Sorry for waiting so long until finishing this, but I needed more distance to write about the final mission. So here is it, then, my mission review of "Priority Earth" and "The Return", with a little more personal touch this time.
Before I speak of the mission, I thought I'd mention how impressive ME3 looks, particularly the characters. The difference is really striking after coming from DA2. Also, yet again the gameplay/cutscene integration is nothing less than exemplary. ME3 knows how to tell a story through its medium. If only it hadn't sacrificed so much player freedom for it.
Priority: Earth
[visuals o, sound +, combat gameplay ++, gameplay/story integration ++, story o, dialogue o, roleplaying o]
The final sequence starts with Hackett's visit and speech. I've always liked Hackett, and his speech is decent. Then the relay jump and the "fleet ready" messages. The quarian fleet looks particularly impressive, but I miss seeing the geth fleet which should be almost the largest. The following space battle...well, a large number of ships alone don't make for a great space battle scene. Spaceships strewn about space like so much litter, the guns sounding and looking like (naval) battle ships of WWI, and it would've been nice had anyone remembered how movement and physics work in space when designing that scene. The gunnery chief on the Citadel in ME2 would've given the designers of this battle a good dressing-down. I found Omega's space battle more convincing.
Before we land to take out the Hades cannon, there is the goodbye with Joker, which is a very good moment. Not too personal but touching nonetheless, exactly as I would imagine it with this Shepard. The following run to the cannon site features...more Reaper minions than I've ever seen at the same time. Very appropriate. But then....the Hades Cannon is clearly a Reaper, and It appears unlikely that you'd be able to destroy it with a good old Cain. The first of a few items of tactical nonsense in this mission. After I take it out, there is the first of three survival type battles in this mission while I wait for the shuttle, which is rather difficult at Hardcore and up. It frustrated me a few times in the past but I don't mind. Things are as they should be. The meeting with Anderson, then the "Hammer forces landing" cutscene that reminds me - not accidentally I guess - of footage from D-Day, only with shuttles instead of landing boats.
At the FOB the music reminds me how much the tone of several scenes in ME3 makes it appear as if Shepard is inexorably marching to his doom. This is not necessarily bad, but in this case the already known ending casts its shadow backwards, and it comes across as very depressing. I speak with my team, and yet again it is depressing that I can't speak with the most important NPC in this Shepard's story - Miranda - in person after the token farewell at Sanctuary. I've talked about the sidelining of the ME2 team in other posts, and I won't repeat the whole stuff here, but even after a dozen replays, it hasn't lost its sting. Grunt's scene is very touching, though, and the goodbye scenes with the ME3 team are very good. Garrus' and Liara's are particulary well done. They've never been my favorite characters, but they've become more a lot more real in ME3. EDI's scene makes me wonder how the writers originally intended Synthesis to come across, given that her lines appear to invalidate its necessity, and Shepard's possible responses to her question are both nonsense. I like Javik's scene, too, but it is unfortunately indicative of how much of a mystical vibe the ME trilogy has acquired since the end of ME2. More of that when I get to the ending, and again this isn't necessarily bad, but I feel that that starting with the Collector Base in ME2, the universe has drifted into a direction where it isn't a universe into which I want to project myself any more.
Then off to the final fighting sequence of this mission - and the trilogy. I have to ask: who the hell wrote Shepard here? First that "hooyah" I can't opt out of, then the cheesiest speech of the trilogy. Why couldn't he have said something striking and to the point, like Bakara did on Tuchanka. Shepard's speeches were always bad, but in the past, at least I had a "no speeches" option to avoid them. Not so this time.
Need I say "character-derailing autodialogue is undesirable" for about the 1000the time? It bears repeating. Also, who the hell designed the tactical side of this mission? There is a Destroyer parked at the beam. A few missions before this one, it took a whole fleet to take one out, and here we are trying to do the same with field artillery. I really like the "stab deep into enemy territory" aspect of this mission, which comes across nicely, but that inconsistency is staggering. Throwing magic words like "Thanix missile" around is insufficient to make it believable if there is no grounding in lore. All that is not exactly ruining the mission, but I think a little more thought should've gone into the tactical side of the final mission of the trilogy. The attack cutscene is nice, though, and the fighting sequence gives a good "is there no end to them" impression, even though it gets a little tedious in the Nth replay.
