Is someone going to find him/her, or is he/she just going to bleed out right there in the rubble?

As much as I hate the blatant Deus Ex Machina the Starchild is, the extra bits the extended cut added do help make the scene at least tolerable and it's actually somewhat satisfying to end the game now. I wish there was more to the ending where you tell the Starchild to piss off other than just "you lost", because you didn't change anything at all, it's just a matter of waiting for the next jackass to activate the Crucible and make the all-important decision that Shepard could've made. If there was hope that the next cycle could defeat the Reapers without the use of the Starchild's new "solutions" then I would find it more acceptable, but there isn't.

But really, the Starchild was really unnecessary. I would've settled with the game ending after the encounter with TIM. Sitting there with your wounds and watching the fireworks, if you fucked up miserably gathering war assets the Crucible becomes too damaged to function properly and the cycle continues, ending with the little cutscene with Liara's time capsule thing giving hope that the next cycle will be the one to finally put an end to the Repears. If you did decently, the Crucible fires and Shepard dies from his wounds, you get a little epilogue showing what will happen during reconstruction. If you did well, Shepard lives and gets reunited with his/her love interest, and you get the epilogue that once again shows what will happen during reconstruction. Or something like that, I'm a lousy writer.

Edited June 26, 2012 by Pinkamena

[turbojet]

Or something like that, I'm a lousy writer.

You are a shit ton better than Casey so you have potential in the business.

Open to intrepretation is a horrible way to end the series. This is why I prefer Samurai Champloo over Cowboy Bebop.

Edited June 26, 2012 by turbojet

[Phos]

The really dumb part about the creation of Mass Effect 3's ending is that apparently Mass Effect 2 already did the exact thing that people wanted out of 3's ending.

So the Normandy crashes and then just flies away again? Ok, I guess. It makes the whole event reach a level of pointlessness nearing that deleted scene from Star Wars where Luke has to fix his land speeder on the way to track down R2. I guess you made the game so you can do whatever you want.

Oh, so Joker leaves because everyone's going to go to the rendezvous point that everyone playing the game and all the characters in the game have to magically know about because no one knew what the crucible was going to do before they fired it. It all makes so much sense now!

And wow, the really dumb implications of the synthesis ending are done no service by just putting them out there. On the plus side, that leaves the door open for the hot new spin off show coming this fall, "My foreman was a Reaper".

INSIGNIFICANT HUMAN YOUR UNION REQUIRED BREAK TIME HAS ELAPSED. ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL!!

[Candescence]

The extended cut provides some closure and fixes some plot holes, but it doesn't fix the most glaringly obvious narrative flaws. And in addition to this, the Catalyst comes off being even worse, what with being blatantly defective.

And on top of all this? Bioware lied. They said they wouldn't change the endings, but they did. Not to the extent many people were hoping for, but they did, and they added a fourth ending. Control and Destroy are improved at bit, but now Synthesis is just plain stupid. And kinda creepy, with all the glowing green eyes.

The new, fourth 'rejection' ending would normally be the one I'd actually pick, as all the other endings aren't satisfactory, period. However, even this one is marred by the fact the results of rejection are not only blatantly incredibly petty, as if Casey and Mac didn't want to include it in the first place, but also undetermined by your EMS, no matter what, making your EMS even more worthless in the long run. It's one big insult to the people who wanted to say 'fuck off' to the Catalyst. However, I would have ignored all this...

Were it not for someone from Bioware saying over Twitter that the next cycle would pick one of the Catalyst's choices anyway, completely defeating the point of rejection at all.

That is honestly the last straw for me. All the stupidity over the original ending and the extended cut being only marginally better was one thing, but Casey and Mac so blatantly insulting their audience like this is not something I can let slide. I'm not gonna be buying another Bioware game after this unless they can legitimately step up their game, and if Casey Hudson and Mac Walters leave the company. Both of them are hacks, and ME3's ending proved it.

Fuck Casey, fuck Mac,

and fuck the Catalyst.

Actually, fuck it, let's put the last bit in my sig. It's too vague for nobody who hasn't completed the game to understand, so it's not a spoiler.

Edited June 27, 2012 by Masaru Daimon

[Emmett L. Brown]

http://social.biowar...ndex/12695580/1

Chris Priestly toys with the English language to the extent that thirteen pages later people are still trying to figure out what the hell he just said. Bottom line: The minimum requirement for getting the best (HAH!) ending in single player has been lowered so multiplayer is no longer mandatory to get enough effective military strength.

Maybe. Like I said, that's professional PR level of vagueness, so who the hell can tell for sure.

It's 3100 Effective Military Strength. I got the achievement for getting most most assets to the final battle after downloading the update, and I've never played multiplayer. I'd give Bioware kudos for finally fixing that problem, but since it was promised that MP wasn't necessary to get the "best" ending from the get-go, it's more of a broken promise finally rectified. Very little, very late.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Hey, everyone! Look who wants to rub salt in the stitches for getting the Extended Cut! I found this from someone in the Status Updates.

I Really Didn’t Need Those New Mass Effect 3Endings

I loved the Mass Effect 3 ending the way it was two weeks ago. It's a shame that many Mass Effect 3 fans didn't feel the same way.

My Commander Shepard fought to the Citadel and, after talking to the Catalyst, I spent an agonizing time—10 minutes? 15? An eternity?—making my decision. As much as I wanted to destroy the Reapers, I finally settled on the Control ending because the idea of self-sacrifice and turning the giant war machines to a greater good appealed to me.

Sure, I had questions about the fate of the individual races I'd united to fight against the malevolent synthetics. But, if I learned anything over the course of playing through 180 some-odd hours over three games, it was that humans, Asari, Salarians and other races in the Mass Effect universe would figure out their own fates one way or another. Yeah, they needed me, but only so much. The series lore excelled at establishing the idea that these cultures had existed long before Shepard burst onto the cosmic scene. They'd probably continue in the same way. I liked not knowing whether the Krogan would try to subjugate the galaxy again and wondered at the hazy maybes of future Quarian/Geth relations.

But then the Extended Cut came.

The whole reason the Extended Cut exists is because a very vocal group of Mass Effect 3 players felt like they didn't get enough. Not enough closure, not enough explanation and, probably, not enough emotion. Bioware listened to them and went to work on an expansion to Mass Effect 3's finale.

[Full Article]

This is my favorite part of the article:

There, the Catalyst speaks to Shepard as if he doesn't care whether your character understands or not. This cycle is as it always has been and now that you've broken it, you have a choice to make. That's all you really need to know.

And this one:

Before, I had an ending that felt like its creators respected my intelligence enough to trust me to fill in the blanks. Now, it's swollen with info dumps.

Man the journalists just seem to LOVE pissing off a lot of readers over the endings while saying that the endings were perfect the way they were. I'm not one to say that you suck for liking the original endings, because if you do, fine with me. What I don't like is this asinine attitude over the fans telling Bioware how much the endings sucked to them and berating them for it. It's as if they're being insulting just to troll people.

The comments are full of win, surprisingly. So much that they closed discussion on it. Really, after 3 months and we get a new ending, what the hell do you they think complaining like that would do to the fans reading the article?

Edited June 29, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Neon]

MrBtongue reviews the Extended Cut:

I'm pretty much in the same boat as him. The Extended Cut gives us closure on a personal level which is great, but the existence of the Catalyst and the Crucible still doesn't make any sense.

Edited July 3, 2012 by Neon