Mass Effect 3 -10 Years Later: This Game Could’ve Been a Masterpiece 

It was a powerful moment. the whole time you act as the father/mother and overall leader (aka shepherd) for so many people. Yet who was there to guide and protect you? Who was there to shepherd Shepard? Who could take the weight of the galaxy off his shoulders, if for a moment? It was Anderson all along, and it was great to see their relationship.

Keith David voicing someone born in London i did find sorta weird as a Brit but i guess in the era they're in mixed accents would make sense

​@@dedmajor born and raised are two different things though. Anderson was born in London but could have been raised in America since he was a child.

Keith David is awesome. He's been in some amazing movies.

Keith David is the only one that could have made Anderson Anderson. His voice is drips with character. He's up there with Kevin Conroy that voiced Batman and Mark Hamill that voiced the Joker. If they ever do a time travel thing with Mass Effect and need him and he isn't available, they'll have trouble finding someone capable to carry it off.

I would have been much more forgiving on the ending as well if they had just fleshed out each choice a bit more but it seemed like they tried to make it so that there was room for a 4th game and left the ending of 3 feeling hollow.

I just wanted an ending where you flat out could win, if you did enough leg work, and the final shot was of you and Garrus sipping drinks on the beach with dead reaper hulls sticking out of the water out in the distance.

@@clydemarshall8095 i think the final mission in me2 makes a lot of people feel like that. the fact that if you put in the work in the form of farming the mats to upgrade the ship and do the loyalty missions you get rewarded with a good ending( ie. everyone gets out alive) is extremly satisfying

@@craserx6267 I don’t know, I feel like the overarching theme in this game is achievement through perseverance and sacrifice. Hell, Garrus even says that Turians know what’s at stake and humans just want to save everyone, but it won’t be possible in this war. The endings definitely feel hollow with just Admiral Hackett giving a slideshow. But I think the destroy ending makes perfect sense in hindsight, more so if you’ve maxed out the war assets. ME3 wasn’t about you winning with overwhelming odds against simply because everyone joined together. It was the desperate need to survive at any costs. The Protheans were far more advanced and spanned larger than the current cycle and they still lost. That means something to me. I think the difference between the suicide mission in 2 and the final battle in 3 are simply the change in scale. In 2 it is very unlikely you’ll win but if you can play your cards right maybe things will work out. In 3 there is no chance to win. It’s a Hail Mary of plans. One final act of desperation and defiance. And I think 3 perfectly captures that. Sorry for the rant. And it totally would be cool if we saw Garrus and Shepard drinking beer on the beach.

@@RagingRavioli22 I guess you are right. All i know is that 10 years later the me3 ending is still famous for being really bad. And 10 years in gaming is a lot of time.

I would have flat lined

Didn't Mass Effect 1 come out in 2007 though?

@@griffingower1883 The ending of ME1 shows you that stopping Sovereign only slowed down the Reapers' invasion.

@@eugeneferguson5987 And the ending of Arrival has you kill over 300000 Batarians to prevent the Reapers from arriving through their personal back door by literally slamming an asteroid into a Mass Relay, what's your point?

It was a good ending, although it was a sad ending. Wish it could have ended some other way and more, I wish it is resurrected in some way for Mass Effect 4. Andromeda was rubbish. And, oh yea, I hope you are well now and that you can wait in anticipation for the next real instalment of Mass Effect....

Exactly what you said is why I’m fine with the endings to the game. Everything else gets wrapped up with all the other characters. That pretty much is the ending

I played thru the games recently with the hd remaster but I don’t know if I did the citadel dlc. Was going to start a new character playthru and would like to make sure to do all the content this time. I wish there was more time in the day lol

"I'm friedipar and this is my favorite dlc on the citadel."

You are joking right? Sarcasm is hard to tell on the internet sometimes.

I wasn't fine with the endings. My Shepard believes deeply in free will, but no matter what choice you makes on the Citadel it takes the free will from either many beings or all beings and that's BS. I didn't bust my ass off creating peace between the Geth and the Quarians just to commit genocide, or the horror show of forcing all biological life to become partially synthetic which left me with control as the only option...which is not a happy ending for Shepard by any stretch of the imagination and frankly he earned a small amount of happiness after everything he did for the galaxy. I mean is his consciousness forever locked into a reaper platform never to know love or life again...for eternity? No, I'll just stick with Audemus' Happy Ending Mod and pretend it's cannon.

