1966 réponses à ce sujet

[Feirefiz1972]

Been a long time fan of the series and the game itself is'nt bad. I enjoyed the overall experience, but it would have been so much better whitout the choppy framerate and constant freezing. I do not know if you guys take pride in youre work, but you should be ashamed for the state you released the ps3 version in. If you do not have the expertise to make decent products for ps3 then maybe you should'nt release for ps3 at all. No patching is going to fix this mess.

[Giltspur]

The Good
The Combat.  The combat was much like ME2's, which I really liked.  I liked the new enemy types: phantom, nemesis, engineer.  Generally these affected kill order because of their abilities: engineers have to go because of those dumb turrets.  Also, I liked how quickly some of the new enemies moved meaning I had to crowd control then since snipering them wasn't always going to work when they were cartwheeling around.

The Darker Tone: I especially liked Mordin's sacrifice and the fall of Thessia.  Shepard's first major setback (Thessia) was impactful.

NPC Conversations: I liked how the crew moved around the ship and went to different parts of the Citadel.  There was a mix of full "dialogue wheel" conversations and on-click reactions.  While the on-click reactions can never replace full conversations, they're a cool extra.

Protheans: I liked Liara finding out how wrong she was about Protheans after you encounter Javik.  I had also assumed they were more admirable and sort of read my own assumptions into them.  Seeing the archaeologist's reaction was a good perspective to have. I also liked the idea of tactile history.

The Main Sections: All of the priority sections were compelling.  I think Turian/Salarian/Krogan was my favorite, but the Quarian/Geth might have been the most interesting in terms of sci-fi.  In general, you made me feel bad for the Geth, and that was cool.

Other Story Bits: I liked the references to all of the old content from the Batarian terrorist to the Rachni queen (having the Rachni get controlled again) to the the Overlord DLC.  And the cameos for both Jack (new look and protective personality were great) and Jacob stood out.

The Visuals: My favorite scene was Palaven burning in the distance.  But the planets you got to visit were great throughout.  I also liked the interpretation of the Geth Consensus that we got to see.  

Things I Didn't Mind
I found the Illusive Man's fall believable, and I didn't mind the explanation that the Catalyst gave for the Reapers.  (That doesn't mean I liked the ending though!  See more below.

The Bad
Scanning planets remains lame.

The Ending
Now I don't think that the ending ruined the series.  And I don't particularly care if Bioware changes it or not.  I'm content to simply accept that ME3 has a bad ending.  That said, here's why I didn't like it:

I found the ending narratively unsatisfying.  ME3 ends with a choice that you don't really see the consequences of.  The Turian/Krogan/Salarian, Geth/Quarian, Asari and Ceberus all have better "endings" than the main game does.

Problem 1: Less Interesting than the Rest of the Game
It isn't interesting compared to the rest of the game.  The ending's  treatment of organics vs synthetics is more simplistic and less satisfying than in other parts of the game.  In the Turian/Quarian section, we got to see how control by the Quarians created conflct and were able make decisions about trusing Geth with Reaper upgrades that made them more individualistic.  (Sadly, we didn't get to use this knowledge to counter the Catalyst's statements about creations always rebelling. The Geth during ME3 seem to be a counterexample.  In other words, this section is more nuanced than the ending.)  We also see EDI's reprogramming herself because of her observations of Shepard of Joker.  That was also a more interesting idea than the bland statements made by
the catalyst.  So the ending fails to be thought-provoking because it's less thoughtful than the sections that have come before.  

Problem 2: Doesn't Make Sense
The main issue here is "space magic". By "space magic" I mean the Crucible's ability to rewrite DNA of living beings everywhere in the galaxy during the synthesis ending or somehow destroy all syntehtics in the destroy ending.  (I haven't thought enough about the control ending to comment here.)  "Magic" is only interesting when it makes a decision tough somehow, when it has a cost.  Here it's a just a three-way solution dropped onto the end of the trilogy.  It's like "Bam, here's a choice after having found out about the origin of the Reapers."  It's not a tough choice like the Rachni Queen or the Collector Base.  It's a weird, disconnected choice made possible by some hard-to-fathom technology that hasn't been a source of interesting conflict throughout the story.

The other thing that doesn't make sense: the mass relay destructions.  I guess this is a consequence of deploying the Crucible.  At least that's the in-game explanation.  I don't know why that's cool though.  I understand Mordin's sacrifice.  It had to be him.  It was tied into his life story.  But what is the sacrifice of the mass relays for the deployment of the Crucible all about?  Why is that interesting?  Tragedy should be revelatory.  I'm not sure what this reveals about the choice you have to make.  It seems like darkness for the sake of darkness--for the feeling of depth and weight that isn't really there.

Problem 3: No Closure
In a way, ME3 feels like it has no ending.  It ends with a choice that you don't really see the consequences.  All you see are the mass relays and the "Garden of Eden" bit.  But what happens to the galaxy if you choose synthesis or control or destroy?  You don't find out.  I feel that in most cases an ending should provide an answer not raise a question that it doesn't answer.  Now, if it's a compelling question, maybe it can pass.  But in "Problem 1" I've said why I don't think the question is compelling.  What about Inception?  That ended on a question and was cool.  But in that movie, what was going on was always a question and was even more interesting than the characters were.  That whole movie is built around giving you clues to that final scene.  I can't say the same for Mass Effect.  Mass Effect trilogy feels like a character story that didn't end with closure for its characters. 

Overall
ME3 was a weird experience.  It feels like a high point in storytelling in a game when you're watching Palaven burn in the distance as Reapers stomp around or when you see Mordin make his final decision.  Then shortly thereafter you're scanning planets, and the intensity drains back down.  I really appreciate the amount of attention Bioware gave to NPC's.  I figure with the war going on it would be easy to forget all of that soft stuff.  Thankfully they didn't.  That said, we then get to the ending.  It wasn't an interesting decision with interesting consequences.  So it really didn't live up to the Turian/Salarian/Krogan, Geth/Quarian, Asari, Cerberus sections that preceded it.  What was good was good enough that I just shrug off the ending that has everyone else so angry. It is suprising that the game could be so strong at some points and so off at others.  Again though, I appreciate the vast majority, which was very strong.

Modifié par Giltspur, 17 mars 2012 - 09:00 .

[TanithAeyrs]

Finally finished last night - the 54 hours I put into ME3 give my paragon fem Shep over 160 hours of game time through the series (I have other Sheps - renegade and paragon but she's my canon Shep so I played her first).
So now for my review.


Overall: 9/10

The good (and whan needed only minor improvement):

- Much more dialog with team members than ME2. More character development (Javik's growth as a character was particularly well done). Still somewhat limited choices on the dialog wheel. Would have liked more options for neutral choices and I wasn't really comfortable with any of the choices alloted when Traynor comes on to fem Shep (it would have been nice to be able to plainly say that your romantic interest lay elsewhere but you'd be happy to be friends - the whole chess game dialog came off a little strange) and it didn't give me an option to not invite her to the cabin and skip to the Allers inteview.

-retuning characters - everyone from Wrex and Mordin to Balak and Verner.

-tough choices. The genophage - I let Mordin cure it. Rannoch - I managed to unite the Geth and the Quarians and spare them both but right up until the end of the last dialog I didn't think the Quarians would back down. Allies with Balak - wow, that was tough for Shep to swallow. The rachni queen - particularly if you spared her previously. The end game choices - I didn't particularly like the end - more about that later - but those were the most morally grey choices I've ever seen.

-gameplay - I'm not really a fan of shooters so I used the HUD alot; but the overall gameplay felt fluid and I loved being able to change plans as the enemy responded to my previous tactics.

-all the little moments. Shooting bottles with Garrus - best friend moment ever in a game. Tali getting drunk. Saying a prayer with Thane's son. Mordin's death "I am a very model of a scientific salarian..." - that was a tear jerker. Lola. Kaidan's anger at Shep over working with Cerberus. The moment when Kaidan realizes that Shep really was dead. Liara's dad. Tali on Rannoch. Tali and Legion at the end of the Rannoch mission. Shep and Anderson's conversation on the Citadel after TIM's death. Grunt emerging from the rachni caves alive. This game brought me from laughter to tears over and over again.

-weapon mods were back

-Team mates moving around the ship and interacting with each other - felt much more natural than having them stay in one spot all the time. 

-The Illusive Man - best bad guy since Irenicus in BG2.  You can hate him and sympathize with him at the same time. 



The bad:

- the mission log - no updates - had to resort to pen and paper to remember what I had done and where I needed to go next.

-only able to get a complete weapon description when you first aquire it - I would have liked weapon descriptions (not just graphs) when choosing my load out.

- the reaper battle on Rannoch - I'm simply not very coordinated - this was the only point where I considered turning the difficulty down (played on RPG mode, normal difficulty - I had finished both ME1 and ME2 on hard difficulties at least once). It took me more than 2 hours to defeat it just because I couldn't move my fingers fast enough when I had to change the direction I was rolling in.

-planet scanning was slow - overall I didn't mind it but the animation just wasn't very fast. I didn't really mind the side missions - mostly they were just playing politics - giving people a motivation to help Shepard.

-the early phase of the game: lots of action to engage the shooter fans but no real build up for RPG players. Would have loved even an e-mail in the opening scene from Hackett listing the charges against Shepard and how they planned to deal with them. Shepard's court martial just seemed so insignificant given that she had blown up a mass relay and possibly incited war with the Batarians. More time should have been given to this.

The End: I'm giving this it's own section because there is good and bad and it was the only part of the game where I really felt that Shep was not being guided by my hand.

Good parts of the ending:
- morally grey. No good choice possible - every choice given conflicted with my Shep's morals and beliefs at some level.

-destruction of the mass relays allows races to develop without alien technology, evolve on their own not down a guided path. Also opens the door for endless possibilities in the future of the franchise - who knows how long it will take to develop the ability to traverse space with another technology or with a similar one - decades, centuries, millenia. The krogan could learn peace, the asari could become aggressive warriors, ect. Should be plenty of individuals left on each species homeworld (except perhaps for the Quarians) to allow sufficient genetic diversity (with or without the synthesis option).

-Shepard's sacrifice was poignant. It felt like a good ending for her. I know there are possibilities to save her but without playing multiplayer I don't know if I can ever reach that level with the choices she makes - I had a very completionist playthrough and my war assests were slightly over 7100. I'd rather not metagame every single choice in all 3 games to see what happens if she lives - I'm trying Infiltrator on my Ipod but so far it's not really my thing so I may not be able to see those endings. I don't really want to play multiplayer because I have small children and I often need to pause my game and leave it at a moments notice.

The Bad:

-Shepard could not confront the Catalyst on the fallacies in his logic. My Shep would have definitely confronted him on all of his solutions because they either caused the destruction of sentient races (synthetic or otherwise) or corrupted them into something else, something they weren't meant to be. And the Geth are cooperating with the Quarians - a good example of a flaw in his logic. The Protheans had defeated another sentient race of machines - another example of his flawed logic. The synthesis solution felt like a destruction of every race in the galaxy - I did play that ending and EDI and Jeff were cute - but.... Or you are left with enslavement or destruction of sentient races. No way my Shep would not have confronted the Catalyst - she was always a proponent of both free will and preserving sentient life - of couse the hole in her logic would be the destruction of the sentient Reapers - the Catalyst could argue that.

-The Normandy - so how did Kaidan and EDI end up back on her when they were part of operation Hammer? And where was the rest of my team if they made it? Genetic diversity off one starship on an alien planet? Why was the Normandy running from the battle anyway?

-How can Earth survive if the Sol relay has exploded? What about other planets in systems with relays?

-The Quarians and Turians stuck in Sol system - slow starvation or do the live ships carry enough food to sustain them? How will they continue to repair the Quarian Flotilla with only one systems worth of resources, or do they start the long, slow journey back to Rannoch or another habitable planet (centuries, millenia?)

-Aliens stuck on earth? Did Wrex survive to control the Krogan? Were there any Krogan females with them (presumably fertile since the genophage was cured)? Salarians, Asari, geth? I'm assuming the Turians and Quarians would not survive.

-No answers on what happened to most of the team - even a cut scene showing all of them dead would have been better. I'm guessing my Shep met Garrus at whatever heavenly bar they could find.

Overall feelings on the ending: The concept was good and the ending would have made a grand and poetic ending to a book or movie. But this was my Shep, with over a hundred hours invested in her she should have been able to argue with the Catalyst, try to show him where he was wrong. The only way I could see that not happening is if the indoctrination theory is true. I guess I would have liked to have an option for the Catalyst to allow a window for the alien fleets to retreat to their own worlds before destroying the Reapers and the relays (or whatever solution Shepard chooses). I would have liked a few epilogue slides or cut scenes to show what happened to team mates, major players and each alien homeworld. If Shepard lives, a reunion with his/her LI or mourning their death or departure. An explaination of why the Normandy did not return to Earth if it is necessary for it to land on an alien world for future ME games.

