Ok so I just beat the game on my paragon female infiltrator. In the previous games I romanced Liara in ME1 and continued it in ME2. I rescued Ashley on Virmire, saved the old council, saved the Rachni queen, saved Maelon's data, saved Wrex, reprogrammed the geth, destroyed the collector base, and everyone survived the suicide mission. I also completed the Shadow Broker, Project Overlord, and Arrival DLC for ME2.
I have mixed feelings about ME3. I was happy that I finally got to continue the epic story of Shepard after waiting so long, and it was great to revisit all the characters again, but on the other hand I feel like the story in ME3 didn't fit. After growing attached to all the characters and the story from the previous games I was pretty disappointed in the way things turned out. The story itself was well written and an amazing experience but, it felt a little too tragic for this kind of video game. I had read about the endings before I played the game so I had a pretty good idea what to expect, but I wanted to play the game myself before making judgement. Surprisingly I didn't mind the endings that much.
In the beginning
So the game starts off with the reapers attacking earth, with no kind of backstory presented. Obviously I have played the previous 2 games multiple times so I'm familiar with the story, but to someone picking up the game from ME3 I feel like it would be nice to have at least some information about what happened between ME2 and ME3. So Vega appears out of nowhere and starts acting all familiar with Shepard without any information about who he is or where he came from. We meet Anderson, the virmire survivor (In my case Ashley), and the human council etc, and then the reapers arrive and all hell breaks loose. What will we do? Fight or die... oooookay. That's it?
Then you see the boy getting killed by the reaper, and that's when the guilt and stuff starts piling on. I could have pulled him out of the vent and taken him with me but the game wouldn't let me. Great. Overall I found the first level, pretty weak. It started abruptly, and we got thrown right into the story, and already people are dying without you being able to do a damn thing about it with your choices. Ok so the kid had to die because it has significance in the story later on, but I feel like offering the player dialogue choices was like telling me "no matter what you choose the kid dies anyway, sucks to be you". Thanks for that. What was the point in having dialogue options in the first level if none of it matters?
The story Continues
Fast forward a bit. I go around the galaxy catching up to my old squad mates, friends, and acquaintances. This was great for me. It was really good to see them all again and see what happened to them. Nostalgia and sadness, especially in the case of Thane who was among my favorite characters in ME2, who we find out is still dying, despite all the advanced technology available in the galaxy. Cerberus was able to bring me back from the dead, but a cure for Kepral's syndrome or at the very least a lung transplant is out of reach? Salarians have cloning facilities and are able to recreate extinct life forms from fossils, but they can't grow new lungs for the Drell? Ok...
Moving on, we meet more of the old characters, yay! Again, I enjoyed the side missions related to them and all that,
but for most of them we only ever saw them a couple of times throughout the whole game. Why are the Normandy and the Citadel the only 2 places in the whole game where Shepard can revisit, explore, and hang out with
characters? I feel like as a player I was very limitted in where I can go and who I can see. You save Jack and her students from Grissom Academy, but then you only see her again one more time in the Citadel and have a dance with her, and then she's gone till the end of the game. It was something similar for nearly all the characters. The side missions were great. The limitted interaction for the rest of the game, not so much. I've grown attached to all those characters. It would have been nice to be able to visit them between missions, rather than have them all just turn into a war asset number and disappear for the rest of the game.
One of the things I enjoyed was the way you could walk around the Normandy and the Citadel and hear the dialogue between npcs. Hearing the conversation between Liara and her "Father" was excellent. Jeff and Edi, Garrus and Tali, Garrus and Liara, Vega and Cortez, etc. They all had amazing dialogue and it was really entertaining to listen to. +1 to Bioware for this.