Roll tide!!!

For me it was talking to garrus, romanced tali, wrex, and kaiden on earth. It basically sank in I was gonna die and this was the last time my shepard would see his best friends

@@raditzhoneyham That's a really good one too.

If they had just ended with that, the Crucible docking and the Reapers being defeated (or not if your War Assets we too low), I could've been okay with the ending. Idk what they have planned with ME4, and after Andromeda, I'm not sure I care.

@@Deafwing There were some speculations going on about a different ending structure altogether, based on your EMS (Effective Military Strength / War Asset) rating, where certain choices were locked out if you didn't have a high enough score. A fifth, secret ending would open up if the player had a perfect playthough (a really high EMS rating)

If Bioware was smart they should have stayed with the leaked ending instead of giving us these same 3 color endings with small differences.

What was the leaked ending? I've never heard about it

@@seal2560 It was essentially that the reapers were harvesting organic life to slow the spread of dark energy, which was the byproduct of eezo. It was hinted at a few times in 2, like with Tali's recruitment mission, and even had a couple mentions in 3 as well.

Mass effect 3 was just the same ole same ole as mass effect 2 combat wise with even worse writing

@@clintbeastwood5116 But was it really the intended ending and did it really leak? Because what I've read is that they just didn't know how to end it (the writer who came up with the dark energy stuff had left) so they had to come up with something new regardless.

The beginning was at Vancouver Canada ? I've always thought that they were in london

@@rayclay3249 No, they get a feed from London showing it being attacked in the chamber with the admirals at the beginning, and then the Reapers show up and start destroying Vancouver.

@@justaguy8218 I never noticed that. Nice catch

Bioware is located in Edmonton. Not Vancouver.

@@rayclay3249 Bioware is located in Edmonton. Not Vancouver.

The fake queen was meant to be similar. It is the body of a queen with reapers adding parts to make it work

The Rachni should have been Sovereigns ticking clock. The vanguard wakes up when the galaxy has reached the point of killing the most powerful organic species the reapers had faced. The Queens couldn’t be indoctrinated. Javik knew of them from his cycle and rachni communication means theoretically a hibernating reaper could have been responded to their deaths subconsciously. Basically, the rachni war is a repeating thing the reapers use to force some form of galactic unity/accelerate the cycles. That is why they can and do make the fake queen so easily. They need to prepare Rachni for the next cycle. If you saved the queen in Noveria. Her forces should appear looking for the new queen. If you spoke to her again through the Asari in Mass Effect 2. The rachni soldiers don’t attack you and you can recruit the fake queen as a war asset that doesn’t betray you, because the true queen is there to shut her up. The amount of soliders the true queen has also gets affect by talking to her asari ally in ME2. Since if the asari recognises Shepard. She can ask for help and Shepard gets the Krogan and Rachni soldiers to work together. If this doesn’t happen, the rachni queen goes from 100 war assets to 60

That, and the Normandy sitting as a duck in front of Harbinger for Shepard to say his love goodbyes...

I always thought Leng should've just been Miranda

And Kai Leng was a bastard, too; an indoctrinated one like his master.

It didn't disappoint me, it's my favourite game of all time. 🤷‍♂🤷‍♂🤷‍♂️

By siding with the Geth and then chooses the destroy ending. You can genocide both the Quarians and Geth.

Two years wouldn't have suddenly made the ending any better unless they had a different writing team. The length of the ending is irrelevant to the quality. It was like five minutes long, they could have done a lot more in the time they had than what we got.

@@tournesol99 they got pushed into the ending due to time constraints. The colors were placeholders by the writing team and not meant to be a part of the end, but the people at the top that wanted a game yesterday said to run with it. Not to mention the fact that every ending looks the same... More time could have allowed that to not be like that.

@@devynn7x Agree with you there. But the writing behind those choices and the way it unfolds in game could have been a heck of a lot better. Time constraints pushed them to make a short ending, but the quality of that ending falls on the writing team. More time doesn't automatically make writing better. It just lets you write more.

@@tournesol99 They only had time constraints because BioWare, and especially their Mass Effect teams, are lousy. Good developers, sure. But the leading of those teams royally suck. Them and their idiotic "BioWare magic". The impression one gets throughout the years is that they leave the developers roaming free for way too long and are then surprised when they don't have enough good results. Things that just shouldn't happen at such a company, but... The fact that their writers for the endings (it was written by Casey Hudson and Mac Walters, if I remember correctly) suck certainly didn't help. I remember reading an article where it was obvious that two people only wrote the ending - the rest of the writing team didn't get any input. That's certainly not how you write a good ending.