Maybe some of these things are realized in the "secret" ending the guide says is possible on a second playthrough. I just don't know if I have the heart to play the game again right now.

In conclusion I would like to thank the dev's for an amazing series and I hope they see that the players have lost their investment in the character in the final scenes of ME3. Well, I'm off to read some fanfic - I'm sure some of the writers have come up with satisfying alternate universe ME3 endings. I don't think many players expected anything other than a tragic ending - they just wanted to know that what they did mattered.

Modifié par TanithAeyrs, 17 mars 2012 - 09:20 .

[Shepard_ME]

took me more than 2 hours to defeat it

Never played in ME on consoles, but this battle on Rannoch wasn't really hard.

Modifié par Shepard_ME, 17 mars 2012 - 09:12 .

[chrislynn]

So, I just finished Mass Effect 3 and while I do not normally give my feedback, I thought I would add my two-cent review. I wish that I could have ended the series with a 'wow' feeling but instead, all I feel is frustration which is a shame because the ride getting here has been an absolute blast.

I'll start with my quibbles. Scanning became a game of 'scan, scan, evade reapers, reload' until I found galaxy maps. And the turret mini games were fortunately brief and relatively consequence free as I am not the best shooter. It also would have been nice to have a clearer indication of which path lead to which choice or the option to turn around once you reached the active point and realized that was not the path you wanted. (yeah, I was busy getting the kids lunch on the table when the conversation was playing, so sue me ) And last but not least was the Kaidan not giving me 'Reave' bug which I suspect is tied in to an issue with have conversations with him at the cafe prior to getting his email to have said conversation.

My largest issue with the game was- wait for it- the ending or rather the fact that I was prevented from getting the ending I would have liked simply for the fact that I do not and will never play multiplayer. Despite getting all the downloads, playing a character from Mass Effect 1, listening to all the conversations, maxed out on reputation and obtained all of the available war assets (any that I may have missed through choices would not have gotten me enough to bridge the gap), it was not enough.

I have no problems with multiplayer specific rewards and I know that many enjoy multiplayer immensely. I just wish Bioware had not seen fit to, in a sense, punish me for not wanting to play. Honestly, when it comes to the combat and the shooting, I completely suck. I play on casual and enjoy it but would never subject anyone else to my particular level of ineptitude. I know they claimed it was possible to achieve through single player games but I am guessing it is only possible after a new game plus because I am fairly certain there were no more war assets to achieve even if I were to go back and meta game. Yes, I have read the posts from Bioware and I still disagree. So yeah, consider me disappointed and frustrated. Enough that I really don't want to play the game again, instead of excited to try my other characters and their choices.

The thing is, Shepard's story is my story and the attachments I have made to both the main character and the crew is amazing. What was created here and the emotion that I felt playing; sadness, hope, conflicted about my choice, is an incredible piece of work. Casual game play was perfect, forgiving enough for my mistakes (or when rolling in and out of cover was an epic fail!) but challenging enough that I was never bored. I loved my sniper rifle and had difficulty whenever I was forced to use a different weapon. Tech and Biotics were fun to use and I still had to think about my strategies. Except for the multiplayer vs. single player bias, I really loved this game. (Even the actually ending itself I got wasn't as bad as everyone making it out to be.)

[hchadw]

DiegoProgMetal wrote...

Ok Chris, I didn't have much time to play it yet, but I'll update this same post as I go. I loved this game as soon as Shepard got near Joker and I recognized Seth Green's voice complaining about the presence of Nihlus in the Normandy. In that moment I said: "This will be epic!".
I can't and wont hide that I'm very disturbed so far by the possibilities ahead (yes, the endings). But I'll reserve judgement until I get there.

What I could get so far: (mostly technical qualities/issues)
+ Gameplay mechanics
+ Slightly improved graphics
+ Vega is funny, as subtle as a train wreck
+ MP was nicely done
- Animations not so good. Eva Core running looked like she was "sliding" or "moonwalking".
- Feels even more streamlined than ME2. Like a movie where I have close to none interaction, even when playing RPG mode.
- Low-res textures.
- Lack of Nvidia Surround/ATI Eyefinity support.

This review is just a stub, and will be changed/improved as I play the game.

I really hope you understand my review as a real fan, someone who came to love this series. I understand my opinions are just that, opinions, and yours (Bioware, Chris, forumites) may and probably will be different. But please, if I make any criticism that goes against what Bioware thought was good, please, don't take it as simple rage/rant or something like that. I really hope you understand and maybe try to put yourselves in my pov. Since you opened this "channel" to your fans, please take any possible bad critics to your "hearts", and think about it kindly, don't just throw away or "dismiss that claim".
As for now, I really hope Bioware won't let me down.

Edit 1: Since I talked to a dev (who asked me not to reveal his name) about the endings, and he said that Bioware is happy with those endings, and he confirmed them, all I can say is that I'll play ME3. Once. And that's all. Said dev listened to my opinion and was very nice, talking to me withouth dodging any of my questions and respecting my opinions, so I respect his opinion too. Unfortunately, respecting someone elses opinon doesn't mean we have to agree. He clearly didn't agree with mine, but said he was sorry I didn't get the ending I wanted. And of course I respect and praise all the hard work the team did to deliver a great series. But I can't agree with the endings. They feel like a spit on my face actually. I hate to criticize someone elses hard work. But I'll never see the point in replaying the game just to get the same disappointing ending. 
I'd like to say to all the workers at Bioware that I'm really sorry we had to disagree with it. Loved this series since the begining, but IMHO, the ending just invalidates the "journey". And it makes me really sad.

Edit 2: I also wanted to tell all the guys at BioWare who worked on this game, that we know you worked really hard. You guys did a great story. So great that we all loved it. But, we are humans, and so are you. Sometimes this frustration becomes anger, and this is where neither of us should walk into. And keep in mind that the only reason for the fans sometimes get angry, is exactly because they love the series. If the series was just "ok" or even "bad", no one would care. And lets be honest, I REALLY doubt that not even ONE Bioware employee thought the endings were not as great as Bioware think they are.
I'm just using this "space" to write those things because I really hope you guys read it, think about it. Don't take it as something bad. The same dev I talked about in the first edit told me that "no matter what we could have done, there would be lots of angry people". Well I agree, but you could make the number of "angry people" decrease by just adding a few different endings... Some people wanted something like: "Humanity agree/surrender with/to the reapers and becomes one of them. The cycle continues." Some people wanted to kick the Reapers a**es with their squadmates, LI, and spill some drinks on the citadel... I think it was Casey who said that since this was the last game, you guys could do anything with the endings, there wouldn't be any restraints, you could go for several different outcomes... Why did you change your idea? Why only 3 endings that throws in the trash bin every choice, friendships, romances, whatever during the first 2 games? Why bother making peace between the Geth and Quarians, if you can choose "destroy" and "bye bye Geth AND EDI". Why bother with the Genophage, if you can choose "merge" and the Krogans will become half robots, probably making them imune or make the Genophage obsolete. And last but not least, why bother keeping your crew alive during the Suicide Mission in ME2, if you'll never see them again, only maybe if you "headcanon" something.
The worst part of it is that I saw Jarret Lee use the exact same words the "unnamed" dev used when talking to me: "This was a labor of love for the team and we're all very proud of what has been accomplished.", "labor of love" and "we are very proud of what has been accomplished" was exactly what the other dev said, word by word. Did you guys had some kind of agreement or script on what all of you should say?
Another forumite made a video in maybe a few minutes/hours, using the scene where the normandy is trying to run away from the explosion of the relays and another scene that I believe is from ME2, where the Normandy managed to get out of the explosion. And it was perfect.
Would it be so hard to make the Normandy escape, then show the "grandpa scene", roll the credits and then show the "Shep_alive.bik"? This would make at least half the people that are now disappointed happier! Make it hard to achieve, no problem. Keep the other endings as well. But at least don't leave the Normandy stranded no matter what. Why this decision? If you tell me that "it's the end of Shep's story", all can say is that: I KNOW! But why ending his/her story should get the Normandy and crew stranded and all the decisions from the previous game invalidated? Even if you had a "rainbows and sunshine" ending, you coud just say: Ok, that's over. There wont be any more Shep based game.
Sorry for this rant, I really wanted you to at least think on what I said. It'll probably change nothing because apparently you have made up your minds on this subject, but try to listen to your fans, since that's what you guys said in every interview. Don't worry, I will delete this "Edit 2" with all this rant in a week. I just hope until there you guys at least take a look at what I said and don't rush into ignoring it. Please.

Feel every word your saying and i aggree with it all!

Took this from another source  below but liked the last snippet most.

Then, of course, there is the ending. It's not just that the
conclusion to the series is disappointing, it's that there is absolutely
no consideration for the player's choices up until that point. The
character that you built across three games is swept aside. You can
press one of three buttons, all of which make Shepard submit to a
magical hologram child and a bunch of last-minute mysticism that Stephen
King would dismiss as being too silly.
Commander Shepard. The soldier who came back from the dead. The man
that did everything in his power to stop the Reapers. The guy that
solved all the galaxy's problems by punching or not punching people.
Told by a child to give up and push a button for reasons that didn't
make any sense, so he gave up and pushed a button because there was
dramatic music and slow motion. WWWTTTTFFFFF~!



http://www.something...fect-dumb.php   (actual source)

Modifié par hchadw, 17 mars 2012 - 09:49 .

[TanithAeyrs]

Shepard_ME wrote...

took me more than 2 hours to defeat it

Never played in ME on consoles, but this battle on Rannoch wasn't really hard.

I was on PC.  I'm not young and I have some arthritis in my hands.

[Xialavairon]

So I just finished ME3 about 90 minutes ago, and am still a tad shaky from the experience, in both a good and bad way.
Anyway, here's my list of moments and details which I found either amazingly mind-blowing or an utter disappointment.

The amazingly mind-blowing moments:

+ Genophage story - the entire story was brilliant, start to finish, and Mordin's sacrifice at the end...well, someone else could have gotten it wrong. :/ 10/10 on this little bit

+ Quarian/Geth story - in my opinion, one of the best storylines in the ME universe, and the apex of ME3 (I kinda wanted to see this part the most). The missions were extremely well done, with my favourite being the virtual reality one...it really shines a new light on the Geth as a race. And in my ending, the Quarians and the Geth made peace, the Geth had gained true intelligence, and I promised Tali I'd go on honeymoon with her after the war and all. ^^ This is a storiy that has seamlessly flown throught the entire trilogy, with a true and fitting ending. Dodging the destroyer at the end was a bit tough and go though, but still...

+ EDI - I really like the way she has matured as a character, an AI with developing emotions...and in the end humanity. The Joker + EDI relationship as an added bonus to this is also very well done - its very unorthodoxy is what makes it so good and worth remembering.

+ Crew - the Normandy's crew feels even more alive than it did in ME2, I liked all the random moments and chatting among the crew members. The crew is also very well written, each fot he characters having their own depth...

Now...onto the disappointments:

- Lack of Harbinger - Among other things, where was he, anyway? Apart from being mentioned a few times and firing on me in London, where was he at all? I miss the guy...he was a pretty badass Reaper leader.

- Uniform Reaper appearance - this is a gripe which I've had ever since I watched the teaser. In ME2's ending the Reapers were shown to be of many varying shapes and sizes, as if every new generation of Reapers got a new appearance. While I understand the army of Sovereigns was created mostly due to developer time savings, couldn't there have at least been a few more unique Reapers? Also, I'm only referring here to big Reaper capital ships, mind you, the Destroyers were a nice addition, but a minor one in the long run.

- Certain plot twists - some parts of the plot just seemed too sudden and rush, like the Cerberus coup on the Citadel...would have liked to see some more explanation why Udina and all that happened.

- Tali's face - I'd honestly expected a bit more, like an in-game model. Still, the amazgin writing and voice acting made up for 99% of it. *thumbs up* ^^

- And, of course, the ending - The fact that there is NO TRUE happy ending was the one that seriously got to me...I had just finished bringing the ENTIRE galaxy together, only to find out I either have to sacrifice myself or all synthetic life in order to win. The synthesis ending appealed to me the most, but...was a honeymoon with on Rannoch with Tali too much to ask for? D:
The entire ending was a complete mess in my opinion...no coherent line of thought present like with the brilliantly done ending of ME2. The Catalyst's explanation of the cylces was also a bit lacking...I don't know, I seem to have something against god children and the line of thought that we can't save everyone.
The "destroy the Reapers, you also destroy the Geth whom you've just enabled to become truly alive a few days ago" is the kind of thing which really made me angry (mostly due to the fact tha I'd be killing EDI as well, with whom I've developed quite a friendship). I had already saved everyone when fighting the Collectors, how was it any different now?
Everything seems a bit hastily put together, but the thing which I am most angry at is the Shepard situation. In my perfect ending, Shepard and the Normandy, all of the crew, would survive, mass relays present or not. And...the Catalyst told me stuff that I had already realized on my own...still...there are a LOT of unanswered questions left. Like...was there even a first organic race, or were the cycles without a real start, only a finish?
GREATLY supporting the idea for a big DLC that would sort most of these things out...all I want is a happy ending in which no one of my crew is hurt in any way. Finish off the best thing that's happened to gaming in the past decade with a fitting end, not an unescapable self-sacrifice (or sacrifice nonetheless).

