I think Mass Effect 3 is at it's strongest when telling the smaller more personal stories like Tuchanka, Rannoch, or the Ardat-Yakshi Temple, Utukku, and Grissom Academy. But it fails completely with the larger plot points, like Cerberus, the Reapers, and the Crucible. The problem is that Bioware never had a plan moving forward, and at best, had rough ideas of how the war would play out and end. Even Drew Karpyshyn, the lead writer for the first two games had no idea where the plot would go. The Dark Energy storyline was practically in it's early drafts, barely even mentioned outside of the Haestrom mission, and the way the war was going to be supposedly resolved according to him was Shepard luring the Reapers to the Relays and blowing them up, which doesn't sound all that compelling either. It's a shame that such a fantastic series had to have such bad end, but it is what it is.
Also factor in that EA was breathing down their necks. Plus they were the ones that demanded multiplayer and the DLCs including relegating Javik to a dlc
Bioware should have planned the trilogy out from the beginning. In fairness, they couldn't have seen how successful ME2 would be, and how EA would pressure them so much for 3 to be rushed out. Bioware had talent, but they didn't plan out ahead wel enough, DA has the same issues. And now, well, the studio is a shell of what it could have been.
story wise, I really can't think of a perfect ending, the series had way too many themes going on, Gameplay wise they definitly could of come up with something better than marauder shields
Disagree. ME3 was amazing. Legendary Edition was my first experience or ME, but I found ME3 to be incredibly moving. The tone, with Shepard looking more and more distraught as they near the conclusion... It crushed me. What an amazing finale. Of course not perfect. But I was very satisfied with the end. Fortunately I am an OCD completionist, so I got the Shepard gasp... that might be part of my love for this game, because I was CONVINCED that Shep would die... the whole third act was farewells!
With retrospect, I really think that Leviathan could have been the main plot for either ME2 or even for ME3, rather than just be a DLC. It's just the foundation and core of the Mass Effect universe we're exploring with the themes of cosmic horror, space exploration and detective & mystery investigation
Personally, I really dislike the synthesis ending. It is way to perfect and doesn´t actually explain how it works. What exactly is a fusion of AI and organics? Does every organic get an onboard AI to...do what exactly? How would that be different than cybernetics (which are weirdly enough almost completly absent in Mass Effect)? Does it link organic brains and AI together so they can somehow truly understand each other? Just...HOW? I bet for Mass Effect 4 they most likely will go with destroy as the canon ending, as the destruction of the mass relays can also be used to do a bit of a reset of the setting. Maybe we see a fractured galaxy, where all sorts of small realms have developed since they where cut of from each other. I just hope they don´t make the control ending canon and we have to fight the Reapers again, just with evil Shepard as their leader. Please no!
Hello, nice work as always; i just want to point out a thing about the plot hole that you mention about the reaper choosing not to use the citadel and blocking mass relays etc: not to say that they shouldn't be able to do something like that, but if you remember in mass effect 1 on Elios (hoping i remember the name correctly), before reaching for the conduit, it is said that some prothean scientists survived the cicle and, despite not being enough to save their race, they went (through the conduit) to the citadel and modified it so that the next cicle the reapers wouldn't be able to take control of it, at least remotely, supposedly. This doesn't really resolve the plot hole but i suppose it can be used as a kind of explanation. Again, keep up the good work, i really enjoy the channel.
I bet the guy has a bunch of clones working with him. I think it's also fair to register here that this channel is a haven of passionate and professional content among the predominant yt/"gaming community" toxicity these days.
I need more time to play 1 chapter of let's say pathfinder than he takes for playing a game 100%. To be fair choosing builds for companions takes forever. :D But yaeh you start the games together and a few days later he posts his 100% review video while you are still in the early levels. :o
You can do all achievs on ME LE in one playthrough (as I did), except for one; reach lvl 10 on a weapon on ME3 (because you must replay the game to unlock this option). But mostly of other games are so hard do 100%. This guy is a hero.
The Javik thing is even more messed up than him just being a DLC character. He originally was going to be The Catalyst. But when EA wanted a DLC character, they had to strip that role from him, because they couldn't make a plot-crucial character a DLC. And yes, ME3 is a game that feels like it was written by two teams that didn't talk to each other until post...which it was. And neither team had an ending that they even liked.
I'd heard it a bit differently. Javik was going to be the Catalyst, yes, but Bioware couldn't find a way to make that work while still making the player feel like they were the heart of the story, and not just a tag along. The Javik as Catalyst idea was dropped late enough in development that the dialogue is still there in the leaked script, leaked about 6 months before release. It was too much work to take him out of the Catalyst role but still make him integral to the game in time for the game "going gold." So they cut him out, wrote the game to disc, then spent the next 3 months before release reintegrating him in the form of DLC while the rest of the team worked on bugs for the Day 1 patch. So not quite evil EA. More that what they were doing wasn't working and they didn't have time to fix it
He was never really a DLC character. Much of the DLC from these games came in the box day one at no cost. Not pre-order, just in the box. It was like a 20 digit pin you typed into xbox live and got the dlc free. They did it to prevent people from buying the game used. The pin was a one time code that people who got the game used couldnt take advantage of. Jarvik was always included in the box. There was never a point in this games existance where you could buy it new and it didnt come with that dlc included. Youre spreading gamer legend wives tales.
Something that I dont see mentioned as much anymore is the entire plot of ME3 got rewritten because the original one was leaked online. Originally there was going to be a larger focus on dark matter, and actually one of Tali's mission in ME2 was supposed to lead into. The one where she says stars are dying faster than normal and the sun is burning you if you're not in shade. Anyways, I think this is also why leviathan is what it is, because it was made after the game launched to help tie up the new plot. Anyways at least citadel was an absolute banger
I just made a comment saying this lol... way ahead of me.. cant remember where but I remember also the original writer/game director even said the plot was entirely different and its not just because of a leak.. more EA wasnt a fan. Dont quote me on that but the game def had production issues especially towards the end. also makes sense since there were tons of threads in the first and second game.. especially the dying star thing with tali that went absolutely no where.