And EA wanted it to be released in 2011. One year after ME2.

Reads a lot better when you just assume Cerberus is a front organization for the Reapers.

I don't know it makes sense to me if they could do shit like they did in ME2. They had so much money and power they are kind of like the shadow broker on steriods. It makes sense to me that they were able to amass so much power when they didn't care about ethics at all they can make a lot of money when they'll do anything for power.

I remember going back to 2 and talking to EDI after being unshackled and she said Cerberus is at that moment including Shepard and the Normandy crew in its entirety, made up of I think it was 136 individuals. Than 6 months later and you’re killing minimum 136 Cerberus agents every time you have a damn mission? I’m not even against the low number it’s just the absurdity of that number swell that always gets me. My headcanon is that the Cerberus ground forces were already being produced and used, but the 136 number is only indicative of key personal and researches ala every names Cerberus character you meet, I can see them not counting the ground troops especially with how modified and indoctrinated they are, it’d be very Cerberus move to not even acknowledge them in the grander scheme of who’s who. They tools for those 136 individuals to use

⁠@@TheScientificBackpacIt’s been too long since I’ve last played ME2 (currently running through the trilogy again via LE, and am in the middle of ME1). But I could’ve sworn that EDI mentioned there being an unknown number of Cerberus cells she doesn’t have the information on. This was done intentionally in the event that if one of the cells gets burned, the rest won’t be compromised as a result. If this is the case, and Bioware really wanted to stretch the suspension of disbelief, then I suppose you could theorize that the Illusive Man (assumedly being the only one with an overview of all operations) was already going forward with rapid expansion/militarization during and following the two years it took to complete Project Lazarus. This in and of itself I guess wouldn’t be too big of a leap, given the scope of other known Cerberus research endeavors like Project Overlord. But I also seem to remember Miranda mentioning that Cerberus had sunk a huge amount of their resources into resurrecting Shepard/reconstructing the Normandy. Ultimately, I think it’s a bit far-fetched that TIM was able to create as large of a military force as he had in ME3 given the circumstances. Especially if he really didn’t start until after Shepard finished offing the Collectors, which would have only given him like half a year. That’s not to mention how he was able to keep all of those people/resources under the Alliance’s notice leading up to the Reaper attack. Ultimately probably just Bioware needing to pad out the enemy variety in ME3’s combat beyond the indoctrinated reaper foot-soldiers. Kai Leng alone points to that mindset pretty strongly.

why? its obvious why they had so much power

At the very least it should have been Harbinger's true form or something that would make sense like a keeper or something other than the only child in the universe.

You made what? You mean that peace treaty between geth and quarians after three hundred years of war, a treaty that have lasted about two weeks? Really? How does that prove anything? The Reapers have seen millions of years pass, your 2 weeks treaty is absolutely irrelevant. You lose the scope of the reapers lifespan and knowledge. When they say that true peace is impossible, I believe them. It's just a matter of time. I think Javik talked about the metacon wars or something like that. An organic species that fused themselves with machines... and became a danger to the galaxy. Something like that may have been just one of the many possible dystopian futures for the Quarians and the geth. That story was just starting.

@@Alfonso88279 The problem with your logic is that, if this was even real, is that they were never given the chance to prove that the peace will last. They were told they were guilty before they had the chance to prove otherwise. So yeah, my peace that I created should’ve been enough. That is 300 years of war brought to an end after all. Something nobody even dreamed would be possible.

@@EliseoRocha Again, you are forgetting the lifespan of the reapers. They have been doing this for millions of years. If you were able to get a peace treaty after 300 years of war between two species that are not warrior/like species at all from the start, I warranty you that the reapers have seen millions of peace treaties, that have probably endure more time than yours. You fail to understand that Nazara was right. You are nothing. Humans are a foot note for the reapers, and that's just because of every other species that sacrificed first to give this cycle a chance. Shepard is an anomaly because of the protean beacon. You had nothing to show to the reapers and if you don't choose synthesis, the obvious future for the galaxy is what the reapers said would happen: Non organics will end up wiping out organics. That's a mathematical reality. The other endings talk about "hope", an abstract concept that keeps us fighting but doesn't bring victory.