To sum it all up, ME3 is a great game, which could have been and still can become an amazing game. Here's hoping it happens soon.

Modifié par Xialavairon, 18 mars 2012 - 02:08 .

[KelaSaar]

First 95%: 90/100 Last 5%: 0/100

Mass Effect 3 is a marvelous game that manages to destroy the entire trilogy in its last 15 minutes. The first 95% of the game is really quite good. Bioware manages to put together some spectacular set pieces and really fun action scenes. The combat is also for the most part better than it has been in the previous games. They also do a good job brining in things from the previous games, and let you make some really cool decisions. The dialog and voice acting is quite excellent for the most part. There were parts that were hilarious and parts that I will admit I cried at. I did have some minor problems with this portion of the game, though. The “a” button is used for just about everything, which can make combat a bit of a nightmare. There’s also a ton of auto-dialogue at the expense of real conversations with NPCs, which is a disappointment. Further, even when you do get to actually talk with characters, they’ve dramatically reduced the number of conversation options you get, removing neutral options entirely. There are stretches of the game that feel more like watching a movie than playing a game, and not in a good way. In my opinion, the multiplayer is nothing spectacular. If you’re a fan of ME’s combat, then you’ll like it, but it’s certainly not going to give Call of Duty a run for its money.

Then there’s the ending, where everything falls apart. I hate that all of the choices and decisions I’ve made in the trilogy come down to picking one of three colors. This series has always advertised itself as one where choices matter, and it has built and marketed itself around that, only to throw it out the window at the last minute. The plot holes were ridiculous, and the leaps in logic the Star Child made were astounding. I hated that my Shepard couldn’t question him at all, and just blindly accepted him at face value. I also felt that the ending went entirely against the themes of the game. I always thought the games were about hope and overcoming incredibly odds through perseverance and teamwork, but then the ending veers off into synthetics vs. organics and seems to basically be saying that the only way to have peace is forcing everyone to be alike. I also hated the lack of closure. For good or bad, I want to know what happens to the people, characters, and places I’ve touched. The current ending gives no sense of closure and is full of unfortunate implications.

If Bioware can take steps to correct the ending (I’m a fan of the indoctrination theory myself) it would totally salvage my belief in the franchise and the company, but as it is, I simply cannot recommend this game. I’ve loved everything else Bioware has ever done, but I’m sorry, I just can’t get past the ending.

[nikola8]

95/100 - Excellent

Gameplay: The gameplay took the fluid mechanics of ME2 and upped it one level. The battle scenes are nearly perfectly executed. The enemies and classes seem more balanced than the first two games. The difficulty was also increased by the simple tweak where, unlike the second game, you can't regain all your health from cover (this was a trick I used to beat ME2 on Insanity, don't know if I'll try that on ME3 any time soon). The rolling, diving, covering, ladder climbing, jumping, turret/Atlas usage and stealth takedowns are also quite welcome. Sub-score: 10/10

Graphics/presentation: The graphics are objectively the best in the series. They are more realistic and have the best textures of all three games. I did notice some "jumps" in the cut scenes (which were relatively absent in ME2), where characters "snap" from one position to the next, but this was forgivable due to the overall beauty of the scene. Sub-score 9/10

Music: The music was so good that often you didn't even need dialogue to get the mood of the scene. Perfectly orchestrated. I find myself often listening to the soundtrack from my N7 collectors edition. Sub-score: 10/10

Story: This is where my review will get controversial, because not only did the ending not bother me, I loved the ending. I believe that a lot of the controversy with the ending is that players feel that their decisions through three games don't matter. This is only true if you look at the game as "ending" in the last 10-15 minutes. Rather, I take a holistic approach to the game and see the whole game as the ending. In this sense, the decisions really do matter- eg. Decisions in ME2 with regards to Maelon's research or the Quarians, or in ME1 with the Rachni do come into fruition, but they do so well before the ending levels of attacking the Cerberus base and retaking Earth. In a lot of ways, the entire plot is wrapped up by the time of the last level. If you're looking for some grandiose ending sequence with a huge epilogue that explains how each of your decisions impacted the post-Reaper galaxy, you'll be disappointed. However, if you accept that the fruits of your actions are continuously wrapped up throughout the game (something that I actually tip my hat to the writing team for in going against convention), you'll find a very satisfying experience. The actual ending sequence with the God-Child also didn't upset me or cause me to hate the ME trilogy or Bioware. It is open ended, sure. After discussions with MANY people who are VERY well versed on the Mass Effect universe on the ending, I have concluded that a lot of the things people are claiming to be plot holes are actually simply perception. While I don't claim to have the "definitive answers directly from Bioware", I can identify at least half a dozen viable theories to explain the ending (and that is in addition to the Indoctrination Theory). I believe that is what Bioware wanted- rather than rage, they wanted people to debate the endings and discover things on their own. I personally have enjoyed piecing the whole thing together. This method of storytelling defies convention (and it seems as though many people were expecting convention when they played through the game). I must make a note about the ending and closure- a lot of people have voiced concerns that the ending lends little closure to the series. As I mentioned before, a lot of the closure is gained THROUGHOUT the game rather than at the end. However, the game definitely rewards the "completionist" player. Many of the closing events are given through dialogue that Shepard needs to initiate, rather than in a cut scene that simply tells you (eg. I was discussing the game with another player and commented, "It was sad when I found out Kelly Chambers died", to which the person responded, "Kelly Chambers died?". This information, for example, was given in passive dialogue in only two non-essential conversations in the game). In this sense, it truly pays to talk to everyone in this game (more than previous games). I appreciate small things in the writing, such as the decision to not have the Illusive Man be a "final boss" (which I've read was on the table at one point in the development of the game). Such an ending would have been highly cliche. Basically, as a final note on the story, if you are expecting a conventional storytelling approach where all decisions are wrapped up in the final cut scene after the ending on the Crucible, you will be disappointed. However, if you accept that the game is constantly wrapping up plot lines throughout, you will feel less lack of closure and less disappointment when you reach the end of the game. For what the team has accomplished in linking thousands of variables over the course of three games, the Story category gets a Sub-Score of 10/10 (the mammoth scale of the entire narrative is truly unprecedented).

Overall: The game excels on so many levels that it is easy to overlook little failures (such as the occasional choppy cut scene). The series is so impressive, and the third game is the perfect capstone on the immense foundation of the first two games. Thank you Bioware for creating a memorable and immersive experience unlike anything I've ever experienced in a video game. Overall Score: 95/100

[Huskeonkel]

Alright, this is my first post on Mass Effect 3, and on this forum basically.

Everywhere
I look there's a lot of anger and dissatisfaction with the ending, and
I understand that because I agree with the reasons for it.
But I
don't think it is fair to only touch on the ending, to only judge and
give feedback based on it. Mainly because everything else about Mass
Effect 3 is so darn excellent.

You wanted to know what we liked
about the game? For me personally, I really liked the emotional
rollercoaster into the hopelessness and desperation of war. I was
genuinely captivated by the excellent story and characters, and I have
been since ME1. My favorite part was the Paragon sacrifice of Mordin
after an edge-of-my-seat struggle to get to the Shroud. Beautifully
written, and indeed .... epic.

The gameplay is vastly improved
compared to ME2, much more fluent and user-friendly. I really like the
battlefield-styled levels. They're really hectic and lets me fight tooth
and nail for every inch forward with enemies left and right, complete
with explosions and background athmosphere. It is nothing short of ...
epic.
The game is perhaps a bit more linear than I would have liked,
but maybe I've been pampered by ME2's "free roaming" style. Also, the
quest tracker is kinda lacking, especially for the scanning quests, as I
have no idea where to go, really.

The adversaries are spot on. I
like the idea of having a reaper version of the known races of the
galaxy. My favorite is the Banshee. Every time I hear the shrill scream
of one, I think "oh no", followed by a tough fight where I have to use
my surroundings well to make it. Also very epic.

The game in its
entirety is in fact so well done that I'm not hesitating to put it in a
top 3 of the best game I've ever played. The Mass Effect trilogy is my
favorite series, so well done to all of you at BioWare. Thanks for
making these great games.

And finally, the ending to the series...

Well,
I can't add anything useful that hasn't already been said over and over
on the forum. I just wanted to mention, as my personal feedback, what a
jarring and unsatisfying experience it was, after all the epic hours
I spent with the trilogy. After fighting these ultimate bad guys and
feeling their grip tighten on the galaxy, to have it all end with the
ill-conceived and baffling "Solution to Chaos" nonsense.
I'm still
holding out hope that you have something special up your sleeve
regarding the ending, especially since the indoctrination theory makes a
lot of sense to me. But if that isn't the case, I'm afraid I won't be
buying any of your DLCs, as the ending sucks replayability from the
whole trilogy.

I hope the feedback was useful.

[Blitzace]

    My Mass Effect 3 rating is 78/100


   ME 3 succeeds in following up its previous entries by carrying on with the same brand of fantastic story telling and depth. Then it goes on further to make improvements on the combat, which in the past has been iffy. Now the combat feels well controlled and meaty. No longer are you held to wielding set weapon groups, or limited to two different handguns. All of this comes together for the best combination of story telling and combat seen in ME. While the game does have some general bugs, they don’t interfere with too much of the game. 


   But while ME 3 succeeds in many areas, it disappoints in others.


   A great deal of where ME 3 goes wrong is all in the story. In previous games you’ve been introduced to, and have grown fond of a great cast. Instead of devoting time to many of these characters or species you are forced into repudiative encounters with Cerberus. I was also disappointed that some of my favorite characters were left to the end. Tali, and Legion were characters that I found intriguing yet they were given so little attention. Instead I was left with Liara from the start, who in my opinion was the most boring of the entire series. Then, in what felt like an attempt to create a more emotional story, the characters you had become emotionally invested with were killed off. Mordin dies, then Thane, then Anderson, and eventually you give yourself. You’re also forced to chose between my two favorite characters, Tali and Legion during which Legion died. It got old. All of this however pails in comparison to the terrible ending. You spend the entire game building up forces for your final encounter, then it all gets incredibly dark, then dire, then it just blacks out. ME 3 was great until your “forced” to play those last few hours. I say forced because it felt like watching a B grade horror movie where all you were looking for was the light at the end of the tunnel. It never came. For a series that built up so much it left a void where my victory should have been, instead of closure I’m wishing for what could have been.


   In closing, it’s one thing for a game to be bad. It’s something else entirely to see a great game build you up, only to drop the floor out from under you. People are asking for a different ending, but does it really matter? Can you wash the sour taste out that was left? I don’t know, but if you can get past the ending, what your left with is a fantastic game. That however, is a big if.

[wasawsolos]

it's hard to keep up but if you havent seen, CNN covers us toward the end of this video.

http://www.cnn.com/v...ame-reviews.cnn

brief I know but the media is starting to take notice.

[JFedora]

This is almost certainly going to be buried in the 50+ pages that have already been written, but sure, I'll give it a shot just in case someone happens to feel like reading my incredibly, incredibly long and detailed thoughts:

It's impossible for me to give an overall rating for ME3. If you had asked me what my overall rating was when I was saying goodbye to my squad before starting the last push with Hammer, I would have said somewhere around 90-100/100. If you're asking me now that I've beaten it and had a couple weeks to think about it, I'd give the entire ME series a 30-40/100, because for me, that is how important the conclusion is to a story. But before I get to the ending, I'll go over a few other things:

Possibly the best part of ME3 (and the ME series as a whole) are the characters. Garrus absolutely feels like a comrade-in-arms; like he's one of your best friends who you trust completely. It's an incredibly well-done character, and an amazing conclusion to the relationship. Tali was another highlight: i romanced Tali, and watching her character move from nervous, shy side-character (ME1) to a more confident, capable leader (ME2) was good enough. But ME3 takes it a step further: from the self-doubting, nervous love interest in ME2, ME3 has Tali bantering with Shepard about it. It really feels like the relationship is moving forward, and it was done well enough that, after saying goodbye to her before the final mission, I then went into that mission with the intention of surviving just so that I wasn't leaving Tali behind to mourn Shepard for the rest of her life. Mordin's death is yet another prime example: it almost brought me to tears, and for a moment I really wanted Shepard to say "You're not going up there alone", and charge into the elevator with him. It finishes Mordin's character arc, and his death is made a little easier by the knowledge that HE died happy, his conscience fully cleansed, knowing he was fixing his biggest regret. It worked, and it was beautiful. I could keep going forever - I absolutely HATED Jack in ME2 (my version of a perfect ME2 ending involves everyone living except Jack), and I still wasn't a fan of her in ME3, but I really appreciated her character arc. Almost without exception, the characters were done as close to perfectly as they could have been.

