I don't feel like Twitter, Facebook, etc., create as much as a sense of community as forums do. The Ash forum here felt like a "home" for Ash fans, just as the Mass Effect forums felt like a larger home for ME fans.

Perhaps others feel that through other forms of social media, but I do not. There is a Facebook page for Ash that I visit from time to time, but not much in the way of discussion. I feel the same way about the ME Facebook page.

Do any other major game developers not have forums? I thought they were pretty standard. The folks developing the new Master of Orion game certainly have them, and so do the folks that made Wasteland 2.

As I said, though, I don't think Bioware will change their mind. As much as this can feel like home, the atmosphere can also become poisonous from time to time, when people disagree. While I continue to think that they didn't handle the ME3 ending well, I now admit that there was quite a bit the fans also didn't handle as well as we should have. Perhaps that factored into their decision.

Well, I guess as of August 26, we're done for. I know I didn't post much anymore, but I still used to check in from time to time.

It's been nice to be able to interact with other Ash fans. I honestly think Bioware is making a mistake with this move, that they should be doing everything to help their fans form communities. But, as with the ME3 ending, I don't think we can do a whole lot to change their direction. Best of luck to everyone, and I really hope we see Ash in another game someday.

I really don't have that many problems with Ashley in ME3. I think "in real life," some of the differences are due to a different writer handling her and the limited content. I would have liked a little more depth, but what's there mostly feels like it's Ashley.

Of course, I'm an unusual person. I like the Mars mission, including the way Ashley acts. I find it refreshing to have someone who actually calls Shepard out on his bullsh*t when it comes to working with Cerberus. As far as I'm concerned, Ash is the only one who has a realistic reaction to Shepard going off and working for Space ISIS for an entire year.

I also like the fact that she doesn't trust you immediately during the coup. Again, I find it realistic. She's acting as a bodyguard, and you've just barged in, heavily armed with two other people. Even if you worked to rebuild her trust, she doesn't immediately know what's going on, and her first priority is protecting the Council. Until she works out what's going on, yes, you are going to have a gun pointed at you. Get over it. That's the way it works. If she were all trusting in that situation, she'd be a p*ss poor body guard.

And, yes, I like the fact that, in the coup, she can tell you that she hopes the "Reapers send you to hell." You just shot her, and before that you most likely treated her like dirt. Were you expecting a "thank you"?

Good for her.

Oh, I understand where the Raloi were coming from as well, even if I think their decision was a bit short sighted. I just think a lot of folks who actually fought the Reapers might have a hard time accepting it if the Raloi ever come back to the galactic stage.

You know, it occurs to me that while the Raloi government may have decided to cut off their homeworld, individual Raloi may have stayed in the rest of the galaxy and even joined the war effort. If you think about it, there's no way for the Raloi political body to force a Raloi on the Citadel to come back to the homeworld. I'm sure there were some there - and elswhere - before ties were cut, and there may have even been a few who found a way to get off the homeworld when they figured out which way the wind was blowing. So, there may have been a small number of individual Raloi who joined the war effort in some way.

Which actually makes the decision by the Raloi government all the more stupid. Even if the Reapers weren't aware of what they were doing, wouldn't they begin to question why members of a pre-space flight species are showing up on the Citadel, or on transport ships, or in various defense forces?

 However, I'm not 100% certain that the rest of the galaxy would harbor too much ill will against them, as their current technological level of advancement was only capable of launching a space telescope.

That's a reasonable point, but I think a lot of folks would say "they can still hold a gun." They could have sent troops to bolster the defenses of the rest of the galaxy, even help by supplying food and raw materials. Instead of making a contribution to the fight for the future, they decided to hide out on their homeworld and let everyone else die in their place.

Some of the planet descriptions from ME2 hint that the Reapers not only harvest advanced, space faring civilizations, but also bomb non-space faring civs out of existence if they have passed a certain point of development. I don't think it's ever confirmed that the Reapers did this, but in some ways it makes sense - it would prevent any one species from becoming too advanced to pose a serious challenge by the time the next cycle ends, and, given the Reapers supposed motive, it might help limit the number of species that become advanced enough to construct powerful AIs before the Reapers are ready to come around again. Wouldn't do much to "preserve" the unfortunate life forms that get bombed out of existence, though.