As I reach the missile battery, may I mention how useless it is to shoot at Reapers with handheld firearms as they do in the cutscene? The following three battles - securing and defending the battery, holding out against the counterattack and defending it a second time - are the hardest battles in the game, which is as it should be, and playing on higher difficulties nicely brings home what you're facing here. Some say the "horde mode" gets boring, but I like how this battle forces me to use everything at my disposal - every piece of cover, every power, every weapon, and select my companions carefully when playing on Insanity. It works very well as an alternative to a standard video game boss battle with its usual gameplay contrivances (DA2 Legacy's Corypheus battle being one of the most annoying ones I played recently). Otherwise, there's not much to say about this. I get on with the fighting, which is very intense even after many replays, until the Reaper is taken out, I'm treated to a scene with the Crucible approaching and the beam run starts. Oh, and while I'm at it, this must be the only time in video game history that a telephone cell provided adequate cover against a starship's main beam attack. As an aside: why do those telephone cells still exist in the London of 2186?
The beam run....well, I rather like it as a story element, though I have to ask if it is believable that a Reaper like Harbinger doesn't have an AOE attack to kill everything in the area. Also, the scene the EC added is...sorry to say it, I know many people like it - complete nonsense. Yes, how the team members made it back was important to show, but it would've been better to leave Shepard's POV to show them getting up and away after Shepard has gone up the beam, and it would've been better to leave Harbinger out of the scene in the first place. Otherwise, as Shepard is taken out and wakes up heavily wounded, this is a clear indication the next part of the mission will be resolved without fighting. I like that a great deal, in spite of problems with the implementation (see below). As Shepard steps into the beam, there's another scene of the Crucible approaching and Shepard wakes up on the Citadel.
The Return:
[visuals +, sound +, combat gameplay n/a, gameplay/story integration n/a, story -, dialogue +(TIM)/-(everything else), roleplaying o(TIM)/--]
The imagery of the landing area... for the last time, I'm wondering what inspired it. If the writers wanted to leave some ambiguity to the Reapers, as indicated at various points in the story, things like this - and the often-bemoaned "abomination aesthetic" of the Reaper minions - didn't help. It is as if there had been two conflicting visions of the Reapers among the writers, and they tried to unify them but in the process coherence got lot.
I'm making my way to the control chamber, where I meet the Illusive Man. This important encounter might have been an opportunity to express this Shepard's philosophy in some way, but the dialogue leaves me only the most generic two choices. This only isn't as disappointing as it could be because I'm resigned to the fact at this point. IMO this conversation would've needed at least two more options for every hub, but then it appears to me that roleplaying ranked rather low in the priority of features for Mass Effect 3. Anyway, at least I have a sequence of options that work for me, unlike in the first encounter with this man on Mars. I challenge him to control the Reapers, and when he can't, I tell him not to let them control him, and he kills himself. I regret how it has come to this. Knowing what I know now, I may decry his methods but I can't but respect the way he held out against the Reaper influence in his mind for decades. Since this Shepard believes that at least some ends justify extreme means, and that there is no more important end than the survival of civilization, it strikes me that had things only be a little different, this Shepard might have ended up like TIM. I still believe he had a point with everything he said and that pushing him as an antagonist with no choice about it was undesirable, but in spite of the lack of options, this is a really good encounter, and in spite of what he's done, the Illusive Man comes across as an antagonist I can respect.
Unfortunately, what follows is not as good. First the talk with Anderson. I would've liked a choice about how much of a father figure he is to Shepard, and his incredibly cheesy lines - I don't know how anyone can bear to write such stuff. It sounds like out of a 1950s movie. Then Shepard's collapse at the control panel, at which point the story reinforces the mystical vibe it has acquired since ME2. Between the collapse and the imagery of what follows, the message is clear: Shepard can't end the Reaper threat on his own terms, he needs the help of a "higher power", and so we're going to meet this universe's god-analogue.
While this is bad enough on its own, what makes it worse is that
this god-analogue has been our opponent, known or not, since the start of ME1, and now we're forced to use its exposition to find our solution against the threat it itself poses. I don't know how this was intended to come across, but no, dear writers, at this point the Catalyst cannot be made to come across as a neutral force any more. The line "The Cruclble changed me" exists clearly to deal with this problem, but it is suspect because it's said by the Catalyst itself. The organic/synthetic scenario it describes is ok for me. I can easily suspend my disbelief for it even though it doesn't give me nearly enough data. However, the story which came before repeatedly makes the opposite point, i.e. that we are not doomed to enmity because of what we are, even between organics and synthetics, and I can't believe that Shepard doesn't get a chance to mention the irony that the Catayst itself is a synthetic who rebelled against its creators. Nor can I believe that I can't mention that I made peace on Rannoch, not even in the Extended Cut version. I can't imagine that any Shepard who made pace on Rannoch wouldn't mention this here.