Moreover, the storytelling was excellent. Bioware always has fantastic writing and excellent storytelling, but ME3 does a particularly wonderful job about wrapping up past plotlines effectively. The geth/quarian conflict that was hinted at as early as ME1. The Krogan genophage that was DEFINITELY hinted at in ME1. The Rachni queen was a little disappointing, because I really expected the Rachni to play a bigger role in the conclusion then they did - but, then again, I expected everything to play a bigger role in the conclusion. (More on that in a minute.)

It's been mentioned plenty already, but the sidequest system really sucked. ME1 and 2 had a wonderful system for organizing quests into Primary and Secondary, and I really wish that had been continued. Additionally, the number of fetch quests was completely overwhelming - they were about the equivalent to the ores and matriarch's writings and such from ME1, but given far too much presidence. If you cut out all the fetch quests in ME1, you could still have a solid 30-hour game; I feel like if you took the fetch quests out of ME3, the game would feel extremely empty. For example, there's one sidequest to rescue refugees from the Elcor homeworld. You do this by finding the system (either at random, or by carefully going through the codex and lore to determine the general area you should look in), flying to the MOON, and scanning it. What about another quick, 10-15 minute N7-type mission where you hold an area against the reapers while the elcor escape? Or you fight through reaper lines to rescue key personnel? There could even have been unique battle conditions reflecting the high gravity. Anything, really, that would bring out the depth of the universe. ME3 felt kind of lacking in playable missions that weren't directly related to the main, linear story.

And, of course: the ending. I am honestly dumbfounded at how anyone at Bioware (a company which specialized in producing high-quality stories) could be satisfied, much less proud, of ME3's ending. I was an indoctrination theorist (if anyone hasn't heard of that already, you can find out here: http://w11.zetaboard...opic/7688087/1/), and one of the more compelling arguments for me was, "Look at all these plotholes and continuity errors. Bioware has made great game after great game; there's NO WAY they made THIS many mistakes." I won't go over all the plot holes here, but there really, really were a lot of them. Regardless of whether or not I think the ending is satisfying as a gamer, or of good artistic quality, it was obviously, objectively poorly done. When you've got a list of plot holes so long that "it was all a dream" makes MORE sense then what you were trying to get at, you have a problem. And personally, I am horrified and feel really let down that a company with Bioware's reputation didn't notice any of these problems. The entire rest of ME3's story is brilliant and damn near perfect - it's absolutely spot-on, fits in with the rest of the series and wraps everything up effectively and satisfyingly. The last 10 minutes feel like it was made by an entirely different (grossly inferior) team and tacked on the end.

Moreover, even apart from the plotholes, the ending was just plain bad, for any number of reasons. For starters, there's the fact that we, as fans, were absolutely outright lied to. There are no "wildly divergent endings", not in ANY way at all. Every decision you make in ME1, 2, and 3 is boiled down to a single number called "EMS" - and, what makes it worse is that EMS has absolutely no effect on the end of either Shepard's story or the overall galaxy's. No matter what you choose in all three games, the Reapers lose, the relays blow up, and Shepard dies. (I'm not counting the breathing scene, because it's a giant plothole all by itself - how did Shepard survive re-entry/how is Shepard breathing if he's still on the citadel in space? How is Shepard alive when he was told his implants would shut down, after the game specifically brings up his implants and how he's only living because of them multiple times?) You can kill all the geth; you can kill all the quarians; you can broker peace between them; or, theoretically, you could just go on a killing spree and murder them all, and it would not effect the ending. We are not even given the satisfaction of seeing what effect our choices had on the battle. One of the big decisions in the game was to side with the Salarians or the Krogan, but not both. (I only sided with the Krogan, so I don't know if you ever COULD side with the Salarians, but I assume that you could.) What difference would it have made if I had sided with the Salarians instead? Any difference at all?  Ultimately, no, no it would not. Contrary to what a lot of people are saying in response to this argument, I'm not saying that I should get to control the game. Bioware has control - but they specifically promised options, and they did not make good on that promise. Bioware could have had complete control in determining the effects of my choices - that's part of what makes the ME series so interesting: seeing the effects of your choices play out. The point is that they DISMISSED the effects of my choices altogether. Sure, I was given a token number in my EMS - but that is NOT "wildly divergent".

But there's even more that's wrong with the ending. A lot of people complain that there was no happy ending, and I agree - but I would also add that there was no SAD ending, either. In ME2, you could complete your mission (stop the collectors) and still "lose". Shepard and his whole team could die. The Collector's didn't win, but it makes it pretty likely that the Reapers would, since pretty much everyone who took the Reaper threat seriously was now dead with Shepard. In ME3, if you complete the game there is no possible scenario in which the Reapers win. Why not?? It minimizes their threat for the entire series. Particularly after the scene with Liara's time capsule, why was there no ending in which Shepard loses, the Reapers destroy the fleet, and you get a shot of some alien from the next cycle finding Liara's box? THAT is a bittersweet ending: we may have failed, but at least there is a shimmer of hope for the future. That would be one step closer to the "wildly divergent endings" we were promised. Instead, no matter what Shepard does, who he befriends, or what choices he makes throughout all three games, all he has to do is SURVIVE until the end, and the Reapers are stopped. In a traditional medium, that ending would work - but not in a video game. The specifics of the story of a game play out differently every time you play through it - even just through slightly different tactics used by the player as he progresses through missions. When the player dies, he reloads and tries something different to reach the ending. So in a video game, it is a GIVEN that the player will reach the ending, because that's why the player is playing in the first place - if he dies (e.g. doesn't convince TIM to commit suicide and misses the renegade prompt to shoot him), he re-loads and does it differently. That's why a boss fight would have been more satisfying: at least in a boss fight, what you do (in terms of specifically how you fight) directly influences whether or not the bad guys lose. In ME3, so long as you make it to the end, the bad guys lose. That's why everything on the citadel feels so empty and pointless: you're doing little more than running a script.

Finally, closure: there is no closure for the story. I recently watched the last season of a tv show called Chuck, and inevitably found myself comparing its series finale with ME3's ending. Chuck did it right. Every single major character in the show is, at the end, starting into some new, big life change. The viewers have no idea how it's going to end up, but it's okay, because we know what they're going to do the day after the show ends. Everything they've done up to that point is wrapped up; they're moving on with their lives beyond the scope of the show. ME3 doesn't do that. The entire galaxy is going through a new, apocalyptic change (relays are gone, and quite possibly everyone's part synthetic now), but their previous lives are not wrapped up. That's why the ending feels like a cliffhanger. The quarians are starting to settle their homeworld with the geth, but in the meantime they're sending the bulk of their fleet (and a large portion of their population) to this battle. The "quarian homeworld" plot is wrapped up (they now have one), but the overall QUARIAN plot is not - how does the war affect their settlement? It's kind of a big deal. Same with the Krogan - great, the genophage is cured, but will it matter if most of the adult Krogan are wiped out in the attack/stranded on earth? How does Shepard's final choice influence what happens to these major plotlines that have been developing through all three games? And that's not even talking about individual characters: what does Garrus do, now that he's got nothing big to shoot at? Since I romanced Tali - how does Shepard's death affect her? Does she move on? Does she make it home? Everything you do in the games UP TO the final battle is wrapped up - but the effects of that final battle are never discussed, and that translates into a lack of closure for the player.
At the same time, don't mistake this as a plea for absolute, definitive answers on everything. At the end of the last season of Chuck, a major character has 5 years of her life wiped from her memory. She doesn't remember meeting her husband though she does find out they were married and meets him again. The show ends with them having (from her perspective) their first kiss on a beach - which of course leads to tons of questions. Do her memories ever return? Do they fall in love again? How does her husband handle having to go through all the same fights the show covered as they adapted to living together? Or do they divorce because it's just too much to handle? The show doesn't offer any answers, and I, at least, was entirely okay with that. In fact, as they kissed, I was saying "yes, perfect, end the show right there, that's the perfect ending". I don't know what happened, because I don't need to know; Chuck found the perfect balance between questions and closure. I know that this is all relative, and that it's impossible to please everyone. I also know that there are probably plenty of people who hated the end of Chuck - but unless I've missed it, it didn't spawn a massive internet campaign protesting the ending, which means it satisfied a far great portion of its fanbase than bioware did with ME3. I don't want all my questions answered. I don't really want to know exactly what each character does with every day of the rest of their lives. I want learn that the characters I love so much have wrapped up this part of their lives and are moving onto the next, whatever that might be. And absolutely most importantly, I want to see my decisions influencing how everyone moves on, because ultimately, my decisions were what made the story engaging in the first place.

[ananna21]

Atmosphere 100%:The set pieces did show the scale of the conflict.
Quarian Geth conflict and krogan conflict masterfully written.
The bad. The entire menu system:sick:. The one mass effect 2 was much more efficient. It truly frustrated me when I got an item and did not even give a hint where to go on the citadel. This lead to citadel becoming tedious. The boy:sick:<_<<_<: I felt Absolutely nothing from him his moments at all.<_<<_< No sorrow. The dialogue from the asari and  her salarian stepfather stirred genuine sorrow from me and I had no interaction with them . Shepard should have seen much death already of people underage weather from colonist origin or from the war hero background so this one boy should not have such a large impace that he is focus of the Commanders nightmares<_

Modifié par ananna21, 18 mars 2012 - 02:55 .

[TheCinC]

My Mass Effect 3 score: 49/100

Why? You know why. Because the final moments make no sense, leave too many questions open, don't fit with the rest of the story and just doesn't feel like the end to Mass Effect. A proper ending gives closure and ME3 is supposedly a finished product. Instead, it feels like there was no money anymore or marketing didn't want to extend a deadline and someone realised the game still needed an ending at 4:55 pm on a friday afternoon and decided to write a placeholder, which then was used as the actual ending because the writing staff had been laid off. This was like watching a thriller where a detective investigates a murder, there are three possible suspects, all  locked in a room with the detective and it is all very exciting and then just as the detective is starting to explain who did it and why and then arrest that person the detective points out of the window at a random person happening to pass by and says: He did it.  With a cucumber. It feels like reading a book, a real pageturner and then finding out the final page is missing. On purpose. And then instead there is an advertisement: if you want to know how this ends, just buy the final page when it comes out! It is just wrong. I paid for a finished product, but this doesn't feel like it. It just struck me how irrelevant ME1, ME2 and ME3 are in relation to the ending: the kid/catalyst lives on the Citadel. Each time I was there, I could have walked into the wrong room, found him and had a talk with the SINGLE being responsible for the Reaper invasion and given him/her/it some classes in elementary logic: saving biological beings from being killed by synthetics by killing them and turning them into synthetics? That makes no sense, please don't bother to 'help' us. kthxbye. Any time I could have walked into the room with the dead bodies and found out his dirty little secret.. Okay, I think I threw up a little inside my mouth. Whatever happened to 'we are legion'? Each Reaper was a nation, right? That is irrelevant if they all listen to a child with a childlike view of ethics.

Other than that, the game is basically terrific. I saw so many of the choices I made in ME1 and ME2 turn out for the best and was feeling rather pleased with myself, enjoyed having some of my old buddies tagging along, it was an immersive atmosphere, just as great a game as the previous two. I would've rated the game higher if Shepard had died close to the beam, that would have made some kind of sense, if the Proteans couldn't win, with all their advanced technology, how could the remnants of a few dozen divided races who had been at eachothers throats until days ago? But this? This. Is. Just.. Wrong. How did anyone even think of this, never mind approve this? Good luck with getting me to pay for DLC, I feel like a sucker for shelling out for preordering the CE. See here for more details: http://social.biowar...13/101#10164656

So, I can't give this game a passing grade, because how can you enjoy a series like this if the ending falls so far short?

Modifié par TheCinC, 18 mars 2012 - 05:50 .

[Sweet Omega]

I was there with you right until the end Bioware. Mass Effect 3 was the best game experiences I've had in years. Ever mission felt important, critical to the survival of the galaxy, all the characters were fantastically fleshed out and realized, and every loss was heartbreaking and felt proper in the story. The multiplayer is frantic and satisfying as well. And if I was rating all of these things on thier own I would give ME3 a 90/100. 