What added insult to injury about the endings with the original release is that Bioware went on record shortly before to say that it wouldn't be a "choose end A B or C" type of deal when it was exactly that. Add to that the slap that was the day 1 DLC companion, bullshit "franchise" integration for the war effort and the whole Cerberus storyline debacle, that why it left such a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people. Of course now with the LE, a couple of those points are not present anymore and you also didn't had to wait between ME2 and ME3 which make it so you cant get caught in the hype. I'm still mad about Cerberus going from this shadowy organization doing dubious things for (what they perceived as) the good of humanity to maniacal cartoon villains putting the logo of their secret org everywhere.
Andromeda is fine. It could have been way better, the potential is clearly visible. Janky as fuck, but decent gameplay. I hope they revisit this sometime, if they manage to do justice with the sequel to the main series.
Hoo, I am glad you don´t belong to the group of people who hate the endings like it´s some humanity erasing virus. Yes, they are not the best, they definitely did rush the game and the endings, but the extended cut did improve it and overall trilogy ending is still something that shatters me emotionally every time I play these games.
@@p4radigm989 I would continue this "debate" however seeing your "tone" I think I´ll enjoy my day a bit more if I´m just gonna ignore you. In case you decide to have a normal decent gaming discussion, I have no problem coming back and maybe even explaining myself, but till then have a good one.
I can explain why Javik was a DLC! This was back in the day when games were made for consoles but Gamestop was reselling games and the publisher would see none of that residual sales from the new players of their game, since it may get sold 2-3x more as used. So! Publishers would break a large part off that would seem important (and was important!) to the game to get those used copies to generate some revenue for the publisher. This actually happened in ME2 as well, as the character Zaeed Massani was also busted out in the same way.
As I remember Reapers couldn't turn off mass relays because Protheans reprogrammed Keepers to ignore orders from the Reapers. It's supposed to be like this reapers leave 1 reaper behind (whom we fight in the first game) him send a signal to Keepers (Alenn lifeform on Citadel) they activate mass relay for Reapers and block it for other races. But Proteans reprogrammed them before they die
Which is why sovereign has to physically go there at the end of ME1, to do it manually. Which is pretty easy for an entire fleet of reapers to do if they can just teleport the entire thing to them.
@@MortismalGaming I seem to remember a dev clarifying that the Citadel was able to "lock" the relays around it, which is why the Reapers aren't able to stage an attack on it in ME3 during the bulk of the game. Which makes sense because in ME1 Joker asks you to unlock them so the human fleet can join the battle Presumably the Reapers are amassing a number of indoctrinated on the Citadel via refugees, which grow over the course of the game, or the Illusive Man unlocks them to allow the Reapers to take control of it. The Reapers then move it physically via the Mass Relays Which all makes sense, it's just, it needed to be *in* the actual game
Bioware has never been great with the overall plot of their games, they're (were) good with the details (side quests, characters, lore). So a franchise where the big evil bad guy is basically space Cthulu was always gonna have to end with a last minute macguffin or deus ex machina and therefore unsatisfactory (does this word even exist in english ?). Plus it's pretty obvious the last mission has been rushed compared to Rannoch or Tuchanka. But the journey ? To quote the end of the Citadel DLC : "-We've had a good ride. (love interest) -The best." (Shepard)
All I wanted for an ending was to humbly spend the rest of my days with dear Tali in a peaceful Toussaint vineyard, was that too much to ask? 😢 oh glorious Shodan, why have you forsaken me?
In a weird way the ME trilogy reminds me of Fallout New Vegas; both incredibly flawed, with 99% of those flaws being the fault of time crunch and impossible demands from publishers or management. But even after all of that, beloved in their own ways and games that most people will never forget. I still think ME3 is my favorite from the entire series and I'm sad to see it will never get the following up love it deserved. Sure, maybe Bioware will somehow spawn a perfect new Mass Effect out of their ass in a few years but I just don't see that happening
The multiplayer was a lot of fun, giving you boat loads of new abilities to play with on character classes representing races we never got to have companions for like Batarians and Volus. The ending will always sadden me, but the series still remains some of the best games I've ever played.
Javik was worse than just being DLC. He was the exemplar of day one DLC that ships on the disc with the game but you have to pay EA extra money to unlock him. One of the many things that pissed so many people off about this game on release, along with the original endings being terrible and requiring playing the multiplayer to get the least terrible versions of.
@@jmmywyf4lyf Yeah, but for example, Shale wasn't as important to the Dragon Age storyline than Javik was for Mass Effect. He was to be an integral part until EA decided to cut him out just for the sake of more DLC.
It's a shame that the multiplayer co-op is not included in the legendary edition. I remeber playing the demo and i liked more the multiplayer than the singleplayer. It was a co-op horde mode with game objectives and it was very fun.
