Aristobulus500 wrote...
Thing is, I do think the series is a pretty smart, intelligent series - it's just the endings, even with the EC, really aren't.
But at least they aren't the burns the original endings were - even if they are not smart endings, they are still somewhat satisfying endings, and that's really all that matters. If they could be smart on top of it, it would be icing.
I'm more cynical than most in that I thought the series, as it was originally intended, basically died with Shepard at the opening of ME2. The feel of the two games is so radically different in structure and design that I'd almost put Mass Effect 2 down as one of the worst follow ups in the history of fiction. It discarded nearly everything from Mass Effect, it dumped the cast, the style pretty much every single aspect that defined Mass Effect as a slow plodding Star Trek style of sci-fi in a grounded universe with clear rules and logic.
Now suddenly you're working for a Bond Villian who wears an evil suit, sits in an evil chair in his evil fortress of evil. People run around in cat suits with plunging necklines and have literal magical powers where they can drain people of life force or wirelessly transfer energy. You spend the entirity of that game either trying to get back what you lost at the beginning (Liara) or wasting time with this pointless side mission involving a non-threat known as The Collectors. Then the game ends on the exact same note as the first "The Reapers are coming and I'm going to find a way to stop them."
Shepard's death and reconstruction is absolutely wasted to the point that they actively downplay and make light of what could have been a genuinely interesting and thoughtful look at mortality and transhumanism. Instead it's just cheap one liners like "I got better" and the total flat out refusal to look at the effects of any of the extensive and radical augmentation you read about in the Research Terminal. It instead being just reduced to +10% Health per upgrade, with no thought to what would be complex concepts such as losing your humanity or even transcending the limitations or bonds of the human race as it exists and whether or not that is a geniunely deseriable state of bing.
So after all that wasted potential I just kinda resigned myself to the fact that ME3's story would rely on a Deus Ex Machina to resolve the Reapers since they wasted the second game not finding a way to beat them and the plot would be really weak and stupid. Though they did shock me with how horrible the endings were, I must admit I didn't see that coming since I assumed they'd play it safe and add some pretty generic endings. I really only bought the game because FemShep and Liara would be in it and Liara would be back in the squad, I didn't buy it for the plot.
I don't know exactly what the point of all this was other than it seems like a lot of people are also lamenting what could have been, just at different times. At one point or another we all had real hope that this was a series that could really be special and it all just slowly rotted away over time. To the point where we had to fight to just be
content with the ending to the game as opposed to bitterly disappointed and angry. I bet we'd all have been shocked if you told us months ago we'd have to fight this hard to get something as average as the EC, that we'd all be hoping the series didn't end with Shepard dying for no reason and the galaxy being either trashed or changed beyond all recognition or comprehension.
Someone pass the Scotch and make it the good stuff.
Retour en haut