But then we come to the end. The final 20 minutes kill not only ME3 but hurt ME1 and ME2 as well, knowing how it comes to an end in a confusing and nonsense filled cutscene. It felt so rushed and out of place next to all the other fantastic writing in the series. I've been an avid gamer for most of my life and played games with worse endings than this one to be fair, but I think what was most upsetting was that I was expecting so much from this game. I hold Bioware as one of the best game companies in the industry. And this ending just felt like a betrayl. 

I was so upset with the end that it literally made me queasy the more I thought about it. Shepard has killed off most of the universe by destroying the relays, and (assueming they didn't die in an atomic fireball) the fleet you spend the entire game recruiting is now stranded above a war torn Earth never to see thier homes again and will most likely starve to death, and, for some reason, my crew is magically aboard the Normandy (which is fleeing the largest and most important battle in history) which crashes God knows where, millions of miles from any kind of help. 

I went in to this game thinking that my Shepard would probably not survive. I was totally fine with this as long as thier scarifice made sense. These choices made no sense. It was very reminiscent of what I lovingly refer to as "ending-mo-tron" from Deus Ex. Three pre-determined endings that have nothing to do with actions prior to reaching the magic machine that takes you to your cutscene of choice.  

I don't need rainbows and kitties from my endings. It would be nice if there was a "happy" ending for players who go through the work to achieve it. But I any ending would be better than the ones we got. And arguing that Shepard is a "tragic" figure is just ludacris. There is nothing "tragic"  about this character. This character is a fighter. And to tell me that I just don't "get it" in regards to the ending is just insulting to your fanbase.

I would have been happy with text boxes that tell me what happened after Shepard dies if that has to happen.
Just give me sort of closure, Bioware,  not a bunch of random cut scene that has no place in this narrative.
I'm sure you have heard these complaints over and over already. And my post will most likely be ignored. But know that the reason we are so upset is because we hold you to a higher standard from most.

We expect you to be the best, Bioware.

So the game up to the end 90/100. The ending as it stands right now 3/100. 

(And on a side note if the indoctrination theory turns out to be right I will tip my hat to you, though that means that you didn't give us a real ending just a cliff hanger before you gave us the real ending in DLC which would be a real kick in the teeth. on top of the puch to the guts the ending we got is.)

Modifié par Sweet Omega, 18 mars 2012 - 06:02 .

[danvaldo]

95/100, nearly perfect, except Diana (Jessica Chobot), had better have another platoon member as Grunt, more places to visit as Ilium, and the end was sad to see how the great trilogy closes with an ending so bad , inconclusive and so out of the game itself, deserves a fitting end to the trilogy, this ending seems like a bad dream of Commander Shepard, but disappointed that it is not

[darkshadow136]

 Dear Bioware,

The game play up to the last part of
ME3 was great, but the end of the game ruined the entire series and the
franchise. The parts that ruined the game for me are listed below.

1.1.        
The endings for the game were
horrible 3 choices that led to 16 variations of the same black. No variety like
promised, all the endings shared 95% the same cut scenes. We were promised
throughout the series that all our choices would shape not only our Sheppard
but the galaxy and the final ending to the series; this was taken away in the
final 15 minutes of the game. You can’t just take an interactive game built on
choice and make it into a linear game in the final moments.

1.2.        
Multi player content should have no
effect on the single player campaign. There is a reason why no other game has implemented
this, since not everyone like multi player. A player should be able to reach
100% galactic readiness without having to play multi player.

1.3.        
I did not like that after you make it
clear to Cortez that you are not interested in him, that he still seems to push
you towards liking him in future conversations. My personal beliefs I don’t
approve of the Homosexual lifestyle, and I don’t feel I need to have that
pushed on  my in a game.

1.4.        
We want our endings more varied and distinct
from each other like was promised, having all our choices taken into account in
the final outcome.

1.5.        
Fill the plot holes give us a real back
round on the Reapers, and their purpose, bring Harbringer into the picture
more.

1.6.        
For those that ME3 is their first
exposure to the ME universe, offer them a DLC that allows them to make the
choices they would have had a chance to if they played ME1-ME2. This will make
more revenue for Bioware in a DLC purchase, and give the player a chance to
have a real full ME3 experience and a bump in galactic readiness to help with
their ending.

1.7.        
The Rachni were always represented in
ME1/ME2 as being an important part of ME3, and in ME3 they played a very small
part. We had to save them again, and all they did was help build the crucible.
We should have seen some Rachni ships in our fleet and so on.

1.8.        
We were also told in previous
magazine interviews prior to release that Cerberus was going to be an enemy,
and that we should make sure to destroy the collector base  in our ME2 saves, This was so the illusive man
would not get a hold of Reaper tech. Well I destroyed the collector base and
the Illusive man still got a hold of Reaper tech. How he got acquired Reaper
tech needs to be explained.

1.9.        
One of the pieces of feedback many of
us asked for was the return of the Mako Tank and exploration missions. That
feedback seems to have fallen on deaf ears since we have no Mako missions in
ME3. 

1.10.   
We had Loyalty missions in ME2 and it
would have been nice to have them with the new squad members of ME3, it added
immersion into the relationships with the characters.

1.11.   
A helmet toggle option similar to
what we had in ME1 would be nice, especially with the custom sets of armor we
got from pre-orders, and import saves.

1.12.   
If you are going to have 16 variations
on the ending fine. But You could cut that to 6 endings and make them so varied
and different it would make a more complete experience, with a excellent, very
good, good, neutral, bad, very bad ending. The key thing being that it takes
our past choices and actions into account, not just war assets and galactic readiness.

I know that if at least the endings
are not redone I will no longer purchase products from Bioware, and the ending
DLC should be free, since we already paid for a proper ending to the game we
purchased. People make the argument that the game is Art and not subject to
pressure to change.

I make the argument that an
Interactive game like the Mass Effect series, in which certain promises and
descriptions and player game shaping was established by the company makes it a Commercial
product , with art aspects, and a every changing storyline, sue to the players participation
in the creative process. ME3 is not a piece of art to mat and hang on a wall
and it is not a 1st edition book to place in a protective case. 

When customers like us give you Bioware
5 years of our life playing your series, making choices, taking different paths
on different Sheppard’s so we can have a complete experience, and that trilogy
is ended in the linear way you chose to do, it was a betrayal not only to your
customers, but to the epic masterpiece that we have helped you shape over the
last 5 years.

Bioware it is time for you to be
Sheppard, and you have a new mission, gain back our loyalty so we can together battle
and claim victory over the Reapers.

Game as is 3/10
Game with just the endings fixed 8/10
Game with all things fixed 10/10

[Shepard_ME]

Multi player content should have no effect on the single player campaign.

You just will not see Shepard alive, that's all influence.)

My personal beliefs I don’t approve of the Homosexual lifestyle, and I don’t feel I need to have that
pushed on my in a game.

Agree with that, we have enough of this content in Dragon Age 2..

[Sinistergrasp]

An extended review that covers From Ashes as well as XBox 360 Kinect support and the iOS Datapad app:

MEDIA SIN Review: Mass Effect 3

The ending was a significant detractor to the experience, and not because it was 'bittersweet', but because it had no narrative consistency with the entire series leading up to that point. While I enjoyed the game throughout, I have played the entire series as pure Paragon, and was excited to try the alternate path at some point, at least up until the very end... When the desire to replay any of the series left me because, story-wise, it would culminate in a waste of time.

There is no aggregate score provided because I am one of those journalists of the perspective that review scores are almost exclusively indicative of poor journalism practice.

[BigZ7337]

For those that haven't finished Mass Effect 3, the first part of my
review will be spoiler free, but the second part must be rife with
spoilers because the story and ending is the biggest problem of the
game. I'll also preface this review by saying that the ME series had
been probably my favorite gaming series of all times, and I beat the
campaign of ME1 three times while I finished the campaign of ME2 four
times. I had been incredibly excited about the game, and had been able
to avoid practically every spoiler except for two smaller ones about EDI
and the Prothean character. Even though the game is flawed, I loved
pretty much 99% of the game, but the ending was so bad that it has
ruined my entire Mass Effect experience. I was going to play the game
again with my female character as I loved the voice over work of
Jennifer Hale, but now I don't really want to. I was even going to start
a new character in ME1 and play all three games in succession, but now
it just isn't worth it.

So, let's start with the gameplay, which
in the Mass Effect series is split between the RPG aspects, and the
third person cover shooting battle system. ME3 definitely has the best
action gameplay of the entire series, and while it can still be clunky
there are constantly amazing moments with dozens of different but
equally awesome strategies you could employ. I just wish there were
almost more buttons on the controller for this game. It's one of the
most effective uses of a controller in any shooter, where you really
have so many different attacks you could use at every moment. Most of
the clunkiness once again resolves around the action button being the
same as the sprint and cover button. I'm not sure if it would work, but
it could be interesting if the action button was instead mapped to the
select button, the only one that isn't used in the game. Now on to the
RPG systems of the game, which is much improved from basic systems in
ME2, for Mass Effect 3 they basically took most of what was in ME1 and
stripped out the hassle of the massive inventory screen and the
repetitive/annoying/time-consuming aspect of destroying/selling the
multitude of useless items you recieved. This interesting new inventory
management system works by all of the weapons having a weight, and if
you go over a certain weight limit (which is dependent on your character
class and certain upgrades you can choose) you can face severe power
regeneration penalties. I love this idea, but it can become annoying
when all of the good weapons have really high weight. It also ends up
limiting the weapons you can bring along, even though I was a Vanguard
that selected the increase weight capacity upgrade. There's a possible
related result, where you can no longer carry any heavy weapons like in
previous games, something that I always loved. Instead there are only
four heavy weapons found at few certain points lying on the ground
(flamethrower, rocket launcher, some Geth laser gun, and the mini-nuke)
with very limited ammo. Back to the main weapons that are in this game, I
loved that Bioware brought back the Role Playing elements present in
ME1 guns, almost keeping the same names and level presentation. The
concept is really smart, where you can purchase an upgrade up to level 5
for each weapon and each weapon add-on (that you can have two equipped
on each gun). The only problems here is that I had enough money so that
each time I got a new gun I promptly maxed out the upgrades, so the
system wasn't as rewarding as it could have been. Also, with the level
of each add-on upgrading when you find or buy a new one, while I love
this, it was a little uneven where multiple times I upgraded ones I
didn't use while I couldn't find the upgrades for the ones I did
regularly use. This whole system could be improved with a few
adjustments, which is possibly a higher level cut-off limit like in
Multiplayer (could make it so that weapons that you like don't become
useless because of their stats later in the game) and something that I
liked in the first game but disappeared in the sequels. That is a weapon
efficiency upgrade system where you could get experience points for
every enemy you kill with each weapon type, I think this could really
increase the RPG feel while keeping all of the action. One more thing
with the weapons, there's an interesting section of the Spectre offices
where you have a fire range to test your weapon load-out. I love this
idea, especially with all of the different weapons, but it makes no
sense to have it on the Citadel, instead it should be in the Normandy
Cargo Bay. Too many times I would upgrade a new weapon only to find I
didn't like the way it fired. Then there are weapons that I never tried
out as their weight was really high and the stats weren't the best. So
while I may have possibly liked the way they fired, now I'll never know
as I didn't have an opportunity to test them out. I was pretty
disappointed that no real changes (non-cosmetic) were made to the armor
system. It's much too basic, almost exactly the same as ME2, and I wish
there were more options to alter and upgrade your armor. I really kept
the same armor for most of the game, even later I just made a few
adjustments and all I cared about was getting the bonus percentages I
wanted. The armor also looked all pretty similar, except for the
helmets, which were mostly pretty goofy looking. Finally, for the
different character classes, in this iteration they seem about the same,
but some new abilities have been added. One of them that I really loved
was the new Nova attack which was really useful when combined with the
Biotic Charge, also I like that it's not perfect as it uses up your
shields, creating an interesting cost versus benefit play choice.