I'll not elaborate too on the endings, as I already did that extensively on your video about five more unsatisfying endings... However, Mass Effect 3 as a whole is janky about how it treats the previous choices... You have memorable moments with vastly different outcomes depending on previous and current choices (the Genophage episode, the Quarian/Geth war) and there's bits that almost ignore what you did (the Rachni bits... where there is a Rachni queen even if you did kill the last Rachni queen in the first game... handwaved with a "oh, the reaper just created it with spare parts"). There's the bits about the citadel and the overall strategy of the Reapers you mentionned... and the "oh, Reapers are just bugged AI" explanation that undermine completely the Eldritch Horror kind of vibe the Reapers had during the first two games. It's almost like you take Cthulhu and explain his behavior as "Oh, he's just giant squid mutated by oil spills, it made it psychic and not quite right in the mind..." The funny thing is, I'm convinced that this explanation - given through the Levianthan DLC - is some sort of damage control from Bioware because of the fan uproar around the Starchild ex Machina nonsense... And then, there's the option to "autodialogue" which doesn't feel right in a game where your choice is supposed to be meaningful. Either this option is out of place or your choices don't matter, but there's no in between. ... ... Eh, I'll add some two cents about the endings anyway. Synthesis doesn't count, it doesn't make any sense and is forcefed - sorry, heavily implied to be the correct ending - to you as the best one makes me wonder what were the writers thinking at this point. "You know what ? War is horrible, let's make peace... everyone will be the same organico-synthetico-blob thanks to the Catalyst... How ? errrr... Reapers are powerful and unknooooowable, of course they'd have the means to do so. That's not space magic, just science so alien we cannot comprehend. So yeah, peace and love and everyone is half organic, half synthetic, best ending !" While the destroy ending do destroy the reapers, it as arguably the worst in my opinion. First, it destroys the Geth. Second, it destroys the relays (I already told how it's a galactic size minor apocalypse at best). Third, it destroys advanced enough synthetic stuff... including Shepard's own implants, essentially killing him/her (unless you get enough galactic readyness... which doesn't make sense narratively speaking). And if Shepard's implants can be destroyed by this, we can safely assume that any existing technology will be too... including Solus or Quarian life support system, meaning that there's a chance a lot of Quarian will die from disease, stranded in the Sol system. But I'm sure the writer didn't even think about that. From where I stand, it feels like they put the Geth and Shepard's life in the collateral damage just to push people away from this ending. Control ending seems the best by default at this point but it feels kind of "meh" for the most part. The secret "eat my bullet stupid AI with stupid ideas" feels... here, how I see it : Player : Whoa, the ending are disappointing as f... I mean, choice A, B or C, one being meh, another making no sense and the third having so much drawback to shy away people ? I'm not taking any of this ! Devs : Well, FU then. You loose, the Reapers have won. Player : At least this one makes sense... And I'm ranting again...
Instead of Javick being a DLC it should have been James, and it should have come with a free copy of "Paragon Lost". That would have made more sense and I'm pretty sure people would have liked James more if they did it that way.
Leviathan was a mistake for me. The whole point of the Reapers were that they were these unknowable, impossible to understand force out there. The fact we didn't know what they really wanted and why they were doing what they were doing was the point. Explaining the big bad evil space squids just took the mystery and threat out of them.
If the reapers come around every 50,000 years, and Asari live over 2,000 years, then there are only a maximum of 25 generations of Asari. That's incredibly few. That's less than 1,000 years of human generational history. The Asari should practically know the Reapers.
@@danepatterson8107 Asari don't live for two thousand years, they live for a max of a thousand. Only Krogan live longer due to their secondary and tertiary organs and regen.
@@danepatterson8107 my grandma is 70, my mother 46, my niece is 3. with the math here there are atleast 4 generations in a single lifespan of 70+ years. a generation is not the max lifespan of just one individual. you could easily double if not triple that number
The Reapers always remind me of the Shivans from Freespace 2. Big bad aliens that fly evil black/red ships, destroying everything and everyone in their path. They give no motive, nobody knows their goals and they don´t communicate at all which is why the humans name their ships after all sorts of occult deites, even the race is named after an Indian god of destruction (Shiva). No matter how many times you achieve a tactical victory, in the end they always retaliate in an overwhelming show of power. And they are so terrifying because you know almost nothing about them. Where they come from, how many of them are out there, all of that is completly unknown even at the end of the game.
@@danepatterson8107 No, the Asari shouldn't because they were too primitive or the Reapers were lead on to believe that they were during the Prothean's cycle. The Reapers ignored anything that they deemed to primitive because they weren't capable of making synthetics that would eventually kill them (if the original ending was in place, the determining factor would have been capable of using technology that created Dark Energy since that would threaten the fabric of the galaxy). It also wouldn't make much sense if the Asari knew of the Reapers because the Reapers hid their existence until they wanted to harvest the cycle. They wouldn't leave the Asari alive because that would allow the Asari to prepare for what is coming and potentially beat the Reapers.
It felt like they really wanted the return to Earth moment to be a finale, and then shoehorned the whole teleport the Citadel thing to allow that to be the showdown. That and the whole little kid thing never really connected to me. Earth is home, sure, but it was never a focus in the series and just using the Citadel by itself would have been better.
I really enjoyed the lore and games of ME, like reading all the outside lore from the game and the lore steel-book that I got with the first game ME2 is still my favourite of the series, the companion stories and Collector mission where brilliant, to me that last great story telling to come from BioWare Even then as a massive fan of ME, I still haven’t brought myself to complete Andromeda, it’s upgraded art engine is nice, but the story is trash
The shore leave missions are the best fan service I have ever experienced in a video game and I can't believe if I would have killed Wrex in the first game I wouldn't experience the funniest parts of it
Totally respect opinions, and I don't believe my opinion is in any way better than another person's, but I really like the AI explanation for the Reapers. It's a pretty common sci-fi explanation if you read a lot, but to see it used in a big budget game is neat IMO. The big AI saw organic life being destroyed over and over by its own creation, and we even see that in the current game time with the Geth. Being able to create peace between the Geth and Quarians shows the flaw in the Reapers thinking before the final confrontation. Yeah, the three choices were garbage, but the plot as a whole is AMAZING.