@@Alfonso88279 With all due respect, that requires players to fill in what is essentially a plot hole with their own headcanon to make sense, because Shepard never has the option to address the peace forged between the Quarians and Geth, nor does the Star Brat bring up whether or not other cycles attempted something similar(headcanon, in general, isn't bad when it comes to interpretive story elements, but when it's needed to fill in a plot hole, that's a problem). Also, there is no guarantee that what the Star Brat said would happen after the destruction ending would actually happen because he himself points out how Shepard's cycle is the first one to ever manage to successfully attach the Crucible to the Citadel, meaning there are factors to this situation that he can't be certain of, even he's over a billion years old. New factors change everything. Also, it is important to address how foundationally contradictory the Star Brat's logic is along with the inability to confront him about it. His solution to stopping organics from making synthetics and getting killed by them is to have synthetics kill and harvest them(which is basically the same as killing them). It gets worse. The Star Brat uses the Mass Relays to streamline the process by having them discover the Relays, and advance their technologies faster through said Relays to the point of building synthetics, and then be killed and harvested by the Reapers. Do you see the problem here? He has inadvertently become the new cause for the very problem he was made to solve by doing this. Shepard for some arbitrary reason doesn't have the dialogue option to tell this kid that his logic is flawed, that he is only making things worse, and that he should just kill all his Reapers, and perish. Sure, you could say that there's no way the kid could be persuaded into doing it, and to that, I say you can't prove me right or wrong because the game doesn't even let you try to take that approach, so we're stuck with the ludicrous decisions that he's left us in his benign stupidity. And before you tell me he's only acting illogically because the Leviathans didn't program him properly, then that brings up another issue. Why would the Leviathans in their presumably cosmic wisdom decide after seeing organics get killed by their synthetics that it would be a good idea to make a synthetic of their own to solve the problem? This makes them look like idiots when they're supposed to be thousands of IQ points smarter than everything else. There is no excuse for that kind of incompetence. Now, concerning the dumb choices that the Star Brat gives, I will have to disagree with you on that too. Blue is bad because that goes against the whole objective Shepard & his buddies were fighting for, destroying the Reapers. Red is bad because it kills all of Shepard's synthetic friends(unless you killed them early), but it gets rid of the Reapers. Refusal is bad because the Reapers kill everyone, leaving the breaking of the cycle in the hands of the next set of civilizations. Green is the worst of them all because you are basically playing god, forcing all life in the galaxy to conform to a new biological state of being, and the game has the gall to act like that's supposed to be the good ending when it is the cruelest of the endings. All four endings are pretty bad(especially green), but between them, red is the best option because you kill the Reapers. Plus, if peace between the Quarians and Geth was possible, then it's possible that the conflict between synthetics and organics afterward can also be resolved. Sure, like you kind of said, it's possible that the peace won't last, but also like you said with the other endings, there is still hope, and more than you realize, where the red ending is concerned. I still firmly believe the ending is arbitrarily stupid no matter what you choose, but when it comes to the morality of the four choices, the red ending is the only one that can be argued as the almost good ending(though honestly, BioWare should retcon the entire Catalyst ending out of existence for literally anything else at this point).

it would have been better to not have a final choice. just let the cruicible always destroy the reapers, just that whether or not you can execute it, and the outcome of it all depends on your choices in the game. like maybe you NEED the rachnii in order to do something, or without the geth then EDI needs to sacrifice herself to fire off the cruicible. things like that, rather than the player choosing red green blue which are artificial, meaningless choices.

@@shriramvenu That's exactly what Bioware promised it would be. They did Red/Blue/Green instead.

@@shriramvenu war assets determine which major characters survive the final conflict would make gathering them feel worthwhile

hear* I'm not proud of you.

I don't care when you play this game, you're going to cry. There will be tears. You can't help it. I have played this game since September endlessly. I think it has helped me mentally deal with my mother's illness and residence at a healthcare facility. This game tests one's morality. We'll all say that we won't do so and so. But when this game puts you to the test, you find out what you will and will not tolerate. There is one thing that I can't bring myself to do. it is kill off Kaidan on Virmire. I can't do it. It just doesn't feel right. There should have been a way to save both or just had one in the first place.

@@mljohnson6072 Completely agree. Thode games were something else. Tbh I never had any huge gripes with ME3. I don't get where the hate comes from.

That mod is so scuffed though. Poor guys really need a better microphone.