Now,
onto the next aspect of the game, it's one that has really defined to
series up to this point, and that is the conversation system of ME3. I
was very disappointed that the conversation options were much more
limited in this iteration, where you basically only had the paragon or
renegade choice. There was never a paragade response or something else
like the sarcastic comments I loved making in Dragon Age 2, at this
point in the series it felt like a step back. There was also an annoying
amount of conversations that resembled your talks with the DLC
characters Massani and Goto. I didn't mind this too much, but it was
frustrating when multiple times I would accidently hit the A button one
too many times and I would skip the conversation. I also had a few
graphics glitches during the normal conversations with choices, where
the character's framework was broken or glitched, and they'd be looking
all over the place or the eyes would be tracking wrong, it was just
really weird. Even stranger, this tended to happen earlier in the game, I
didn't really experience it too much later, I'm not sure why. Possibly
relating to this, I didn't have any problems importing my character's
face as some have, but I think that's because I played around with it in
ME2 because I didn't love my Shepard's face. There were multiple times
where there were great little inside joke comments that were only for my
Shepard, but I was a little disappointed that there weren't more new in
depth conversations with your crew. Even with the new character, Vega,
while I love the sparring interaction you had with him (One of my
favorite interactions in the whole series) you don't get to know him as
much as you did the previous game's characters. I understand that with
the possibility of almost every old character not being present in ME3,
the developer didn't want to spend too much time and money on them, but
conversely they didn't add many new characters. In total, not counting
the DLC character, there are only four new crew members on the Normandy
(all of whom are humans): the new playable jock character, a gay male
pilot, a gay female communications officer, and a female reporter. I
liked all of these new characters (though the reporter is a little
generic and annoying) but consider something for a minute. If Garrus and
Tali had died in your playthrough of ME2, for most of the game you
would only have two playable characters, Vega and Liara. Later of
course, you get Kaidan/Ashley and EDI, but it's amazing they didn't add
new characters or make more of the characters from previous games crew
members. Even with all of the crew members possible, you don't get a
representative from the Krogans and the Salarians, or any of the other
non-council races. I expected to see all of the different species send
someone onto the Normandy, but for some reason no one did. All we got
was a Krogan leader (Wrex!), a Turian leader, and a Quarian leader in
the War Room for a few missions. You'd think that if Bioware didn't want
to waste time and money on possibly unpopular characters, they would
have created more characters that every player would get to know. The
only possible explanation for why they didn't do this is that they
didn't think they had the time to establish multiple new interesting
characters. Another annoying change to something I loved before, was how
when you're in the hub-world listening to people's interesting
conversations you have to leave the area and come back to hear the next
part of the story. In ME2, you could just keep hitting the A button to
listen to the rest of the conversation, which to me worked really well.
This time, even though the stories are cool, I would lose interest in
them as so much time could pass between each part of the telling, also
at one point they glitched out and all of the conversations reset. I
also had a problem that I figure has to be a glitch where at the last
conversation with the Illusive Man, the Paragon and Renegade options
were greyed out. With this Shepard I have always selected the blue
conversation options in each Mass Effect game every time they appeared,
and I also always explore every possible conversation option. I had off
the charts amounts of Reputation and Paragon points and still I had a
conversation option blocked, the first time this has ever happened to
me. I felt extremely confused and annoyed that somehow the best possible
resolution to the Illusive Man conflict wasn't available to me for no
apparent reason.

Onto the locations and exploration of the
different worlds, something that was one of my favorite parts of the
previous games, but is almost non-existent in ME3. Here is where ME3
strikingly reminds me of the failure of Dragon Age 2. Similarly to
Kirkwall, the Citadel acts as the only hub-world in the entire Mass
Effect 3 game, while in ME2 there were four completely different
hub-worlds. This would be okay, as most worlds are under attack from the
Reapers, except for the fact that this version of the Citadel is the
smallest and most basic of the entire Mass Effect trilogy. Then the
Citadel only goes through a very minor cosmetic change halfway through
the game, and they expect us, a society full of ADHD people, not to grow
bored of the surroundings. We get to go to worlds we've always wanted
to explore, like the Turian, Salarian, Quarian, Asari and Human
home-worlds, but all of them are filled with waist high walls and
they're all being blown up by Reapers and/or attacked by Cerberus. The
missions are also relatively short, and we fail to really see anything
unique about the planets. Further, ME3 has essentially eliminated the
mini missions on random worlds, and the probe mechanic found in ME2.
Instead, now you have to fly around each system evading the Reapers
while you randomly scan for 2 or 3 of the interesting things, which are
either small amounts of fuel or some random unexplained war asset on a
planet. Then you get to play a few basic solo N7 missions on the limited
number of Multiplayer maps. I understand that exploring Alien worlds
isn't a priority in the middle of a war with a group of ancient
synthetic/organic hybrid monster spaceships, but I missed this aspect
that was hugely present in the previous games.

Here's where I'm
going to stick a bunch of the random features in the game. I was a bit
surprised by the complete elimination of mini-games in ME3, while they
were all a little annoying before, instead of fixing them now they just
removed them, and the doors/safes take a little longer to open, implying
that you're automatically performing some type of hack or bypass. The
reputation system is a much appreciated addition/adaptation, where you
get standard reputation points for performing moral neutral actions, and
every Paragon or Renegade point adds to your total. Because of this,
players are no longer punished from not being an absolute character, and
no matter you preference if you have enough reputation points both of
the Paragon and Renegade conversation choices are unlocked. However, it
is pretty goofy how the bar is filled up very early into the game, I was
still getting lots of points, but there was no visual interpretation of
the increase. I almost wish there was a bigger bar, or even a numerical
presentation of all of your reputation points. Another new addition to
this game is the War Assets and Effective Military Strength (EMF). I
really liked this feature, as everything you've done in the Mass Effect
series is represented here. However, once again the bar fills up
incredibly early in the game. There's also some really disturbing about
the EMF, and that's the aspect of Galactic Readiness, which can only be
increased by playing multiplayer. So if you hate Co-op Multiplayer, or
if you don't have enough money or the ability to have an Xbox Live Gold
Membership, your Galactic Readiness is locked at 50%. This means that
all of your War Assets will be halved for the EMF. So let's look at my
level, I had 7245 points with a Galactic Readiness hovering around 100%.
If I wouldn't have played Multiplayer, then I would have only had 3622
EMF points, which is enough to get the endings but is not enough to get
the "best" ending. To put this in perspective, I played every mission
available except for a few that glitched out on me. The only things that
might have lowered my war assets, were that in ME1 I saved the Council,
in ME2 I destroyed the Collector Base (even though for the story
Cerberus still found most of it intact), and in ME3 I cured the Krogan
Genophage which annoyed the Salarians. One other random thing, in ME3
you don't have someone like Kelly that will take care of your fish. The
only option is to buy a crazy expensive Aquarium VI, and if you don't
your fish will die, even if you feed them every chance you get. You'd
think EDI would be able to monitor your fish tank for free, but I guess
it'd be a little degrading considering her new role as a crew member on
herself.
Now onto the last aspect of the game that isn't the story,
and that is the newly added Co-op Multiplayer. I was initially concerned
about this aspect of the game, but I've had a lot of fun playing with
it. I did have a lot of problems with the EA servers the first couple of
days though, and this was exasperated by the fact that you only get
experience and credits by either successfully completing the mission, or
by dying. I wish that the game would save your experience after each
wave, especially when any expendable items you use before you disconnect
are lost forever. After this I also glitched out a couple times, once I
got stuck in a wall, but I was actually still able to kill a bunch of
the enemies while some of them were unable to get me. Another time I
glitched out during multiplayer, it was much worse and much weirder,
where the whole stage was shaking like I was in the middle of an
earthquake. Then while I was running, I ended up floating in the air for
a few feet before falling through the floor (I actually have a video of
it but it's kind of crappy since I couldn't find my camera and used my
iPod). Sadly or thankfully, my team members were a capable bunch (even
though it was a silver Reaper mission) and were able to beat the 10
waves, though it took like 20 minutes where I just had to float there in
nothingness and wait. The even weirder thing was that I could damage
some of the enemies with biotic powers, and the enemies were able to
kill me. However, once I died I would immediately come back to life.
Looking past the glitches, I love leveling up the different characters,
and with a group of capable players the missions can be very fun.
However, after a while I grew a little bored playing the missions,
they're all just too similar. Then I worked really hard on maxing out
the Vanguard branch, but when I hit level 20, to get the achievement I
promoted the soldiers. This is a cool idea, but I wish there was more of
a reward for this, or possibly the ability to still use the high level
characters when attempting a Gold level mission, or at the very least a
new character plus where they get an extra bonus so you're not starting
from the very beginning of the character. The biggest problem I have
with the multiplayer though is that EA decided to for the first time in a
AAA console game to include a freemium pricing structure for the locked
characters, weapons and items. I actually find this kind of offensive,
as I could play the multiplayer for hours and get a random pack someone
else could get immediately by shilling out two dollars. I especially
have a problem with this pricing as you could spend two dollars on a
pack, and get nothing you could use. If you're going to charge for items
others could get by just playing the game, I think you should be able
to pick items, although of course it would make it even more unfair for
people that don't want to be tricked into paying for items that are
already in the game. I think that the Multiplayer could be saved with a
patch, and possibly more game modes than the 10 waves that always
feature the play modes capture the flag, secure the base, headhunt
certain enemies, and kill everything moving. As it currently stands, I
can't see this multiplayer establishing a consistent faithful base for
anything nearing long term.

Now, I can finally get to the aspect
of the game that had me the most upset/frustrated, and that is the
story. From here on in, warning, there be major spoilers ahead. Right
from the start of the game the story is goofy. A minute after our first
look at the ME universe's Earth, the Reapers attack, not giving the
player any time to acclimate to the game. Then a little later (after a
goofy child's death that will haunt Shepard for the rest of the game)
you are introduced to the game's one and only plot device, blueprints
for an all-powerful weapon designed but not completed by the Protheans,
called the Crucible. This is just so generic and out of the blue, it
doesn't make any sense, but I was ok with playing along. You then have a
mission involving each of the previous ME game's characters, some small
and some large. The developers then proceed to kill off two of my
favorite characters in these missions, Mordin and Thane. However, I can
accept their deaths, especially since it was established previously that
both of them were near death (old age and lung disease respectively)
and both of them were done very well, they had good deaths. I admit that
I felt serious emotion with both of them, and I may or may not have
cried through the whole hospital scene.
I have a lot of problems with
the development of Cerberus as the main antagonist in a game about the
Reapers. I understand that Bioware wanted to provide different enemies
to face, and I admit that their AI and designs are excellent. However, I
don't understand how Cerberus became so powerful. Every time you see
them they're a step ahead of you, even when you kill hundreds or
thousands of their heavily armed and trained troops. Later they kind of
explain this by establishing that they created a refugee Sanctuary that
was actually a Human harvesting and indoctrination factory, but it still
doesn't quite add up. I didn't love Cerberus in ME2, and things they've
done had always been on the border of indecency and terrorism, but it
usually seemed to be in Humanity's best interest. However, in ME3
they're all crazy and doing absolutely horrible incomprehensible things,
Bioware tries to say it's all because TIM has been slowly indoctrinated
and he's now under control of the Reapers, but I never really thought
they successfully established this. Probably the goofiest Cerberus plot
line is the coup of the Citadel, which made absolutely zero sense. They
somehow gained control of Udina (who while being a douche bag didn't
have any connections to Cerberus and had no reason to betray the rest of
the Council) and managed to infiltrate the Citadel which is supposed to
be the safest and most guarded place in the Galaxy (they even again
said they upgraded the security). Then they for some reason wanted to
assassinate the entire council, for reasons that are never explained.


Up until around halfway through the game, I didn't love the story, but I
was in love with the game and having a lot of fun playing it. Then
after the previously mentioned Cerberus coup of the Citadel, I received
the first realization that Bioware might not care about their fans, or
that they might possibly even hate us. Previously in the Citadel, you
met up and talked to Kelly Chambers in the refugee camp. There was a
great little scene where after asking if she wants to rejoin the
Normandy, she describes the horror she experienced on the Collector
ship, and that she can't be on the Normandy as it reminds her of what
she faced. Instead, she's helping the refugees coming into the Citadel. I
loved this little interaction, and I thought it was great fan service
for Kelly fans. Then after the coup, when walking around the refugee
camp you hear two people talking and they basically say "Have you seen
that red headed woman who was helping out so much?" "You didn't hear? A
Cerberus soldier came up asking if she was Kelly Chambers, and after she
said yes he just shot her in the head." "Huh, I guess if Cerberus asks
you if you're someone, you should just say no." "Hah hah hah." This was
a character I spent the whole of ME2 talking to and growing to care
about, and Bioware decided to kill her off so disrespectfully and
unnecessarily, I was just absolutely horrified. I wished I could have
never heard that conversation, but no, it will now always be in my
brain.