In any event, I doubt the Raloi trick would have worked. Even if they don't routinely nerf civilizations that have advanced beyond a certain stage but are not space faring, it's unlikely that the Reapers would allow a species to survive into the next cycle that 1) interacted with the species from the previous cycles and 2) knows about the Reapers and would, as such, have thousands of years to prepare for the next time they come back. Does anyone really think it would be smart for the Reapers to allow a species to know they exist and give them that much time to prepare?

As for the fate of the Raloi after the end of ME3 - If they haven't been destroyed, I'm sure they will either re-establish contact with the rest of the galaxy, or the rest of the galaxy will re-establish contact with them. The rest of the galaxy will probably look down on them, too, for sticking their head in the sand while everyone else fought back.

If the room has a sound system like in ME2 and ME3, an option that allows it to search your computer for MP3s and play those instead. Would be kind of neat. You could choose to use the default, in universe music, or have it play from your own library.

Also, an eezo powered toothbrush. If you buy it, it shows up on the sink in your bathroom.

Even if that's all it amounts to, I find a release with extra bug fixes and a performance patch to be better than a release without them.

It's an idea that's been discussed before, but one thing that I'd like to see is at least one world with a pre-space travel civilization that we can visit.

Nothing too primitive - perhaps a world where the major powers have tech that's somewhere in the range of 1900-1950 on Earth. Visiting could open up some interesting choices and moral dilemmas, especially if interfering in local politics and development is a way to accomplish a mission goal.

Frankly, I'm okay with a delayed release. I'd rather they spend more time on it and do it right instead of shipping something that feels rushed and incomplete.

More info would be great, but we'll get it when we get it.

 

I always appreciated her personality in my first playthrough of ME1, because like a lot of the rest of the game, it was a realistic representation. If we really did step onto a galactic stage with multiple races all vying for their own places in the galactic political arena, there would be a lot of us who would be wary and distrustful of the aliens. I liked that they had someone in the crew with that very human point of view. But then the experiences of the trilogy should have informed that point of view, and softened it, at least somewhat, but it never really did, which just made her look bigoted rather than pragmatic.

A fair number of people see this in ME1, when you have the opportunity to make her reconsider some of her views. Although she seems to backslide a bit by her lone appearance in ME2, due to less than stellar writing.

Just out of curiosity, where in ME3 does Ash seem "bigoted," though? I don't remember her saying anything that seemed to convey much in the way of distrust of aliens as a whole. She's not entirely comfortable working with the geth, but given the history there, I think it would be unrealistic if she were. In fact, as a whole, I think Ash seemed more tolerant of working with aliens in ME 3 - she never really expresses general discomfort with it, and she accepts a Spectre appointment, which means working for the Council.

Everyone looks a little different in ME3. I actually had to redo my Shepard's face. He looked normal in ME2, but in ME3 his face looked really bloated.

I mostly don't have issues with Ash's looks in ME3. I think her face looks fine. I don't mind seeing her hair down, and as a reminder, there were a fair number of Ash fans in the forums who were asking for that while ME3 was still in the works.

That said, I would probably have preferred it if she wore a normal Alliance uniform, and I do roll my eyes a bit at what they seem to have done with, her, uhm... cup size. Unfortunately, with ME2 onward, Bioware apparently decided that they needed to go in a cartoonish direction in terms of armor, uniforms and the way they portray female bodies. In that regard, I liked the feel of ME1 a lot more.

It's a good idea in theory, and could be okay if handled right.

But, as others have pointed out, look at how they handled Ashley and Kaidan. Instead of being different characters that evolve differently over the course of three games, they were basically shoehorned into the same role in ME3. And had limited content to boot.

The temptation to do that will be the problem if you can choose between "squad member A" and "squad member B." Different squaddies have different personalities. How their stories unfold and where they end up should reflect that, especially if ME: A is the start of another "transfer your decisions from Game 1 to 2 to 3" trilogy.