@@janisir4529 for legendary edition Audemus’ Ending mod is like a spiritual successor to MEHEM & better quality, if you have LE on pc

@@Dreadwing1000 You can also get the CEM (Citadel Ending Mod) in tandem with AHEM to get the true happy ending experience, as like Big Dan, I too think the Citadel DLC is the true happy ending to the trilogy

idk what you guys call happy ending but the way the game was made to end imo and the best ending is when you make bio and mech live together and become one, that's like the answer to stopping the cycle, the synths would stop human nature to self destruct. And it feels stupid to kill Edi or the geth seeing how much they helped. Actually Geth > Tali and her people, they are the victims and their only fault was becoming self aware like other living creatures. Sheppard dying is what heroes usually do, most people are just dumb and wish their character lived, I assume most of them being console casual gamers.

Look up the happy ending mod. But no I wholeheartedly disagree with you synthesizing ending is a cop out. You have played 3 games where shepherd's only goal was to destroy the reapers he/she wouldn't waver.

@@deathjunky "he/she wouldn't waver" The player is Shepard, the players gets to decide, tbh I always loved the two favorite endings Femshep Renegade Destruction which makes shepard have tunnel vision to destroy the Reapers even if he/she has to sacrifice friendships along the way. And Paragon shepard control which turns him into a moral compass for the universe.

@@deathjunky I would counter that Shepard's experiences with Legion (and the Geth consciousness) and EDI would make her reconsider her goal to destroy the Reapers if it meant the destruction of all synthetic life in the galaxy. I don't think my Shepard could make that sacrifice. If synthesis ended the cycle and stopped the Reapers from destroying advanced organic life, that would be preferable to sacrificing synthetic life for the sake of organic.

Edi isn't technically synthetic she could be backed up and put in another body. Catalyst says shep will die because of all the implants, doesn't make sense its not a reaper. Its just metal devices by that logic all ships, citadel included should be obliterated their "synthetic" going by the games logic. Yet Shep only breathes at the end after the destroy end. So if Shep's alive the quarians should be too. Its just a suit. Crucible was built before quarians had the suits so it shouldn't even target it. Sighhh, its why we all dislike 3s end.

True and when they were making mass effect 3 bioware wrote themselves into a corner and they had about a year and a half to make the game which is less time the original games had.

Come on man.. they managed to wrap up the genophage, quarian and geth conflict, the citadel conflict with the virmire survivor with incredible outcomes and varied choices.. They could have wrapped up the same way.. The main problem is that you all start the same (an alliance soldier), and gain the control and synthesis options without earning it.. You should have been able to side with cerberus to gain the control ending or side with the reapers and gain the synthesis ending..

i don't disagree but given that the ending was apparently written around late 2011, i feel that Bioware pinned themselves at a wall by writing the ending during the final months of development. They should have focused on writing the ending during the game's early phase of development because they had a near perfect blueprint in the form of ME2's Suicide Mission. while it is difficult to incorporate all these different outcomes but if they followed the blueprint of ME2's Suicide Mission, then they could have achieved a near perfect ending where Shepard destroy the Reapers but there are a variety of outcomes (based from the mission tasks and EMS points overall).

Yea maybe one day they. Can make a game where the game creates itself as you make choices but I think that's pretty tough to do

@@Johnny-ux7yi Pretty much what I expected from the ending. Instead, Casey Hudson thought having a fan-boner over Deus Ex was a good idea and copy-pasta the ending was the only solution (BTW, it's the ORIGINAL Deus Ex game from 2000 he plagiarized. Look at the endings for that game and you'll know what I mean.)

Yeah, forced slow walks are annoying. I’m also part of a very small minority that liked all three games, including the endings in ME3

1 had god awful combat and PLENTY of glitches... but after replaying the 360 version through again recently... I fucking hate 2. Attrocious UI, hollow and meaningless character arcs, god awful customization and weapon options, FUCKING AMMO BEING FORCED INTO THE GAME WITH NERFED LEVELING AND A RUINED INFILTRATOR CLASS, boring as FUCK linear levels with an awful final boss and forced race to the finish at a random arbitrary point that doesnt allow you to get to know legion without saving side missions for the epilogue, with major elements of the story ripped out and turned into DLC because fuck EA... major step down from 1 as an RPG turning the game into an action 3rd person shooter with paltry excuses for RPG elements.... 3 had buttery smooth and satisfying (if rather repetitive) combat with improved leveling chimera'd from the best parts of 1 and 2. Plenty of writing complaints because EA Bioware... but the game gets far too much hate.