The choices the Catalyst explains to me, on their own, are all interesting enough to consider even if you don't believe in the scenario. Or rather, they would be if they came from a neutral force, but as it is, if you really roleplay, they're all suspect because of who presents them. Enough has been said of this in countless posts, so let's just say that while the scenario and the final choice options pose no logical contradictions, the narrative dissonance is so staggering that you question if you're in the same story any more, and even more importantly, this creates the feeling that Shepard goes to his doom for nothing, that it ultimately wasn't worth it. I believe this is the main reason the ending still comes across as depressing to many players.
Of course you, as the player, are aware at this point that all those endings are meant to be good endings. You know that you're supposed to trust the Catalyst because otherwise you'd have no information at all about how to proceed. You know that because you know how stories work, and because you believe this story won't betray you in that, but the way the information is given to you is so much more hindrance than help that this only becomes clear in the meta-perspective. In the case of Synthesis, I'm also confronted with an extra dose of the abovementioned mysticism, with "Shepard's essence" powering this solution and with an implementation that defies all rationalization in terms of in-world logic.
So I make my way through this conversation - at least since the EC there is *some* meaningful exposition - all the while having to split my mind between the in-world and meta perspectives in order to encompass the information I've given. This Shepard finds the outcome of Synthesis a very desirable one, but at the same time I, the player, am aware that this ending doesn't fit the story I've just played through, even though it's clear it's meant to fit somehow, or it wouldn't exist. I must've played this sequence about 20-30 times, and it never ceased to be confusing. In the end, I decide to choose for the outcome and disregard all the narrative inconsistencies and thematic incompatibilities that come with the Catalyst encounter. This means that essentially, I have to treat the Catalyst encounter as a black box which mysteriously and inexplicably places information about the final choice and its possible outcomes in my mind.
That means this Shepard makes the jump, but
I am unwilling to accept the mysticism in the exposition as pointing to anything real. I cannot accept the necessity that Shepard basically has to sacrifice his soul to power the Synthesis. There's just too much fantasy and above all too much religion in it, and Mass Effect has never been that kind of story. Above, I said I felt that the universe has shifted since the story started, acquiring a mystical vibe starting with the end of ME2. While I've always been able to rationalize my way around that, I feel that ME3's ending finally betrayed ME1's promise of a reasonably grounded science fiction story in a way I can't ignore, and I find I cannot go along with the change. Thus, the black box. At least the Extended Cut epilogue, while not free of the dissonances that plague the whole ending scenario, gives me nearly everything I could hope for. The imagery is regrettably drastic, with the "green eyes effect" dreadfully overdone, but I like the "joining with the other" theme expressed through it, and I recall how much of a relief it was when playing with the EC for the first time, to see the results of my choices, the fate of the characters and the retcon (don't tell me it isn't one) of the depressing dark age scenario of the original ending. The final image, in spite of everything, points to a future that triggers my imagination in a good way.
Afterword:
So...what's left? What's left after almost five years of playing the story of several versions of Commander Shepard? All in all, it has been a great if bumpy ride. Even with the ending as it is, I wouldn't have wanted to miss it, and I don't regret having spent so many hours with it. There were many great moments, and I hope I haven't failed to mention those along with the equally great flaws. There were major and minor story arcs which were engrossing both in themselves as well as in the characters who brought them home to me as a player, and there were compelling characters all the way. There was also gameplay evolving noticeably throughout the trilogy, with ME3 featuring the best mix of what came before, and an equal evolution in visual art even though the style of some elements was not to my liking.
However, when it comes to what I may have taken away from it, the most prominent point is this: don't get invested. While disappointments about how things go in a story are nothing new to me, such disappointments have a special sting if you've been active in shaping your own experience with it as a player. There's also one thing I would like to tell the writers: there is nothing wrong with strongly defined protagonists. There are games which use them to good effect, and it's easier on the writers for storytelling. However, if you start a story with reasonable freedom to express your character, and then the final chapter is full of lines put into my protagonist's mouth I would have avoided like the plague if I only had the choice, then this comes across as a betrayal. If a story starts out as a reasonably grounded science fiction story (in spite of things like the asari) and later veers off into mysticism, then this comes across as a betrayal to those who don't like the latter. If a character is introduced with controversial traits in a way that suggests I'm free to make up my mind about her, and I come to like her because of those traits, and the next chapter of the story implies they're all worthless, then this comes across as a betrayal. So, in spite of the many great moments, I feel betrayed by Mass Effect 3 on three promises made by its predecessors, and that's why I most likely won't return to this universe after ME3.
Modifié par Ieldra2, 24 septembre 2013 - 08:52 .
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After this much time, I wasn't sure that you were going to, but I appreciated reading your thoughts on the earlier missions, and welcome the chance to see your view of the finale (even if I already knew some of it).