If we do have another story that unfolds over more than one game, having lots of potential crew members and squad members to choose from could also run Bioware into the same trap they had in ME3 - too many different stories to tie up in the final game, and not enough time and resources to do it properly for everyone. That will especially be the case if every subsequent game also gives you a choice of crew and squad members. I'd rather have 3 or 4 core people in the first game, then maybe and one or two extra in the second, and then stick with those for the final game so everyone has the right amount of content and has their story arcs closed out properly.

Just beware that, following the last ever patch released for ME3, Ashley's Marksman skill is glitched. If you invest in it, it renders her more or less unable to function in combat. Since it was the "final" patch that screwed it up, it looks unlikely that Bioware will ever do anything to solve the problem.

You can work around it by not investing in Marksman (generally what I do now - she's still awesome at combat without it). As Survivor mentioned, he also came up with a mod that fixes that problem.

I'm biased since she's my favorite character. I always bring her on board, and take her on most missions for the last half of the game.

I suppose if I had to look at it more objectively... She doesn't talk much at all on the Normandy and rarely leaves the observation room (I think she ventures out into the ship itself, like, one time at most). In terms of on board conversation, there's not much there, especially if you're not romancing her.

Survivor is right - her mission dialogue tends to be good, though. Her Citadel conversations are also decent, albeit very focused around her family.

I also think she's a great asset to have for the missions. I give her a Revenant and then just let her go wild. There have been a few times where she actually saved me a reload by stopping me from dying. Most memorable is the time she took out a geth hunter that got the drop on me and was about to finish me off.

At the end of the day, I've never done a trilogy playthrough where Kaidan survives past Virmire, so I can't speak to how the quality of his content, on or off the Normandy, in ME3 compares to the quality of the content that is there for Ash.

Since you're not as heavily invested in her as I am, I think what it should ultimately come down to is who you feel is better suited for your needs in terms of the mission. Do you play a Shepard who already has biotic abilities but maybe needs some extra firepower on his/her squad? Then go with Ash. Or do you play a straightforward soldier who could use someone with a biotic/tech skills combo? If so, it might be better to have Kaidan around.

Long story short: We have absolutely no idea what Ash did between ME 1 and ME 3.

I have my own head canon, but there's never any conversation with her that "officially" establishes what she did and how she came to be Spectre material. We know (from ME2) that she was on assignment on Horizon, looking into things from Anderson. But that's about it. We don't know which unit she was assigned to, if she commanded a unit, if she became special forces, etc. It's another element of ME3 that was somewhat frustrating, as far as Ash is concerned.

Someone in the Ash forums was writing a really great fan fiction about how Ash went into special forces training (a different special forces program than the "N" program) after Shepard's death, and I mostly adopted that as my own story of what happened. Unfortunately, I don't think he's writing it anymore, and I'm not sure he even bothers to visit the forums these days.

As for what Ash does if you don't taker her on the Normandy after the coup attempt - I think I read about that somewhere, but I've long since forgotten. I've never done it myself. I always took Ash along in my previous playthroughs, and probably I always will in any future ones.

Ash doesn't really say much on the Normandy. A few pieces of Zaeed style dialogue (click on her for an observation or two) after most missions, but few real conversations. One of the few actual conversations takes place the morning after she spends a night drinking and deals with her being non-functional from a hangover, which is cute except for the unfortunate fact that it happens during the quarian/geth missions, when the Normandy is in a war zone - so it feels out of character and has just given people who already don't like her another reason to criticize her. She really doesn't interact with the crew much, either, although if you play the missions so that you do the coup attempt before doing the Tuchanka bomb mission, she does have an intercom conversation with Tali - although doing the missions in that order makes no sense story wise.

Neither of the Virmire Survivors are all that popular with the broader fanbase, so it doesn't surprise me that Kaidan has little to say on the Normandy, too. I think I read somewhere that the "official" explanation for Ash is that there was a certain amount of allotted dialogue per character, and that hers got used up in other places, like on the Citadel. Not sure if it's true, but if it is, it had the unfortunate impact of turning my Shepard's LI over the course of three games into what often felt like a background character in the last half of the game.

I guess when I went into ME3, I was hoping Ash would play a role  like she did in ME1, when she had all these great conversations after the major missions. In ME3, I was glad to have her on the squad again, but sometimes it didn't feel much like she was on the ship.

