GhostShadow115 wrote...
@txgoldrush
And yet here I was thinking that the Theme of Mass Effect is: Hope, defeating impossible odds, prevailing against an unstoppable enemy, standing tall and ready when the worst is yet to come, showing to an entire galaxy of what we (and others) are truly worth.
For me that was Mass Effect. But it gave up on those views for... well for "Oh my god we cannot bloody win. Game over man! Game Over."
It's a bad mission not only because of what many have said before me, but because it abandoned its own main theme.
Basically, this. The overall narrative was about what could be achieved with unity in the face of adversity, no matter how impossible it may seem; this was spelled out from the very beginning with the simple stated fact that Sovereign was forced to conceal its existence and hide itself from the galaxy at large because it wouldn't survive if the myriad races of the galaxy presented it with a united front... which is more or less exactly what happens when Sovereign was left with no other option but to directly assault the Citadel to activate the relay to Dark Space, it was destroyed by the combined Council Fleet.
That trend continued in the 2nd installment; rounding up all of these disparate characters that may outright dislike one another due to bad blood, etc. gaining their loyalty and having them work together to achieve an objective (to the point that failure to do those things can result in the deaths of everyone involved)... That squad was practically a microcosm of racial relations in the galaxy as a whole. Hell, going by the debriefings, at that point in time even The Illusive Man and other Cerberus folks apparently understood the need for unity and cooperation with other races; e,g, his concern over the Quarians preparing for war with the Geth, since the Migrant Fleet would likely be needed against the Reapers.
Even by the time of installment #3 that "unity in the face of adversity" theme held up: getting the Krogan to fight side-by-side with a race they absolutely hated for more than a millenium, potentially creating peace between the Geth and Quarians, and just generally uniting pretty much every civilization we know of to oppose the Reapers.
Really, that theme only changes with Priority: Earth and the ending... where none of that prior work in uniting the galaxy is really shown to actually pay off or have a noticeable impact, even at the decisive moment of the war; when within moments of achieving the objective that'll end it. Receiving zero support when it would matter most actually runs contrary to the theme.
Incidentally, if there was a perfect time to show assets or even just that EMS number making a difference, that was it... by having the assembled Allied fleet focus-fire on Harbinger when it lands at the end. EMS could've determined how long Harbinger would be able to impede the completion of that final objective and how much damage the Crucible sustains, e.g. low-mid EMS/Assets? The Allied Fleet's just a nuisance or distraction and Harbinger's eventually forced to leave to deal with it, allowing the objetive to be completed but not in a timely manner, cue the current finale. High EMS? Harbinger never gets off the ground again; the Allied Fleet destroys it then and there, it dies on the spot. To my mind atleast, it'd actually make far, far more sense than Harbinger leaving "just because", or the fact that even though Harbinger was identified as being both one of the Reapers leading the attack on Earth as well as the being the oldest Reaper in the entire Armada, the Alliance apparently never pegged it as a Victor Target.
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