Hot take time: Priority Earth doesn't really look much worse than actual London.

@@janisir4529 Ah, a fellow Brit

@@gaven5479 I'm just a one time tourist

When they were first out I played them through dozens of times. Probably the most I have played any non love service game. I have just finished a full back to back insanity play through and I am blown away how much they still stand out.

@@bigmol1633 I’m on my 6th or 7th play through of the series I think and I still can’t get sick of them.

THANK you. I feel fucking insane, I really don't get what the problem is with the ending. I loved every second of this series.

Same. I played the trilogy on PC, PS3 and then the LE on XBox One X and now on PS5. It has a hold on me like no other game.

I haven’t played any of them in 10 years Just finished the remasters the other day, most of 1 and all of 2 and 3 (I couldn’t stand 1s gameplay, it’s way too dated and I actually never played it before. Fantastic story, but like KOTOR I can’t play those games again, gaming has just jumped so far ahead to where it wasn’t enjoyable to play anymore) and I couldn’t believe how much of an influence this series had on my most formative years. In that time since I’ve played them, I’ve been in management, and realized that my main approach to it (building personal connections with employees and genuinely caring about them as people to bolster morale) was exactly how I played Paragon Shepard. I owe so much to this universe and it didn’t take til literally a few days ago for me to realize it. Now that I finished it, that shit hit hard. Now I got nothing to play, nothings gonna hit the same for a while. Yeah, 3s ending is kind of crappy, but it’s still my favorite to play. The tone was nailed perfectly, the gameplay is the best of the trilogy, and there’s so many quality of life improvements that it’s one I can easily play again, and again, and again without burnout.

Well, the latest poster for ME4 implies Geth are involved. I think that they will canonize the destroy ending, and somehow allow EDI and the Geth to continue.

Miranda and Jack should've made the cut in ME3. It was hugely disappointing that we couldn't spend more time with these awesome characters, and their romance suffered as a result.

completely agree. I love jack and always romance her. but she has so little screen time!

Well, I kind of liked having tons of options - sure some characters were bland (Kaidan and Ashley IMHO - especially Kaidan!) and annoying (Jacob, not to mention that he's a cheater! Damned, you were with Shep, no knocking up some scientists and then come crying for help...should have been able to punch him really hard! Just like we should have been able to tell everybody, repeatedly: I TOLD YOU SO! - From the annoying Turian Councillor, to the lying Asari (who kept a beacon for themselves!) and the damn Salarian, too and the Alliance leadership as well!)...but over all, the romances are one of the best things in any ME game :)

I feel like Dragon Age does romance so much better than ME. They could've just copy paste the DA romance formula and improve it a little. lol

It´s not a problem in the first game, because Shepard is just getting to know the realities of commanding his own ship, and the whole game kind of puts you on the clock from a certain point. However, there should definitely have been options for having romance way earlier in ME2 and ME3. It feels especially akward with Liara in ME3 after finishing the Shadow Broker DLC. Aside from a few playful conversations, you get no indication that the romance is even happening until right before Thessia. I get that the ME tradition is that the sex happens before the final mission, but by the third game, it´s just ridiculous. There should have been an option to just lock into a romance with her right away and have her wake up next to Shepard when he has his nightmares. Even other previously romanced characters should have had that option. I mean, the world is ending, and people are wondering whether they should hook up or not?

Absolutely. I had 8271 assets, which is almost the maximum you can get, and I had all the stuff that goes into the Crucible design. Yet, I couldn't choose to destroy only the Reapers and save EDI and the Geth, who I helped grow and with whom I brokered peace, gaining their assistance in the final battle? I had to lump all synthetic life together, instead of deciding the Reapers were the stagnant force that destroyed life, and EDI and the Geth chose to be better, work with organics, and grow? That really pissed me off.

The geth tried wholesale slaughter instead of trying to fight for peace.

I agree Harbinger needed to be more present and god forbid speak in ME 3. They built him up so much in 2 that it seems like they forgot about him I’m 3.

All they had to do was make Harbinger possess the Illusive Man on the Citadel. But no.

I felt the same. WTF was with the whining about the multiplayer? Sure they messed up in the beginning, making it mandatory, but then later they fixed it to being optional. But Dan is whining about having to do everything correctly to get the best ending? Seriously? That's kind of the fookin point of a game, right? Do everything correctly, and you get the best ending. I am sick to death of hearing people whine about multiplayer, and having to do everything a specific way to get the best ending. It's kind of the point of games. ME:OT is meant to be played different ways, and experience very different cut scenes as a result.