I normally don't comment on videos more than a month old, but hearing the name Javik dredged up some bitter memories and I had to vent. You see, at the time my modem was cheap: no Wifi or whatnot so my Xbox had no way of getting online, and even if it did Australian internet is so terrible it was a nightmare to download anything big. As a result I was cut off from this major piece of lore which infuriated me no end. It was the first major time I can remember the fears about the pitfalls of the DLC model coming true. Corporate greed cut a vital part of game for extra pennies. EDIT: combine that with being unable to get the updated endings and... yeah, my memories of Mass Effect 3 are rather mixed.
For the secret ending, you can actually access it in a more natural Mass Effect-ey way through dialogue rather than shooting the space ghost. Instead, you can keep refusing the options that the space ghost offers. Shepard will question it, saying this is a big decision that he can't make for everyone, and that he wants to end the war on his terms. It's actually pretty perfect in that Shepard stays true to himself until the end. The only downside is the Reapers win, lol. (Although, if we could remove the 'Reapers win' part, as a head canon, I would argue that it's best ending. Shepard stays true to himself, and I don't think it's far fetched for him to believe he could win. None of the prior cycles had united all the races. And this cycle was preparing based on info from the previous cycle. Seems pretty perfect to me.)
Your war readiness could have been what decided victory. The story lines you complete could have in turn dictated how well each group survived. Instead we got an arbitrary pick a color ending. The series needed a true final ending in which your decisions leading to that ending changed how ready the galaxy was to survive afterwards. In the end shepherd needed to die.
Ironically enough it’s the ending I got on my first, and so far, only playthrough. I figured it would be in character to reject whatever the space kid was spouting. Too bad it ended in the reapers winning but I still like the choice itself regardless of its outcome.
The big problem for me is that a lot of the writing was all over the place. It's almost like there were 2 different writers, or writing teams, that were not communicating with each other on what they were writing. The most obvious one is how everyone kept saying you can't defeat the Reapers conventionally, and yet you do exactly that more than once. Or how Anderson, who was more of the diplomat, decided to stay on earth to fight, while sending Shepard to the Citadel to beg the council for help, the same council that has never listened to him the whole trilogy. Just stuff like that throughout the game that really made it difficult to buy into. The combat was the best in the trilogy, and the smaller, personal stories were good, including the follow ups.
Anderson actually directly says to you that he's never liked or been good at being a diplomat in ME2 if you make him the councilor, he is definitely a leader of soldiers and not a negotiator. On the contrary it's possible that Shepard spends the entire games of 2 proving how good they are at making people work with each other, and both Anderson and Hackett state that they've read all your mission reports. So I don't think the decision to send Shepard is that out of the blue.
Man, this game series. It took that same BioWare trajectory as Dragon Age, though more gradual (DA1 was an old school crpg masterpiece reborn, 2 was a rushed disappointment, and 3 was a trash single player mmo (albeit with some great characters)) ME1 was a bit clunky and dry at times, but an amazing intro to a new universe and as good a sci-fi rpg as you’re likely to get. ME2 was a fun space adventure with the gameplay refined. In particular the characters and side quests were excellent… but the main story was forgettable and it ended on perhaps the stupidest, most stakes-and-lore-undermining boss I’ve ever encountered. A great game nonetheless. The series was in a good place to continue. Then they _never made any more Mass Effect games again._ *never.* I’m not sure which series stung more, the way it turned out. Probably Dragon Age, since it was a big part of bringing back a genre that had stagnated in the classic, dense and deep crpg and then utterly gave up on that after the (excellent) dlc for DA1. At least plenty of other studios continued in that direction and we got the western rod renaissance I started and we’re still feeling
Nice review. Yeah I was surprised to learn about the furore over the ending, probably because I only played LE and it was apparently somewhat improved. Over all I think I enjoyed 3 more than 2. One single gripe is the scanning missions. Contrived (and nosy) acquisition. Less tedious but now pointless planetary scanning mini game, UI didn’t show progress, or remind you where to go to awkwardly confront a stranger with the fact you had eavesdropped on them months ago. The last part could have been improved if quests could be completed using that com room on the ship rather than visiting the citadel.. and even overhearing them in the first place shouldn’t be vital. If you find some artificial or whatever some intelligence service should be able to locate people who might be interested in it.
I enjoyed the character stories and interactions. I enjoyed the combat. I did not enjoy how collecting war assets eventually just becomes “ping three times and dodge the reapers” over and over and over, while wasting credits on fuel. That was neither fun, nor interesting, and the “eavesdrop on people to get the quest” mechanic was also bad. I also hated the unskippable awkward slow motion dream sequences with the dumb kid. I’m sure BioWare had some deep meaning about PTSD or something, but the message was lost in the garbage. I think I’ve seen each ending a couple of times, both release and extended cut, and with the legendary edition I get to just before The Cerberus base, do the Citadel DLC, and that’s the end of the game. I just head canon that they destroy the reapers and everyone lives, because the actual endings are dumb. The secret ending just feels like pettiness on BioWare’s part. Upon release, with the backlash surrounding the endings, there were lots of posts, and probably videos, where people would just keep shooting the star kid as catharsis. So BioWare, being mad that their genius was being challenged by the masses, took that away. In fact, while not directly related to the mechanics of the game, BioWare’s response to the negative criticism came off as generally childish, unprofessional, and disconnected. That, as much as their poor performance since, did a number on their reputation. They really, really didn’t like people posting interviews from a month before release where Casey Hudson talked about how there definitely wouldn’t be just and A, B, or C ending. Whoops.
It is a weird rollercoaster of a game. Particularly regarding the story, on the one hand you have some of the best character arcs and subplots on one side hitting some great notes, then you have an overarching story that feels so rushed and was doing the bare minimum which for a series like this is lacking. You are right about the use of the AI big bad trope, it doesn’t work if you have to make random jumps in logic to make it fit your story, it feels amateurish as far a sci fi goes. Still enjoyed the game but the story good and bad sticks with me. Thanks for great video Mort I have enjoyed this series.