I still haven't finished Fallout 3 or played Fallout New Vegas at all yet.

I at least own Fallout 3, but I lost interest every time I made it to Megaton, shortly after leaving the vault. I was going to give it another try, but it won't run on the version of Windows that I'm using.

I'm enjoying Wasteland 2 a lot more, anyway. I'm not sure what it is about Fallout 3, but that game - at least the little of it that I played - feels tedious and hard to get into. Not at all like Fallout 1 and 2.

Also, thought I'd make sure there's some Ash on the page, so I went looking and found this. Don't they know they're going to spill their coffee?:

I'm going to play it. Bioware games are generally fun, and there simply aren't enough sci fi RPGs out there to give it a pass. Plus, I don't think that relocating to Andromeda will necessarily make it feel less like Mass Effect. I enjoyed Stargate: Atlantis despite the change in setting.

That said, it's really not my preferred direction for the next game. I would love to see how the galaxy rebuilds after the war, spend more time exploring the Milky Way, have a combination of "old" settings with new setings, etc. I guess it was just too much for them to handle with the endings, though, and they clearly don't want to change the ending.

I think in terms of just being a fun game to play, ME 2 is probably the best in the trilogy. The combat works well, and, as you said, there's lots to do. ME 3 felt almost a little too streamlined. There's an argument they did that to drive home the urgency of the war, but it didn't make for an RPG experience that was as enjoyable. I would have liked extra side quests with missions I could actually play instead of a bunch of scan and fetch quests.

Maybe we'll get more info on ME: Andromeda over the holidays this year? It's too bad there's probably no way for Ash to be in it, but I am curious for more information on what it's going to be like.

Oh, Ash is still my favorite squadmate in the trilogy, even if many of the other fans dislike her. It's unfortunate - even with getting forced into Cerberus, there's still so much that feels right about ME2, to the point where it's possibly my favorite game in the trilogy. But, Ash isn't on the squad, and isn't in it at all except for the unpleasantness on Horizon.

I like your version of ME3, by the way. In the version that I kick around sometimes, Miranda is on Mars instead of Liara - who stayed behind to do Shadow Broker things and asked Miranda to go in her place. Miranda is the one who gets hurt by Evabot, ends up in the hospital and comes to the squad after the coup attempt. Ash, meanwhile, is on the squad the whole time after leaving Earth.

Liara would still be on the squad as well. She'd just be recruited after Mars. Perhaps even the Cerberus attack on the Shadow Broker vessel that she talks about would be played out in game as her recruitment mission.

Can't say I ever noticed, though to be honest I never bothered with the alternate outfits that much.

I think maybe they wanted to focus on members of the squad who were either popular or new. Ash has never been popular, at least to judge by what I've read on BSN and elsewhere. A lot of people genuinely don't want her on the squad in ME3, and more than a few take the second chance to kill her off.

I wonder if at least some of the remaining creative team just didn't care for her that much, too. There is some good content in there, at the hospital, for example, and the Citadel conversation where you can restart the relationship. But other times it feels like she's only in there because they felt they "had" to put her in. It is correct that she doesn't mesh well on the Normandy at all. Very few real conversations with Shepard, very little interaction with the other crew members. The game touches on parts of her character, but seems at times as though the writers were incapable or unwilling to go very deeper.

Sorry to hear you won't be continuing with that, Aurora. I never really had time to take a deep dive into fan fiction, but it's unfortunate when someone can't continue with something they've invested so much time in.

It's also understandable, though. I rarely listen to the ME soundtracks for similar reasons, even though I really like the music from ME. The ME3 music, in particular, dredges up lots of mixed feelings. For a long time, I didn't even keep "An End, Once and For All" on my MP3 player with the rest of the soundtrack, because it was too much of a reminder of the horrid endings.

Didn't finish my last ME3 playthrough. Just sort of stopped during my runthrough of the Citadel DLC, after most of the individual character meet ups but before the party, even. Not sure when I'll go back and do another trilogy playthrough. Been playing lots of Wasteland 2 lately, and it seems like there's lots to do in that game.