Was It so hard to make the Catalyst be a goddamn Death Star like It was implied to be since the start of the game and like any other space opera to begin with? Seriosly, they could have insisted in being unique in so many other aspects of this game, but no, they had to complicate the only concept that should be as simple as PRESSING A BUTTON.

Honestly, they could have gone for an ending where no matter what you do the Reapers win and the cycle continues. Even *that* level of piss-in-your-face would not have been as bad as what they did

I remember in the days leading up to the release of Mass Effect 3 (I only was introduced to the series about a year prior to its release, and had pretty much played nothing but ME and ME2 during that year, over and over), I was thinking that they better not introduce some kind of deus ex machina to solve the Reaper problem. Which is, of course, what they did with the Crucible and the Star Child. So that was extremely disappointing. Normally I'd also be wary of choices being relegated to a mathematical formula, like War Assets, but I'm okay with that here because the sheer number of choices makes anything else unwieldy. But as you said, I would have been much happier with an ending that used the combined might of all the races, or at least all those you recruited, to defeat the Reapers conventionally. Or at least some component that was like that.

@@dereka5017 Thumbs up. My experience was the same as yours. Bought ME2 about a year before ME3 came out. Played 3 times. Then I decided I wanted to change things, so I looked at the comic that allows you to do that, but then saw that ME1 wasn't much more expensive. So I downloaded that, and then went looking for a physical copy of ME3. Went to the closest Best Buy, but they were out, so an associate looked in their database, and found that only one was left in all of Jacksonville, so he called that store for me, and had them put it behind the counter at Customer Service. I drove straight there and bought it. I had the N7 patch sewn onto a high quality black hat sold by a local uniform shop. I still have that hat, though it's seen better days, lol.

Kie leing, cerberus ANSWER TO ANAKIN SKYWAKLKER!!???

"Barbie with guns". Lol, agreed. In ME1&2 she had a modest appearance of a regular soldier, whereas in ME3 she apparently becomes a supermodel as a side gig. Yet Kaiden remains mostly unchanged, because apparently no one cares about Kaiden. The biggest irony of her change of appearance in ME3 is the fact that she was quite a feminist in ME1, so during one optional cutscene, if you chose the bottom "renegade" lines which makes Shepard rant about humanity's beautiful women, Ashley makes quite a snarky response: "If you want to see me in skirt and high heels, I want dinner first." I guess Shepard must've taken her out on quite a dinner just before the start of ME3.

@@GTAVictor9128 big time.

@@GTAVictor9128 What is the deal with her having heels as part of her armor? That makes zero sense. Also, her dialogue sucks. In the first game, she had some pretty intelligent insights into life and such, and read deep poetry. Suddenly, in ME3, she is either drunk or still whining and complaining. She is great in a fight, but her character isn't done well at all. Tali has such amazing growth and comes to believe in herself and separate herself from her father, and Liara also really shows growth. Also, and this is just a former soldier complaining, but she went from a high-ranking non-commissioned officer (I'm guessing Operations Chief is an E-8) to a Lieutenant Commander, which is an O-4, three ranks and about ten years of service as a commissioned officer. She is a Marine, so they could have given her a Commission for sure, but she would have been a Lieutenant. Since Shepard calls her Lieutenant half the time anyway, instead of Commander, which is what you call a Lieutenant Commander when speaking to them, then it would make sense. Also, she is a Marine, so she wouldn't go to Lieutenant Commander anyway, but to Major. I had previously thought about romancing her with Male Shepard through the whole trilogy, but I decided against it with what little you get from her as a character in ME3. Even the ME2 love interests, other than Jacob, all give you more and grow more than Ashley. I'm not saying Jacob doesn't grow, but rather that he isn't an option for you in ME3, since he is attached to another woman and having a baby.

Really glad I’m not the only one who feels like Ashley’s character got way worse in ME3. They really stripped her of all her charm and confidence, yet some people think she’s better like this cause there’s no racism; but Ashley had more than that going for her and it’s gone too.

@@justaguy8218 what is bonkers is the character dialog of her that is bugged in ME3 since the original release of the game that Bioware has been ignoring.