Was so weird, playing all three games as a paragon, then choosing the renegade (destroy) ending. Felt like the writers didn't understand the world they had created.
Destroy is not the renegade ending. If anything, it's the most paragon of the endings. Control is a stupid ending that will bite the galaxy in the ass later down the line, because Shepard will come to the same conclusion like the original AI, that the organics and synthetics will always wage war and try to eradicate each other. Synthesis is just you changing everybody against their will and turning them into androids. I know that the destroy ends with all of the synthetic life dying but it's the only ending where the reaper threat doesn't hang over the galaxy's head like the sword of Damocles. I know that the geth and EDI die, but they die free and for a greater good.
@@roboute-Terra exactly. I was saying renegade, as it's portrayed as the red choice, and it feels like the storytellers were implying that we should either embrace the artificial or control it, while destroying it was what an unenlightened barbarian would do.
@@sandrogamer30018 On the portion of the video where he talks about the Citadel DLC, when they all take a picture, Jack is sitting next to Shepard, and they are looking at each other. That only happens to romance characters.
@@sandrogamer30018 I mean, it's literally the same Shepard that's in the rest of the whole video... The purple hair and all Unless you want to say that he took the whole playthrough from someone else, in which case I am inclined to say that Mort would've stated that, and for sure credited them.
My biggest disappointment in ME3 is how it handled the story missions. In ME1 and 2 when you're done with the prologues you're given a list of story missions and you can do them in whatever order you want until the midgame, then the galaxy opens up again until the endgame. In ME3 you're given one story mission at a time, making things very linear. The only choices you have is when (or if) to do the side missions and when to do the DLC.
I'm glad you got to play the improved version of the game, at launch Mass Effect 3 felt like a major disappointment, and aside from the terrible endings (I assume you got a chance to see the original endings before the fixed them) it was also a disappointment because expectations were pretty damn high considering how big of an improvement Mass Effect 2 was over ME1. Going into this game with tempered expectations can definitely help in terms of enjoyment. I think it's similar to the Cyberpunk 2077 situation in that respect.
Possibly the best Mass Effect 3 review I’ve watched. Love your work. Mass Effect 3 is my favourite Mass Effect game for the interactions with the characters and the way a lot of their arcs rap up, as well as the fun to play combat. I like how accurate and pointed your critiques were, much better than just the 1000th meme on the ending.
Ya I think the major hate is only really from the few of us on the first wave. Had it day one and played through it at its worse. I still have only seen the orginal vanilla ending. Then people got on the hype and kept hating on it even though they had fixed a lot. The game today is different then, I wish I didn’t play it right away.
Glad someone else thinks the destroy ending is the best ending. Though doesn't that also destroy Sheppard too? That's my main beef with it. Like you said, I want my cake and eat it too. Why have a franchise focus on romance storylines so much if you can't have your squeeze at the end? And same thing with all your other best buds like Garrus. I simply do not want to give up my identity to be some human/synth hybrid (and yes I realize the events of ME2 make Sheppard already some sort of hybrid which I don't care for). And I wouldn't want my S.O. and friends to be hybrids either. You are changing their indentity. And I completely agree about Kai Lyn or whatever his name was. He was just annoying.
i wonder if you're gonna review some jrpgs. i think they would take longer to 100% them (with the grind and dodging 100 lightnings in a row and what not), so not 100% necessarily. but i'd like to hear what you think about some of the major ones.
Funny story. First time I played this game, when I got to the spectral boy at the end, I was a little disappointed with the three routes I had to take. So I decided to shoot the spectral boy just for fun. You can image my despair when the scene started to unveil...
Months late to this but oh well! ME3 is my favorite game I think I've ever played, if not top 5. So I do love this game a LOT. I feel like the biggest casualty of Legendary Edition was the Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer. You mentioned you liked the combat, the MP made the combat even more amazing. Each character you picked had a pre-set skill loadout(you still spent the points) and you could equip any gun(s) you wanted up to 2 for that class and you were off to the races. What was REALLY cool was, the MP had skills even Shepard never got, had guns not in the main game, AND many of these characters were not human, You had Turians, Quaraians, Krogan, Batarians, Vorcha, Geth, and some I'm probably forgetting. Each of these had different melee attacks, sprint speeds, dodge mechanics, hp/shield levels, etc. It truly felt like playing something unique from the main game with almost every character. Even some of the humans had totally different setups and designs as if they were a different race(looking at you N7 Destroyer and Paladin). it was PvE vs AI and while that sounds boring the difficulty levels truly made them way more fun than they had any right to be. I honestly can't gush enough about the ME3 MP, and it still has players to this day. I did like that you talked about the endings post DLC. I do wish more people went back and tried them to see if they became more...acceptable to them. I personally never had a huge issue with them myself. One thing I do have to disagree with you about is which ending is the canon or intended ending. You mentioned that Synthesis(green) is the intention, but I actually think its destroy. Primarily because a very high war asset destroy ending has Shepard waking up in the rubble with a sharp intake of breath. None of the other endings end this way. My headcanon does follow the Indoctrination Theory though, where basically everything after the big boom on the hill is just the reapers making an attempt to convert Shepard while he's out. And the destroy ending is the final rejection. Thus why Shepard wakes up in concrete and rebar(if you choose high asset destroy). One of my favorite tidbits about this theory is that: In the entire game trilogy, blue is paragon, red is renegade, but for the final choice, Control, which many would consider a renegade option is the blue, and destroy, is the red. But why would controlling the reapers, the choice the Illusive Man made and failed at, be the good option? Saren tried synthesis in ME1, ended poorly. Illusive Man tries control throughout ME3, ends poorly. Destroy is the only choice left. Which if this theory is correct, would be a mind blowing fourth wall break attempt at indoctrinating the player themselves to leave the reapers alive, despite all they've done, because blue = good, and don't think too hard about it. Which many people doing a paragon run for the sake of it would do. just pick blue cause blue = good regardless of the situation cause vidya gamez. Final note: shooting the kid makes him get really mad and just go to "You LOSE, GOOD DAY SIR" ending. Which I think reveals more that the kid is meant to be a palatable and softer interaction interface for Shepard instead of having him talk to another Reaper Hologram like he's done for the past 2 games. Anyway, just nerding out, I do love my indoctrination theory. Really does make the ME3 ending so much more interesting for me.