After this point, everything was ok, not perfect but I
pretty much enjoyed all of the events and there were some really awesome
kickass scenes, until the final battle to retake Earth. The whole
strategy for retaking Earth was a little goofy, but I didn't mind it too
much. There was also a great area where before the final battle you
walk around the camp and talk to all of your party members, and you can
even call and talk to the previous game's characters that aren't
playable in ME3. The conversations are a little short, but I enjoyed all
of them. Then after fighting for a while, you get to the beam to take
you to the Citadel (Which was taken by the Reapers without any
explanation of how, and you can assume billions of people were killed)
and everything breaks apart in a million pieces. You know the developer
did something wrong when fan created explanations/interpretations make
more sense than what we were actually given (The most logical being that
the whole Citadel sequence was an indoctrinated dream). Other people
have more succinctly examined and explained all of the different
problems and plot holes, so I won't go too in depth here. Nevertheless,
you are apparently hit by the Reaper's laser beam that destroys
everything it touches, but here you only get some melted armor and a
beat up face. You also receive a very powerful heavy pistol with
unlimited ammo that you use to kill the Reaper creations between you and
the teleportation beam. When you get to the beam and are transported to
the Citadel, somehow both the Illusive Man and Anderson beat you to the
main room. There's this whole thing where somehow TIM is able to
control your body and make you shoot Anderson, then you are able to kill
TIM. After ascending the elevator to the merged Crucible and Citadel
console, a God-like AI in the form of the dead child from Earth appears.
Here, Bioware for some reason decides to give you more questions than
providing any answers. The God-child says that the Reapers are his
answer to the problem that Synthetic life (pure order) will eventually
completely wipe out all Organic life (pure chaos). Basically, the
Reapers were created to save Organic life from Synthetics by murdering
and harvesting every developed race each 50,000 years. Through this
whole interaction, Shepard acts completely subjugated and accepts
everything the child says as absolute truth. You are finally given three
options, you can control the Reapers (presented as the blue or Paragon
choice even though it was represented by TIM, who was at least a
Renegade character), you could destroy the Reapers along with all
synthetic life (presented as the red or Renegade choice even though it
was represented by Anderson, who was absolutely a Paragon character), or
you could take the third option which would merge all organic and
synthetic life (presented by no one, but this is obviously the choice
that the God-child AI wants). Then, no matter what choice you make, as
long as your war assets are beyond a very small level, Shepard dies, the
Reapers leave Earth or are destroyed, every Mass Relay is destroyed
(hopefully in a way different than what was seen in the Arrival DLC or
entire systems might have been wiped out of existence), and the
Normandy, after Joker apparently flees the battle on Earth, just barely
escapes the blast and crash lands on an Eden-like planet, with
characters that were just with you rushing the beam somehow being
magically transported to the Normandy. Then that's it, the game is over
except for a ridiculous conversation featuring a star-child and an old
man taking place in a forest that resembles the one in Shepard's dream
(and a flash of Shepard taking a breath if you had enough EMS and chose
to destroy the Reapers). Oh, also there's an insulting message telling
you to buy the future DLC Bioware releases, and you're set up back on
the Normandy before the raid on the Cerberus base. I literally walked
all around the Normandy trying to talk to everyone, and it felt like I
was in a different dimension, it was just so weird and awkward. The only
real difference between the three endings is the color of the beam the
Crucible emits. When faced with the choice, I watched each ending on
Youtube, and decided on the Green/Synthesis ending. Partly because it
was the weirdest, but mostly because Edi and Joker embrace in that end,
and if I had to die & the universe had to be irreversibly changed
(most likely leading to many of the stranded races on Earth dying of
starvation and never seeing their homes or loved ones) at least someone
could find some happiness in this ending.

So why am I and almost
every Mass Effect fan outraged at the ending"s" Bioware gave us? (In
one poll found on the official Mass Effect forums 91% of around 60,000
fans hated the ending and wants Bioware to change it completely, and 6%
still wanted the ending slightly adjusted). First and foremost, the
ending is so bleak and depressing, that there is no opportunity for
happiness or even a sense of accomplishment that should come with
beating a video game. I've never before played a game that punished me
for beating it. Then there are so many plot holes with weird and abrupt
revelations that make no sense. However, the biggest problem with the
ending is that no choice that you made in all three games has any
bearing on the outcome. As long as your Shepard didn't die in ME2 and
you have the minimum amount of war assets or EMS in ME3 you get the same
ending as someone that worked hard in each Mass Effect game and created
their perfect Shepard story, maxing out all of the meters, doing all of
the missions. I wouldn't have liked any ending where Shepard dies, but I
could have accepted it if it was well done and provided closure,
instead of just appearing to be the crumpled pieces of paper that a
writer with any talent would have thrown into the trash. The sense of
hopelessness despair and depression was never before found in the Mass
Effect games, even though you faced suicide missions, if you did
everything right only one of your team members died in the games, and
the mission was always essentially a complete success (There were always
a large amount of casualties, but they were all blank faces). I really
can't see how anyone at Bioware would have liked this ending. I've come
to the conclusion that either Bioware doesn't care about their long term
fans, hates their long term fans, or are so stupid that they thought
the fans would actually like the ending they provided (or possibly a
fourth option where they're just being trolls and the whole ending was a
dream sequence and the true ending is being released as DLC, although I
would probably associate this option as aligning closely to "they don't
care about their fans"). I have my own version of the ending rolling
around in my head, which resolves mostly around the possibility that the
Crucible is a Reaper artifact, not something created and added to by
each successive cycle. I might post it in the comments section when/if I
finish it.

Before finishing this way too long review, I wanted
to talk about one last thing, and that is High Expectations along with
the pitfalls of the massive undertaking that is the Mass Effect Trilogy.
There are two kinds of expectations gamers had for Mass Effect 3, one
is what fans that played the previous games expected to see in the
finale, and the other is the high expectations that the developers and
the video game media hype monster created for the game. I have always
been worried about the third Mass Effect, I could never figure out how
you could battle the Reaper army. I really expected there to be some
sort of new game play¸ even though Bioware has not had too much success
with vehicles, I always thought there would be some sort of galactic
space battle that you controlled or lead from the helm of the Normandy.
Instead we got a short though admittedly awesome cut scene for the
final battle. I didn't know how they would make a game out of fighting
gigantic near invincible beings when before the main gameplay aspect had
been about cover based third-person shooting. Bioware's answer to this
was to have a number of cool indoctrinated/altered beings which to me
worked well, and they used Cerberus as another shock troop enemy force,
which didn't really work with the narrative. Finally, my biggest
expectation was that I'd experience a conclusion that ended my amazing
time in this universe with a bang, which hopefully included the
destruction of the Reapers and making little blue babies with Liara.
Instead Shepard followed the directions of a God-child AI that was just
introduced without asking any questions, and used a weak plot device
called the Crucible that through unexplainable powers killed my avatar
I'd spent 100's of hours creating/developing and effectively destroyed
or at least crippled the galaxy. As you can see, my expectations were
not met. Now onto what the developers kept insisting, that this is the
final conclusion of the Mass Effect series, where all of your actions
would come to a head in an amazing climax. Yeah, expectation not met,
however they succeeded in their goal as they managed to get millions of
people to pre-order the game or buy it on release day. Regarding the
pitfalls of allowing save files in a game filled with hundreds of
choices to be carried on to each subsequent game, there are multiple
problems. Bioware had three main sets of fans to consider when creating
Mass Effect 3, people that loved the previous games and saved each
character that was possible to save, people that liked the previous
games but didn't care enough and accidentally or purposefully let
multiple characters die, and potential new fans of the game that they
could get to buy ME3. The first set of fans is probably the hardest to
appease, as they all want hours of in-depth interactions with the
characters they grew to know and love. The second set is also hard to
appease as Bioware had to create characters to fill in for ones that may
have died but are needed for the narrative (Regarding this, I recently
saw a conversation on Youtube with the Salarian that replaced Mordin
that was one of the funniest in the entire game, yet I didn't get to
experience it because I saved him. It makes me wonder what other awesome conversations and characters I might have missed because I was a
good player and beat all of the side missions). The third set of fans
are probably the easiest to appease (if they like the game play)
although it might be hard to establish previously introduced characters
enough for the player to care about them, and EA has to spend a lot of
money trying to attracts these new potential fans. I accept that it's
hard to appease everyone, but Bioware should have understood that the
previous hardcore fans (even though you know they were going to buy the
game anyway) can serve as a free promotion device as they are incredibly
vocal when they love a game. They are also even more vocal when they
are disappointed in a game, something that Bioware is experiencing now. I
would almost feel bad about the horrible backlash Bioware is receiving,
except for the fact that they ruined the time I spent with my most
favorite video game series I've ever played. So instead I hope the
pressure collapses their stone castle and they give real answers to our
questions and demands regarding the horrible ending.

So,
concluding this obscenely long review (really I'm sorry for its length) I
would give the game a 4.5/5 rating, but with the ending I have to give
it a 2/5. I would give it a 1/5, but that really wouldn't be fair,
because I did enjoy most of my time with the game. If Bioware were to
release a DLC alternate ending I would be happy to alter my rating, but a
2/5 successfully expresses the disappointment, anger, and depression
I'm feeling after beating the game.

Modifié par BigZ7337, 19 mars 2012 - 03:32 .

[Silasqtx]

I'll divide my "review/feedback" in various parts.

All these opinions are mine, they do not reflect the community

########## Multi Player ##########


It's compelling and I personally like it a lot. There's just one thing:
Banshees/Phantoms can oneshot you randomly ruining the gameplay. It would be better if you can cheat death once.

######### Single Player ##########

I personally enjoyed the SP a lot. It's the best ME game so far. Adrenalinic combat and a compelling story full of memorable moments. It's awesome until, as we all know, the end sequence. I'll talk about it later. Issues are divided between technical and artistical.



Single Player Technical Issues:


Journal became quite useless due to the lack of information during quests (ME2 journal was perfect imo).
"some" textures can be improved (PC only)
Most sidequests are fetch things and in the long run can bore
Sound Volume is low, no matter what. Don't know why.Single Player Artistical Issues:

The ending.
No, really, the ending.
Some cutscenes CAN be awfully improved.
Sometimes wacky animations (some facial animations too: they don't always reflect the tone given by the voice actors)
Wishlist:
A better ending.
More moments with your squad, even more with your LI.
Interactive poker table in the lounge :3
More N7-like assignments.

######### Ending ###########

I personally chose Destroy, TIM shot himself and Shepard lived in my first playthrough (yay.)

bwFex wrote...
Turn the Star-Child scene from absurd to awesome by using the Indoctrination Theory we've made for you.

The biggest complaint your fans have is that the final five minutes of the game is absurd. It's disjointed, it doesn't fit within the ME universe, and it simply feels like a non-sequitor tacked on at the last minute because you didn't have enough time to finish the ending you really wanted to do.

Fortunately, your wonderful fans have solved this problem for you, because you already did most of the hard work for us. You have hints and clues of Shepard's subtle indoctrination all throughout the game, finally culminating in what many of your gamers assumed to be the obvious truth: the final fifteen minutes of the game were a hallucination sparked by Harbinger trying to indoctrinate Shepard.

If you're not familiar with the theory, you should be. It's all over the internet. Green option means you were indoctrinated (with the same lie used on Saren). Blue option means you were indoctrinated (with the same lie used on TIM). Red option with low EMS means you rejected the indoctrination, but were killed out in the real world because your ground forces were too weak to protect the Conduit while they looked for you. Red option with high EMS means you rejected the indoctrination attempt, and your ground military found you and rescued you after you woke up.

After that, you just have to give us the real ending.

Make our War Assets really matter.

I love the war assets concept. I think it's brilliant. I think it's an elegant way to handle a massive amount of tiny little things all adding up into a giant force. The problem is that right now, there is absolutely zero indication to the user what their war assets were actually good for. Even if they go online and look it up, it still makes zero sense. Why does my army strength change the effects of the non-sequitor space magic? Isn't red space magic going to destroy earth whether I have ten ships in orbit or fifty? It just doesn't make sense.

Instead, you need to use the War Assets in a way that makes sense. Obviously, the "perfect world" solution would be to actually show each individual asset in action, or to even let us decide where each asset is assigned (this was awesome, in the final battle of Dragon Age: Origins). But obviously, there is way, way more content in ME3 than in DA:O. And that's fine. We're not expecting that much out of you.

We just need to know that that cumulative number really makes a difference. Personally, I liked my idea of using the War Asset rating to establish time limits and difficulty levels for the final boss - but you'll see that in a little bit when I post my fanfic.

Give us an epilogue slideshow, exactly how you did it in Dragon Age: Origins.

We already saw the conclusions of a lot of story arcs throughout the course of the game. You don't have to give us a lot more closure in terms of content: it's just a psychological thing. We need to have that catharsis at the very end of the game, as credits are rolling, so that we can see that all of our choices had a real impact.

"Show, don't tell" is a great rule, but only if you show us everything. That's obviously impractical here. A slideshow will be fine. One slide for each race/species, one for each surviving squadmate and major NPC, and maybe a couple for any of the more prominent minor NPCs (Aria, Kelly Chambers, Conrad Verner).

Give us a funeral scene, so we can see exactly who lived and who died.

