I prefer not to give number reviews, but rather focus on whether I would recommend a game, and by how much.
Despite my longterm support of Bioware, starting with the purchase of Baldur's Gate 1 when I was in high school, I cannot recommend this game.
I've told my friends who have inquired that I honestly don't feel it's worth the money. It looks nice, plays well (though I find the weight mechanic to be a bit superfluous), and the dialog and general story are fine. However, it deviates considerably from what I've come to expect from a
Mass Effect game.
It's feels more linear in a rather bad way. And while the prior games weren't super open, you could at least pick the order of many of the missions. Especially during the second half of ME2 where you could go about things in any way you want to. I don't get this feeling of freedom at all.
And that relates to the biggest problem I have with ME3. The ME series was and is marketed on the concept and idea of choice. Your choices and what you do matter and impact how the game progresses and the stories of the characters. This installment lacks that, and to be honest it comes off as invalidating the entire feeling of choice.
Like many others, I associate a large part of this to the endings. For the last 2 games what we've decided has impacted the endings, altered them, and shown us different outcomes. This is particularly true for 2 where you could actually fail miserably and even die/lose for an ending if you did poorly enough. But with the endings of 3 any and every choice you've made becomes pointless. They don't matter, they have no impact on the ending of the series. All your choices have been thrown out the window and you're given the choice to pick A, B, or C.
It's utterly contrary to how the game was promoted. What's more, it makes me feel if I ever replayed the series I may as well just barrel straight through and ignore all side quests. Why pay attention to them, whyconsider the choices I'm making in even the main quest? They won't matter, you'll never see any results to them and the only choice that actually changes anything at the end is the rather contrived macguffin.
Which is another problem. Coming up with a clutch magic solution in the last installment to miraculously defeat the Reapers is poor writing. It comes off almost as a Deus ex machina, which are a hallmark of poor writing used by authors when they've written themselves into a position they can't find their way out of. They ruin the efforts of the characters in the story. I had expected all the efforts raising a
massive military force and a genius battle strategy, not that. With the loss of their Citadel trap, and the proof that reapers can be destroyed (Soveriegn and the Human Reaper), a conventional war was quite plausable, if improbable in victory. But that draws out tension and keeps people interested. It's why Star Wars worked. Insurmountable odds, but the Rebels still succceeded.
The lack of a happy ending and this forced dour/dark/or downright bleak option with 3 different flavors is equally disappointing. In part because of the choice issue. Because no matter how hard you try, what you do, or all your efforts in a game that's vaunted for supporting them... you can't get a happy ending.
It's bad writing, the games have never flowed towards dark and depressing ends. I like bittersweet or even just bitter endings. The last 4 books I've read have all had very imperfect endings, but the authors steered me towards that. I knew not to expect a happy ending. But
Mass Effect has never done that. It was high fantasy in space. Space marine and Reaper instead of Knight and Dragon. It was always suggested by Bioware that you could save the girl, defeat the monster, and ride off into the sunset if you wanted.
You can't. It let me down a lot. The way
Mass Effect has been written to this point did not suggest this. But right at the end when you're getting to the satisfying conclusion where you see the culmination of your choices the game veers sharply to the left and kicks your support out from under you. There's nothing to suggest that you just have to take this awkward, unsatisfying conclusion and deal with it.
The endings lack closure, finality, or any real substance. They're just poorly done and smear the way I'll remember the series. After 3 games I expected a much more well thought-out and fulfilling ending, not this. Some epilogue, conclusion, and by golly I wanted to see my Shepard walking down a street on earth wtih Bromance Garrus and whatever LI I chose for that playthrough while I hear about how the choices I made changed the galaxy.
Instead I get everyone my character cares about missing or dead, and an old guy telling his kid a fairy tale with my Shepard being screwed any way you shake it. It was completely off the flow of the game and felt utterly forced to be bitter and negative for the sake of. That's not good writing.
Cutting out this old man portion and having a resolution that would allow you to have Shepard survive and be with at least some of his friends and loved ones would have done worlds for this. Then it may have been bittersweet, and not just bitter. Some people died that you knew, a lot that you didn't, but you won and have the rest of your friends to work with to start picking up the pieces.
Yes the journey is important, but it doesn't matter how nice that walk in the park I had today was if I tripped and my face landed in a pile of dog feces at the end. That's the part that will stand out to me.
So, because I know my friends would be utterly disatisfied with the way the game ends, and it would make them feel the way I do, I won't recommend this to any of them. Just like I can't recommend DA2 to anyone. As it stands after the quality of your recent games I will be taking your future releases with a grain of salt and reserving my purchases till I hear whether the trend is continuing.
Sorry Bioware.
PS: I would strongly urge your ME writing team to go play Dragon Age Origins. This is an example of making choices matter, both in how the finale plays out (Including your support during the final battle), as well as altering both the in game ending (The coronation) and the epilogue text (though I always prefer more cinematic story telling in games.)
Edit: I should add, throwing in at the end of the game that the entire 3 game conflict was about Synthetics versus Organics, the eventual take-over of Synthetics, and the 3 endings provided doesn't fit or work.
Man vs Machine has never been the primary concern of ME, it's always been Mortal vs God, essentially. Can the regular, normal people defeat the super monster. Or single mortal Knight vs a Dragon. Yes, Synth vs Organic was brought up, but it was always brought up as part of the universe.
More to the point, it was never really Synth vs Organic, is was a question of are AIs alive. Do they think, feel, and have a right to exist? We see this in two cases; The Geth and their revolt to survive when the Quarians attempt to shut them down after they began to show signs of sentience, and EDI as she develops from the Normandy's computer to a thinking, feeling person with relationships and even romantic interests. The Synth question has always been, are they really alive, do we respect them that way, or are they just running code that has them behave as such.
So the sudden Godchild informing us the entire series is about Synthetics conquering Organics is completely contrary to even the narrative threads addressing living machines. It's always been David vs Goliath.
These endings worked in Deus Ex (And they're identical to the DE choices, don't try to claim otherwise) because the DE narrative focused heavily throughout the game on cybernetics, implants, machines and the ethical questions of using the implants and people becoming more machine. So the Control, Destroy, Merge ending made sense with the narrative. It lead there.
Mass
Effect doesn't, instead you get a Godchild changing the entire story and force feeding you the new conflict in the last 5 minutes in a failed attempt to make the awkward ending choices work within the setting.
Modifié par Wildhide, 11 mars 2012 - 04:16 .
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). Especially after such a sweet romance. So the lack of closure was quite heartbreaking. And unlike in other scenes, I felt like raging more than anything. It felt unecessary. Drama for the sake of drama makes people rage, not cry.