I was pretty disappointed that they didn't take the time to put in any sort of colourblind mode. I really struggled with some mini games. I also managed to choose the wrong ending.
Moving the Citadel is poorly explained, but is due to Illusive Man controlling the citadel from within, much like Saren would have done. It's probably not teleported but travels via a mass relay or two with Reaper escort. It's rather interesting though that he did not lock out the mass relays like the Sovereign's plan was, perhaps Reapers just decided to not bother, or perhaps their control was not quite absolute at the time.
The best part of the series is the 8 minute Blasto 3 ad in the citadel,followed by the Javik/Shepard/Blasto cinematic in the Citadel DLC. I still play Multi-player in vanilla 3. I have so many promotions I can skip every war asset in the base game at 50% readiness and still get the best endings
An excellent, detailed and quite thorough review, Mortym. I am looking forward to following in your footsteps with this game. I am about to start another playthrough of ME1 and will try the Vanguard build you suggested. I tried the Infiltrator build and that worked okay in insanity mode. Thank you for all the MELE videos and for making the experience more enjoyable!
Speaking with the Catalyst at the ending was infuriating. As Shepard, you could not properly argue with the Catalyst. The Catalyst doggedly states Organics and Synthetics will never get along. But, if you made peace between the Qurians and Geth, you cannot bring that up as a counter arguement. Nor can you bring up the relationship between Joker and EDI. Anyway, there is a lot more wrong with the ME ending, and it should completely be changed to something else from this Organics vs Synthetics. Personally, the originally intended Dark Energy Ending should have been used.
Original reasonong for Reapers was to stop creation of Dark Energy, that is created from mass effect technology, which would turn into cascade event that would destroy the universe. They were hoping to find species from harvest to create the special reaper that could solve it forever.
I remember when I first played the game: at launch on xbox360. The game was full of bugs and various technical issues: one of the worst was the impossibility to play the mission to save Jack at the academy, the game would just crash while trying to starting the mission. I was (and still I am) not a fan of multiplayer games, so I wasn't able to max galactic readiness, with obvious consequences om the endings. Speaking of endings... what a sad mess. I was a great fan of the first two games (completed multiple times), which were THE games of my teenage years and my hype for the third chapter was immense. I still feel kind of bitter thinking about the very underwhelming gaming experience I went through, but I'm glad they put a lot of effort trying to fix a few issues with the Legendary Edition. Should I give this game a second chance? Or better avoid a resurgence of bitterness?
Always fun to watch impressions of a new play through. I really think the developers did a great job in making a trilogy. Question is, if shown on tv, would you prefer a movie series or a tv series for Mass Effect?
I still believe ME3 was a rushed product. So much of it feels like a hack job. It is like the writings realized it was be hard to make true endings to reflex so many player choices and because of pressure to get the game out in a short time frame just started cutting corners. Because many of the ideas feel like something someone tossed out at some brain storming meeting and it sounded good but no one wanted check if it actually would work with the set lore from ME1/2 and by the time the realized it was a plot hole they just looked at their deadlines shrugged and said F it and pushed on.
Before I get into why I disliked Mass Effect 3, I just want to preface by saying that in 2012 I had realized that my backlog had become far too massive to control, so I adopted the mindset that any DLC updates released for any game I played from that point on were completely irrelevant to my initial experience. I'm not knocking anyone's personal opinions or trying to invalidate anyone else's experience, I'm simply describing my personal mindset on how I've played and judged games for the past decade. With that said, my biggest gripe with Mass Effect 3 wasn't that the developer promise to make every decision impactful for the remainder of the franchise went unfulfilled (though that's definitely a strong second), it's that they ruined my favorite class from ME2 😞 In the first game all of my favorite classes were the core classes: Soldier, Engineer and Scion, since the hybrid classes just felt like they were missing an identity, but in ME2 the hybrid classes felt amazing, and I actually preferred them over the Engineer and Scion in that game (Soldier was the most overpowered class in every game, so I can't claim I liked it less lol), especially the Sentinel which I felt was the perfect melee spec for people like me who prefer to fight up close, even in shooters, but ME3 RUINED that class! The way those shield worked in ME2 was fantastically fun, but in ME3 you'd pop the shield for what felt like no benefit whatsoever, making it the worst possible option, unless you just wanted to play that class as a pistol shaman, which I'm sure there's an audience for, but I ain't it 😞 Aside from that, it's pitiful that Bioware disrespected player choice so much that they didn't even include vignettes to tell you how your decisions played out at the end, which is the hallmark of any player choice driven storytelling. Such a shame. The first 2 games are my most played games of all time, and due to my statement at the start of this too long rant, some of the last games I ever put that kind of effort into, so as a true fan ME3 was an absolute betrayal of goodwill, far more than even Cyber Punk 2077 or Fallout 76 as far as I'm concerned, though I'm sure for many it's the opposite. If you bothered to read this far and are still interested in playing games in this narrative style and haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend Alpha Protocol. It's definitely far lower effort in terms of overall quality, but it's great spy fiction and proof that Obsidian's lack of technical prowess never dulls their excellence at telling compelling stories through video games 🙂
Bruh, when Kai Leng first showed up, I genuinely lost my shit. Like wtf?? How did ninja Shadow the hedgehog get in this game??? Couldn't stop giggling and making emo jokes and mocking this guy the whole way through. It didn't help that he spent nearly all of the bossfights just doing flips on the other side of the room. Made it way easier to not take him seriously and just wheeze my way through.
