Dilandau3000 wrote...
100% agreed.
Saren-Husk as a final boss in ME1 was silly. The human proto-reaper in ME2 looked like it was explicitly designed to out-silly that. Having the Illusive Man as a final boss would've been colossally stupid.
Harbinger would've been a better final boss, though I can't see how it would've worked except as another "dodge the lasers, shoot the weak points" sequence.
The boss battle is one thing I'm glad they cut. I do still wish the final mission was more involved, but it doesn't need a boss fight.
I personally didn't mind the Saren husk battle, even though it became bliteringly easy if you were an Adept or Vanguard, and even moreso if you also had Liara with you. Having TIM as a half Reaper boss fight would have been awful though. Especially since I already think that Cerberus were overpowered and too much of a factor in ME3 as it is (I get it that they're supposed to be antagonists, but it seemed like they were trying to overthrow The Reapers as the main enemy half the time).
Boss Battles aren't necessary in all of today's games, and in a lot of ways they are one of those things that's survived literally decades of gaming despite the many other factors that were once common in games being gradually filtered out. Today you have to do a boss battle really well and provide more than just a big slab of hit-points that deals loads of damage to succeed at it.
What ME3 could have done was something akin to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. And when I say that I'm not actually talking about the horribly forced boss battles what were outsourced to another studio and that Eidos apologised for and admitted to being shoehorned and bad. What I mean is the conversational moments that almost seemed like boss battles, where Adam Jensen had to convince several major NPCs now and then by choosing the right dialogue choices in the right order. Given ME3's cinematic nature and the fact that TIM is supposed to be more of an intellectual enemy, something like that would actually suit the situation. The only thing is, in ME3 it would probably be hard to implement and keep clear with its rather limited and defined dialogue wheel. Too many players are used to Red and Blue text meaning "win conversation" if selected and available, so to change that up for one or two moments would likely be confusing. It's the restriction and downfall of a dialogue wheel that's established certain moods and intent of the dialogue based on positional design: you can't suddenly break those rules without it being jarring and confusing.