I would have given Cerberus less prominence. We are fighting the Reapers and yet half the time in the whole game we are constantly fighting a human "black ops" organization so powerful and resourceful that it challenges the might of the human Earth Alliance. WTF?

@@sergeontheloose agreed, I felt the game should’ve focused more on the reapers as well.

@@XunluT Question: Do you think that would have been too Saturday morning cartoonish of an ending? Meaning… after how bad this was and how many people died would it have been too over the top to hug and laugh after it all ended? I do agree that War Assets should have dictated your success of your final mission and lot just the color of explosion fans god.

I agree. Big Dan should do that! I have never succeeded at having all squad mates live and the warm fuzzy ending. But I am not a huge fan of Multiplayer either and you have to do those in the original version.

This alone should get you free drinks. You hit the nail on the head here.

Absolutely and positiviely livid

It felt so hollow, and unfulfilling

I'm also a huge fan of the n7 fury making fun of loot boxes

I thought the Geth-Quarian arc changed writers? Like I'm sure I remember reading or hearing somewhere that the guy writing them in ME2 explicitly said he didn't want to do the generic "I want to be a real boy" motive for the Geth instead making the Geth want to become a true hivemind and look down on the individuality of organics. But then in ME3 the Geth go and do the "I want to be a real boy" motive where they suddenly want individuality because a different writer took over even going so far as to retcon 'the question' from "Do these units have a soul" to "Does this unit have a soul".

Because synthesis is a bad ending for a multitude of reasons. It makes no logical sense that merging synthetics and organics would instill peace in the galaxy. It's like the developers forgot that there's other conflicts beyond synthetics vs. organics. Last time I checked there was no synthetic vs. organic elements to the Rachni Wars, or the Krogan Rebellions, but apparently we're supposed to believe that as long as solve the Geth Quarian conflict everything in the Universe is now paradise. Synthesis is Shepherd making a choice that forces the rewriting of all of the DNA of every being in the Galaxy. If he wasn't dead already he should be on trial for war crimes for doing that. Oh you completely rewrote everyone's DNA so that medical knowledge is completely back to square one? Up against the wall with you now. The crucible should have done nothing more than rendered all the Reapers and anything infected with Reaper code inert and awaiting the next command. After that there should have been a scene where the council races are all attempting to decide what to do with the Reapers. Paragon option is to destroy all Reaper tech to prevent it from hurting anyone else again. Renegade is keeping the Reapers around and using the technology for personal gain. You gain more technological advancement but you risk indoctrination and you've just kicked off a galactic arms race.

​@thisismyyoutubecommentacco6302 Not to mention the fact that the "synthesis" option basically implies a hivemind and loss of individuality. The impression it gives off is one of being put on SSRIs and antipsychotics when you were already sane. Completely dystopian, "off" and the greater context of indoctrination, loss of conscious humanity and identity is straight up gross. This is not the good ending. I'd rather the main character be killed and all technology be wiped than remove everyone's "soul". But if you choose red, you're punished for it. You die. Your team gets stranded in the middle of nowhere. Intergalactic travel is no more. It's gloomy, depressing. It doesn't matter how many good decisions you made. There is no better ending because they didn't think people would have a problem with becoming artificial. Fake. And they do, and should.

Cringe lol

Hit the nail on the head here. I expected all of those earlier decisions to heavily influence the actual ending themselves, not silo themselves in their little corner.

Pretty sure Shepard living was added after the game came out

@@Mr_Snifflez Nope. It was available at launch, but you were FORCED to do Multiplayer as Dan said.

I agree. For me the ending wasn't even that bad since i played the trilogy in the legendary edition.

what do you get if you pick engineer?

@@legion6211 oh well when the game asks you if you wanna listen to Aria or the other girl about killing all the civilians if you are an engineer you can just say nah bro I'm too smart for this and auto win both choices, then Aria complements you saying your better then the rest of her grunts.

“smudboy where my standards were in retrospect not feasible” how was it not feasible?

Yeah, agree, I am of those that criticize some the things pointed in this vid and I am also sour because all of it to this very day, but I do reconize the scope of what EAware aimed to archive, it was a monstrous task, a shame they weren't capable or couldn't or didn't wanted to do, cos they didn't add or change anything for the LE🤷‍♂️

You will. Andromeda is great. Look at it like a new chapter in Mass Effect, not a new chapter “of” Mass Effect. The storyline can be a little overwrought at times (it’s a game though) Great game, great ending; gives you the feels!