A lot of the hullabaloo about the ending was from the pre-patched version. Post-patch provided some closure on story beats with the still images, but pre-patch completely left that out and just had it be some ambiguous ending with the Normandy crashing on that planet.
In my opinion, while this game was pretty weak on a role playing aspect, due to limited choices, the actual gameplay and combat scenarios were the most fun in the series, even compared to Andromeda, which came out later. Basically, this is a really good action game, and Garrus felt like my best friend in the galaxy. Worst aspect of it was Kaidan's annoying attempts to romance me at every oportunity he had past a certain point of just treating him fine.
6:00 in mass effect 1 there’s dialogue Vigil on Ilos which explains exactly this, it’s revealed that a group of surviving protheans - who came out of hiding centuries after the reapers left - found a portal onto, discovered and subsequently prevented this aspect of the citadel from occurring in the next cycle - hence the plot of mass effect 1 and the need for Saren to take it by force
Well... someone might reply with a better answer, but it might be a mod you would find at a site such as Nexus mods. So you could try going there and looking through the ME3 section. I don't recall that armor as being in the base game, but I believe this reviewer tends not to use mods and it's been a while since I played this, so I might be wrong.
If you are referring to the knight armor looking stuff, it was originally a bonus for playing the demo for kingdom of Amalur while signed in to your ea(?) account. I believe it was just added to the game for legendary edition. If you are referring to getting Kai Leng's armor, you can get it or something close by doing the arena stuff in the citadel DLC.
I am really curious where Mass Effect 4 will go from here but still looks like a good game, can't wait to play this one as it's the only Mass Effect I missed
I adore ME1 and 2, but really don't like 3. Not just because of the god awful ending(s?), but the whole game feeling very off, compared to the first two. Shepards dialogue especially bothered me. A lot of the dialogue prompts you would have in the previous two seemed like they were missing or streamlined, with the middle choice being almost entirely removed. Lot of the story was also very disjointed, or in direct contradiction to pre established things. It makes sense when you look into how the game was made, and all the events that led up to its released state. A lot of the plot drastically changed, several story beats cut from the game, and rushed out the door last minute. The original story revolved around, the games namesake, Mass Effect fields and the consequences of using them, with the Reapers still technically trying to "preserve all life", but in a very different context. It followed the buildup from the second game, why stars were dying out faster then expected, why the Collectors and Harbinger were specifically targeting Humans and trying to rush out a Human Reaper, and a few other things. It's a shame ME3 got so rushed, cuz it had a lot of potential to be something very special. Instead we got this half baked thing. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good game. I just wish we got what it was meant to be.
Mass Effect Andromeda Gameplay is the best in the series, including the world exploration and combat. The story I didn't mind cause I feel it was a needed thing to forge a bond between everyone since it's a new MC, kinda like making new foundation and I thought they did the world building aspect of Andromeda pretty well (doesn't mean the story itself is good though, those 2 are different things), granted I did thought the story was very bad but not enough to ruin the whole franchise. I didn't mind about the whole new galaxy part either since Mass Effect 1 to 3 MC did ended, so new beginning. What made the game super bad however was probably the characters, MC included. By literary having a very bad MC for us to play as, they literary ruined the sequels of Andromeda, it was either keep making bad Mass Effect games, or create a new MC again from scratch. Between bad story, one of the worst glitches in gaming, and awful characters, I feel awful characters was the worst part cause it literary ruined the sequels, so I'm glad they decided to go with the new beginning route for the next Mass Effect game. Lol XD
Matter of fact, love it do much i just started a replay of it yesterday. My wife was completely into it watching me play. She wonders why it’s so exciting and mass effect andromeda was so……….boring 🤣🤣
ME3 was butchered by EA, endings aside, there is a noticable drop in quality after Tachanka, ME3 needed three years of dev time, it got eighteen months... And so, a franchise that could have become a backbone of western gaming, was relegated to the digital dust bin. RIP.
I think if they followed Dragon Age Origins with little vignettes of what happens after the game to people who knew and made decisions about a lot of the justified complaints would have been muted. For example... Generic subpart endings... Oh my buddy Garrius is now a space cowboy making a living as a trick shooter and Tali is now a famous lounge singer..
For me Control is the optimal ending, sure Shepard doesn't kill the Reapers, instead they sacrifice themselves to prevent the Harvest from ever happing again without taking away the free will of the entire galaxy or killing the geth that Shepard worked so hard to broker the peace with. On a personal level, I could never choose Destroy because I could refuse kill my friend EDI, along with breaking Joker's heart. I'll die before I do that.
ME3 was near perfect until the last 30-45 min. Then it was crap. Not even the extended cut dlc improved it greatly IMO. That said, it is still my favorite game of the series (even more so than ME2).
I don't think that they should continue the story in fourth game. It's pretty much closed a no matter how bad or not finished the endings are, it don´t need to continue. So i think it should be something different and about another hero. What i would like to see, is story from Earth during Reaper invasion. Fight agains strong enemy, with small chance to win and with basically zero materials. Hard choices to make and no epic hero that saves the day. Just bunch of peoples that surviving.
ME3 has the best combat system of all 4 games. It's why the multiplayer was so fun. I'm fine with getting rid of the galactic readiness, but I really wish they could have patched in the multiplayer from ME3 or made it a stand-alone download for the current consoles.