This was one of the most frustrating things for a lot of people, besides the ridiculous ending. Not knowing everyone's fate was very difficult to deal with. Sure, you want to leave a little bit of mystery, but there's a point where you're giving out so little information it's ridiculous. You can't possibly have expected people to be satisfied with what you gave us.

Leave our galaxy in a state where it can be reasonably repaired.

Sacrifice is one thing. Cities can be rebuilt. Heroes can be remembered. Cultures can regrow.

I'm even okay with the destruction of the Citadel. Sure, it was one of the coolest structures in the franchise, but it's not the defining element of the Mass Effect universe. Personally, I'd rather spend my time on Omega.

The destruction of the Mass Relays - even if you ignore the fact that their energy release should have wiped out the entire star system - is not something we can rebuild. It took the Protheans, at the peak of their evolution and technological prowess, an exorberant amount of time, money, and research to build a *single* uni-directional relay. Given the state of our galaxy in the current ending, there's a good chance we'd slip into a technological and industrial dark age for so long that we'd forget the relays ever existed - let alone start rebuilding them.

Success should be an option, even if we have to work our asses off for it.

In my opinion, Mass Effect 2 did this wonderfully. Failure was a very real option, but so was success. If you had a perfect gameplan, and you put a massive amount of work into it, you could walk off of that Collector ship with minimal losses to the people you cared about most: yourself and your squadmates.

I know sacrifice is an important theme, and if people need to die for meaningful reasons (Mordin for the genophage, Thane to protect the Council), that's fine. But don't go around killing people just for the sake of killing them. Every single one of the endings currently in ME3, if interpreted literally, feels like a forced failure. There's a difference between giving the player a hard choice (do I want to sacrifice the Sol system to save the rest of the galaxy?) and making every choice feel like an abysmal defeat.

Forced failure is not fun.

It's one thing to fail because I messed up. But when I am doomed to fail, it makes it very hard to really care about what I'm doing.

Shepard should die in almost all situations. His story was built for sacrifice. But it should not be impossible for him to live, with a near-perfectly-played game, even if it requires us to go back and play every single side-quest of ME1/ME2.





Example

Earlier this week, I wrote up an example of what I'd like to see in a fanfic/prediction. It was well-received on Reddit, so I figure I'll share it here. Enjoy.

---------------------------

First, the current "endings" are canon, and remain in the game. They simply aren't what they seem to be. The only change to them is we ditch the Normandy crash and the jungle scene, because those simply don't make any sense, even in the context of a hallucination.


If you pick blue/green, or if your EMS is low, everything stays the same. That's how the game ends for you, and you're left scratching your head.


If you pick red and your EMS is high, these events happen after the "rubble" scene.


Part 1 - London: Wake Up

Anderson sees you struggling to get up and runs over to help you. He tells you that you've been out for about an hour, and that Hammer team has set up a perimeter around the beam while search parties looked for you. He says that after the laser knocked you out, Harbinger's lights turned bright green and blue, and he stopped attacking. Shortly before you woke up, Harbinger's lights turned red and he started shaking violently, then flew away.

You meet up with your squadmates, and fight off reaper ground forces to get to the medbay, during which time you will explain that you had a vision after the blast, and you think it was indoctrination. You have a tense conversation with your squad, and ask them if they have what it takes to kill you, if it comes down to that.

Before they can answer, you're interrupted by Hackett over the radio.

"Good job with the Citadel, Hammer Team - the arms are opening."

Shepard replies, "We aren't in the Citadel, Hackett. Something's not right."

Hackett barks, "Well then you'd better get in there and figure out what's going on, Commander, because the Crucible is almost in position and we can't hold off the Reapers for long."

Harbinger swoops back down to Earth. The horn blares, and you can feel him raping your mind. The dark tendrils you had during the TIM vision reappear. You yell at Joker for some sort of backup. The Normandy swoops in and lays down heavy fire just as Harbinger is starting to shoop-da-woop, causing Harbinger to retreat. You, your squad, and Anderson use the opportunity to run into the portal. "Time to find out what's really on the other side," you say.

Part 2 - Inside the Keepers' Lair

Inside, you find yourself in a Keeper tunnel, just like in the vision, but there are no human bodies. Instead, you find dead Keepers, a couple of dead husks, and a single dead Cerberus soldier, who appears to be mutated or partially husked. Your squadmates point out the disfiguration. "Something's not right."

You proceed to the end of the tunnel, and open the door. It opens up to a massive room similar to the circular chasm from the indoctrination vision, but filled with Cerberus lab equipment, Cerberus soldiers, and holding cells containing Reaper units - very similar to the lab equipment on Sanctuary. At the far end of the room, TIM appears to be fiddling with a console.

"Shepard, good. I'm glad you could finally join us."

"When you blew up my lab on Sanctuary, we lost a lot of valuable data. Fortunately, the Reapers have been kind enough to provide us with a new base of operations. You see, they want to see humanity succeed as much as I do."

"Unfortunately, it appears that we were wrong about the Citadel. It may be part of the Catalyst, but it is not the only missing piece. We should be able to activate the Crucible from here, but it simply isn't responding. I'm beginning to think we might need you for that."

Shepard enters dialogue with TIM, and begins to suspect that the reason he can't activate the Crucible is because he is indoctrinated. Why else would the reapers bring him here? They don't want to be controlled - they're using TIM to stop Shepard from reaching the Crucible controls.

A renegade conversation leads to a fight. The paragon conversation seems to have an effect on TIM, and he slowly starts to admit he's indoctrinated and pulls his pistol to his own head, but he snaps out of it and orders his men to attack. As the fight begins, he retreats to a glass safe room overlooking the lab, dodging a few shots from Shepard along the way.

You, Anderson, and your squad start wiping out the Cerberus forces in the room. As the fight progresses, TIM begins opening up the containment cells, releasing Reaper forces who begin attacking you alongside the Cerberus troops, including a new type of unit: the mutated Cerberus soldier, like you saw out in the Keeper hallway.

While you are fighting, TIM tries to argue with you, rationalizing his experiments here, claiming that he was too close to controlling the Reapers to give up now. You try to explain that the Reapers are just using him, but he stutters and stammers, refusing to accept it.

Part 3 - The Final Battle

As the last few containment cells open up and you're down to just a few remaining enemy forces, a short cutscene begins. TIM seems to finally crack. He admits indoctrination, just like Matriarch Benezia on Noveria.
He tells you that the Crucible is a failsafe designed with a unique trigger: a test of will against indoctrination. The Catalyst is someone who can resist that indoctrination.

The Reapers are mindbanks of one of the very first spacefaring species in our galaxy, their solution to overpopulation. When the ancient species was building the reapers, some of their scientists felt that their plan to farm/harvest new life to sustain their own race was wrong, and designed a weapon that exploited the Reapers' indoctrination code, so that once a race had evolved with the readiness to face the Reapers and a will strong enough to resist indoctrination, they would be able to fight for their place in the galaxy.
TIM starts to spasm, choking and distorting in unnatural shapes. When he finally stops, he stands up slowly, his eyes glowing red, and speaks to you in Harbinger's voice.

"You have resisted us, but this one is ours. We will direct your demise *personally*."
In an explosion of flesh and steel, the illusive man bursts into a mechanical monstrosity. The final battle commences.

You are given a time limit based on your effective military score. If time runs out, you see a cutscene showing the reapers overwhelming your allied space forces, killing a race/fleet. One of the reapers fires a beam towards the crucible that kills one of the squadmates you have with you. The timer restarts, but is much shorter this time. If you fail again, another race/fleet is overwhelmed, and Anderson and your other squadmate are beamed. The timer restarts one last time, faster still. If that one fails, the reapers completely overwhelm the crucible. Game over.
As the fight starts, radio chatter from Hammer Team tells you that some Reaper forces are breaking through and jumping into the warp beam. The final battle alternates between fighting the mutated IM and fighting waves of reaper forces coming in from the hallway behind you. The better your EMS, the less often you get Reaper waves behind you.

Part 4 - The Crucible

After you defeat the Harbinger-controlled Illusive Man, you get more radio orders from Hackett.
"Shepard, whatever you're doing in there, you need to hurry up. We can't hold these Reapers back much longer!"
Shepard races up to the terminal. It appears similar to the Prothean beacon from ME1, but is definitely not Prothean technology. He touches it.

A bright flash of light. Time appears to stop. You look around, in awe of the sight before you: ships and reapers frozen in space, lasers and torpedoes hanging motionless between them. Your squadmates tending to an injured Anderson behind you.

At this point in time, the "indoctrination trial" begins.

A voice similar to a reapers, but more patient and eloquent, perhaps female-sounding, will start to question the major decisions you've made over the course of the trilogy: from the Virmire incident to the Collector Base, to how you handled the Genophage and Quarian/Geth situation. It will try to convince you that you chose incorrectly, that you are a failure, that your race doesn't deserve to live because of the weakness you've shown.

If too many of the decisions you made are indefensible, or if your reputation is too low to select enough confident answers, you fail the indoctrination trial, and the Crucible misfires, killing you, Anderson, and your squad, blowing up the citadel, and only leaving some of the reapers alive. Two fleets/races are killed trying to finish off the remaining reapers, and you don't get the satisfaction of the Harbinger interrupt for beating the trial, seen below.

The hologram of the child from your vision appears. He speaks to you using Harbinger's voice.

"You... it cannot be you. We are superior. We are infinite. You are an accident. We are the epitome of evolution. We are eternal. How did you resist us? We-"

Renegade and Paragon interrupts both show up on screen. Shepard interrupts Harbinger with a kickass catchphrase, then presses a button on the console device. A subtle ripple bursts out from the console, like a gust of wind.

Cutscene. With time still frozen, as if in a dream, an explosion of white light pulses out from the Crucible. The explosion moves slowly, beautifully, and as it hits each reaper, you hear the sound of metal wrenching and twisting in near-silent agony. A shot of London shows the white light slowly washing over Reaper ground forces. As it hits each husk, its lights change to white, and they spark and fizzle.

The wave of light reaches the Relay. Its lights turn white, and it beams the energy out, just like in the previous visions. Pull out to the galaxy, we see the wave spreading through the mass relays, just like in each of the previous cutscenes, covering the entire galaxy. The camera cuts back to the room with Shepard, either looking out the window at the battle, still frozen in time (if he survived the Crucible), or unconscious on the ground (if he failed the Crucible).

Part 5 - Conclusion

And suddenly, everything comes back to life. The reapers explode in glorious unison. The Reaper ground forces vaporize all at once, soldiers begin cheering. We see cutscenes inside various ships that you've gathered for your armada, and Hackett calls over the radio - "You did it! Whatever you just did in there worked, Shepard. You're... you're a god damned hero."

If Shepard is still alive, he gives a speech over the radio. "We all did it. Together."

A memorial/funeral service for those who died is shown, with face placards for any of Shepard's teammates or significant NPCs who died. Thane, Mordin, Ashley/Kaidan. Many of the rest are shown in the crowd, to let the player know they're still alive.

Cut to black, credits. As the credits roll, we get a Dragon Age style epilogue slideshow, showing how each race/character still alive spends the next couple of years rebuilding or causing trouble, based on the bigger decisions you made.

After the credits roll, if Shepard has a LI, we see them standing side by side in an appropriate location (Rannoch for Tali, Thessia for Liara, etc.). If not, we see Shepard looking out over the ruins of Vancouver. Either way, Anderson walks over. "It's a hell of a thing you've done, son. What will you do now?"

Cut to black. Title menu.

^This.


Here's some handmade indoc. proof:

#### After getting shot by Harbinger #####

All you hear are whispers (dream sequence anyone?) and "there is no hope" radio chatter.
First, I tried looking around for my squadmates/Anderson but they were simply gone. THEN Anderson says that he followed me into the conduit but got "elsewhere", yet he's ahead of me. There's also ONE path to the console, but Anderson says that he got in a different tunnel.

#### The Talk with TIM #####

The whole discussion with the Illusive Man is also strange. All you hear are whispers similar to those in the dream sequences. He's controlling both you and Anderson, he forces you to shoot Anderson but he's not forcing you to kill yourself, why? Doing so he could've accomplished what he always wanted, controlling the Reapers (even if he's already controlled). That's why the Indoctrination theory gets more and more plausible. This discussion is between what you've always believed in (Anderson ---> Destroy) and Harbinger's indoctrination, personified in the Illusive Man.

##### God Kid #####

Indoc. Theory more and more true. You overcomed Harbinger's first attempt to bend you over Control, he now materializes itself as the Kid that's haunting your dreams. He tried bending you appealing to your interest in humanity, now he bargains, giving a third, yet false, resolve: synthesis (see Saren for further explaination)


##### Extra Stuff #####

The 1M1 panel on the Citadel looks awfully similar to the Alliance Dreadnought's guns ( www.youtube.com/watch minute 2.58)



My feedback, hope it helps.