The new characters
Diana Allers... most pointless character in the game? I don't know... she just seemed really useless. I kept visiting her often to see if she would eventually get to being interesting and useful, but nope. Vega was pretty cool as was Cortez. Traynor, was a little so-so. I feel like she could have had more to say in the game but she was pretty interesting I guess, although I think she was a bit too flirty with my femshep early on. I'm going to play one of my Male Shepards on the next playthrough so this makes me a little worried about talking to Cortez, even though he's a cool character. I hope I don't accientaly trigger a romance with him like I did on my femshep with Treynor. One minute we were talking about chess, and next thing I know we're getting busy in the shower. Awkward. Luckily I saved before inviting her up so little damage was done. The female Krogan was also a fantastic addition. Also, not really a new character, but the new Edi was amazing. A real gem.
Genophage and Geth
As far as I can tell these are basically the 2 major choices you make in the whole game other than the endings. I decided to cure the Genophage, which pissed off the Dalatrass (she was a **** anyway), but ended up with Mordin dying. This made me go all Darth Vader from Star Wars III. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! It was a heartbreaking moment as he was another one of my favorite characters. He died with honor doing what he though was right though, so I accept his loss as part of the story.
As for the Geth, I made peace between them and the Quarians, which would have been an impossible decision to make if I had to choose between the 2. It was really cool to get more info on the backstory of the Geth and Quarians and overall I think the Geth were right, but I wouldn't be able to betray Tali (damn you Bioware for not letting me romance her on my femshep). It's a huge relief knowing that they will finally be able to coexist peacefully and that the Geth would help rebuild the Quarian homeworld and get them out of those suits by helping jumpstart their immune systems! Finally Tali takes off her mask, buuuuut of course her back is turned (damn you again Bioware...) which I think is pointless considering you get to see a picture of her face anyway by romancing her with a male shepard. This would have been the ideal time to reveal what she looks like I think.
Enemies
So the baddies... lets see. I'll start with the Rachni. So after saving the queen in ME1 and telling her to stay the hell out of trouble, she goes and gets captured by the reapers to make rachni husk things. Oh dear. Actually I don't mind that much since I was able to free her again and put the Rachni to good use. The thing is... what then was the point of killing her in ME1, if the reapers just clone a new queen anyway? Pretty silly of bioware I think. Oh and Grunt is an absolute badass.
Udina... well. I never expected him to turn out being a bad guy. He was always a douche but this was pretty unexpected. Working with Cerberus? They have similar ideals I guess, but he just didn't seem like the corrupt polititian type to me. I did however take pleasure in shooting him in the face, but It just seemed a little random as far as the plot goes for him to have been such a major enemy in ME3.
Cerberus... no surprises here I guess. The Illusive man being the villain fits. I think Bioware handled him pretty well. I never thought he was evil himself so indoctrination fit, and getting him to realize it in the end like Saren and having him redeem himself by suicide was a fitting end. Kai Leng? A cyber ninja, yaaaawwwn.
The Endings
As I mentioned in the start, I don't think the endings were bad per se. Personally I went with the merge ending because I thought it was the best choice overall. Between killing the reapers (and the geth) or controlling them I think merging organic and synthetic life was the best long term for everyone and was the only real way to end the cycle. I was ok with Shepard sacrificing herself because it would save the galaxy and she would be remembered as a legend till the end of time. Sure it would have been nice to have a happy ending with my love interest and hang out with the rest of my crew telling war stories and reminiscing, but that's not my biggest problem.
My problem is that it was too open ended. The player is left with more questions than answers. We dont know what happens to the rest of our crew, our friends, our loved ones. I took Liara (and Garrus) with me on the final mission, so I was pretty surprised to see her alive in the ending clip walking out of the crashed Normandy. How did she get on the Normandy anyway? How did she survive the reaper deathray thing when we were charging to get onto the Citadel? Say that I accept that she got on a shuttle and went back to the Normandy while I was on the citadel, why the hell was the Normandy randomly trying to outrun the crucible ray-thing? What was it doing out there anyway? Last I checked it was on Earth or fighting Reapers in orbit. What happened to the rest of my crew? Did they survive? What the hell is the Catalyst? Not even a written epilogue? Something?
Overall I enjoyed the game but... I don't have any feeling of closure. More of a feeling of WTF? The story cant just end here...
edit: forum messed up my post.
Modificata da Tsantilas, 07 marzo 2012 - 03:45 .
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