9:30 Totally agree on the Red and Green ending, but totally disagree on Blue. I consider Blue a fantastic Paragon ending, and as to your comment about the reapers being alive asking for trouble, you had to prove you are a tremendously noble person throughout 3 games to get that far, to broker the alliances, I think we can trust this Sheppard... No will imposed. No genocide.
Yeah, the "bad" ending was even worse when it was released. If felt like the developers were pushing back on the fans pointing out that Shepard just going along with some random AI's decisions after going through the entire game and making your own decision. Fans pointed out that it'd make more sense for Shepard to shoot the AI and find his own solution. So the developers added the option where you shoot the AI and promptly die. ... I'm still bitter about this game after all this time.
Mass Effect 3 has the option to remove choosing dialogue completely and play it as a straight Gears of War clone. THAT is EA's legacy. It's also why Bioware is in the toilet.
Can we all agree that leaving earth opening is absolutely heart wrenching 😢…this is the first time we really get to see Earth in all it’s glory and we got decimated!
Honestly until the end fight on Thesia mission ME3 is probably the best game of the series. Sadly at that very moment the game starts to fall apart very quickly and the ending is just stupid and non-sensical.
When you say that the writing is bad, it should be specified that this only holds true for the macro-level. The writing on a per-character basis, the "voice" every NPC has is outstanding and is the reason why this game holds up so well. Most of the writing team stayed the same, but lead writer Drew Karpyshyn (who also wrote BG2, btw) stepped away from ME3. Why? What changed? Eh, that's all speculation. To me, the best explanation was always that the original ending (at least the vague version of it) was leaked/guessed and the bosses at EA weren't happy with that because remember, this was 2012, an era where everything was built around plot twists, no matter how far-fetched (the "Lost" effect), so when people guessed the ending, you couldn't twist. DK, not wanting to risk his reputation, fought it and got pushed out. That's also why the ending of ME3 didn't quite gel with the story so far while the plot threads themselves remained strong.
DK while has done somme amazing work, has had somme flops as well. his novel on Revan is on particular novel so i don't think its fair to put him on some pedestal. regardless his work here was stellar and its even crazier what the other writers were able to do in only 18 months
Theres interviews with Drew Karpashin (one of the OG writers at Bioware) about where the storyline for the series was meant to go. A whole bunch of shit got rewritten. Originally, the buildup of dark energy in the galaxy's core was the initial reason for the creation of the reapers but that got changed to AI is bad M'kay so lets make a bunch of AI to solve the problem of AI is bad. *sigh* jesus.
@@geronuis2295 As a novelist, he's definitely hit or miss, but as a lead writer who can delegate the stuff he's bad at (writing women, creating depth, tugging at the audience's heartstrings) it works fairly well.
Personally, the whole trilogy wasn't anything special plotwise. I'd even say that, for that very reason, I wasn't particularly bothered by the ending. The characters - most of them -, on the other hand, carried the whole thing from start to finish. Of course, the lore and worldbuilding also played a huge part in that, but the character writing/development was, for the most part, truly fantastic.
6 months old I know but, just to clarify. Drew left halfway thru ME2, he had nothing to do with ME3. That all falls on Mac Walters, who became lead writer after Drew left. Which is why ME2 became so character focused, because Mac is a character writer. He wrote Garrus in ME1.
The endings sucked because they had nothing to do with the choices you made throughout the series. Instead it was choose door #1, 2, or 3, which was a ludicrous and lazy outcome. The little summary cutscenes afterwards did not do much to help.
So having just played through mass effect 1 isn’t there a quest with the keepers that leads you to knowing how it works and then blocking the signal they get from the reapers which would stop the reapers from actually controlling the citadel?
It's never brought up anymore but it can't really be conveyed how much of a slap in the face these endings were. For fans since me1 it was years of waiting and teasing, hours of marketing material and interviews where the creators of the game claimed and promised that all your actions will lead to your own special ending. It was a scam. And when people were upset and in denial game journalists called ME fans entitled and unfair.
You should try out the og multiplayer for me3, it had a lot of variety in combat that wasn't in single player and its pretty sad it wasn't included... if you do play it you should definitely use cheat engine to hack in credits unless you want to grind for an impossibly long period of time, there has been zero moderation for years so there is no real reason not to.
I saw a video a month or two ago about a new mod that does everything possible to take Kai Leng out of Mass Effect. All his cut scenes are removed and his character model is replaced by a totally masked space ninja.
i played the launch version a lot and the endings simply were not anywhere near as bad as everyone was making them out to be. Even before the new-ish endings were added. It was a bunch of sensationalist clickbait.
Excellent review, as always. I'm so glad someone finally pointed out the writers' memory lapse about the Citadel being the beginning point of the Reapers invasion in the previous cycles. Major plot hole there.
The only way to make Kai Leng bearable is the mod "Shut Up Kai Leng". It adds minimal tweaks to his plot and aesthetic that makes him seem extremely ominous. Most of the outrage for the endings comes from the fact that players that had followed the series from the first release of ME1 were told from the get go that there would be many endings to the final episode of the game. After ME2 players were told over and over that there'd be 17 unique endings. Even the Devs admit the colours were a *literal mistake* and should never have been added to the game. The only reason they are there is the upheaval and crunch got so bad during the last weeks (yep, literally a couple weeks before the game went live they were still writing/animating the finale) someone panicked and just added the colours in from marker dots on a physical story board. The star kid was also never meant to be there. It was a whole fiasco. The patching and LE make it SO much better, but the ending is still a hot traffic light mess rather than the fully fleshed out 17 unique endings they promised up until a few DAYS before release.
I loved me1, me2 was better in some ways, and worse in others, but i thought me3 sucked balls. I didnt think the endings were any worse than the rest of the game.
