Yes.
I've posted a few times, in other threads, that the squadmates should die on the beam run no matter the ems.
Huh.
Well it does make more sense than the Normandy all up in Harbinger's face with no effect whatsoever or Javik and EDI (my go-to team) actually fleeing the battle.
Alright, I approve. Maybe not have it mandatory but have some mechanic that can trigger it.
I don't know about *overall*, but I love both ME1 and 2, but I abhor ME3 (except for the Citadel DLC).
I don't know about *overall*, but I love both ME1 and 2, but I abhor ME3 (except for the Citadel DLC).
I find the main question just difficult to answer. Like what is the overall story? If it's just the central/Reaper plot I found it decent in ME1, frustrating in ME2, and just workaday in ME3. But that main part didn't ultimately make me dislike ME2 overall due to all the individual side stories, which were otherwise very interesting and engaging; while in ME3, which I found it to be better (at least in the plot, not making me want to drop my controller down way), it just didn't justify all the bland game design -- which is ultimately my objection to ME3.
The Reaper plot was always the least interesting aspect to me. It was cliched and doomed to be concluded by some MacGuffin superweapon, based solely on how OP the Reapers are presented as. The side stories, characters, and politics were always the best parts of ME.
The best part of the mass effect trilogy was the second. Everything after that went down quicker than an ice cream in a microwave.
The Reaper plot was always the least interesting aspect to me. It was cliched and doomed to be concluded by some MacGuffin superweapon, based solely on how OP the Reapers are presented as. The side stories, characters, and politics were always the best parts of ME.
This. Personally i think they should've gone all Cthulu with the Reapers. Some unknowable menace and the galaxy would go on like nothing happaned when you stop them. But the whole story is one long power fantasy that can't go 5 minutes without patting the player on the back, and i guess the entire galaxy acknowledging how amazing you are is part of that, then you die.
I'd rather it all be behind the scenes and the majority thinking Shepard is a crazy person. Councilor Air-quotes can air-quote it up untill his fingers fall of i don't care.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
This. Personally i think they should've gone all Cthulu with the Reapers. Some unknowable menace and the galaxy would go on like nothing happaned when you stop them. But the whole story is one long power fantasy that can't go 5 minutes without patting the player on the back, and i guess the entire galaxy acknowledging how amazing you are is part of that, then you die.
I'd rather it all be behind the scenes and the majority thinking Shepard is a crazy person. Councilor Air-quotes can air-quote it up untill his fingers fall of i don't care.
I think that all depends on who you speak to. Vega used to be a fanboy, but he knows you're just human. And I love that Wrex is full of himself and just sees Shep as a peer. And Jack will call you a dumb ass, and punch you, even in romance. And the VS has to learn to trust you again.
The general message of ME3 however isn't just Shepard saving people's asses, but that everyone tried to unite against the Reapers..
I think that all depends on who you speak to. Vega used to be a fanboy, but he knows you're just human. And I love that Wrex is full of himself and just sees Shep as a peer. And Jack will call you a dumb ass, and punch you, even in romance. And the VS has to learn to trust you again.
The general message of ME3 however isn't just Shepard saving people's asses, but that everyone tried to unite against the Reapers..
Sure i'm just beeing flippant. But it's not really just in ME3, the series pretty much starts out with Sheppard being the best thing since sliced bread and you waltz around the galaxy deciding who lives and who dies while making life choices for random strangers.
One part sticks out in ME3 tho, in the assualt on earth Sheppard is giving the attack order. Why? She's just a commander. You can't throw a stick without hitting an admiral,councilor, general, captain or whatever but nope, let's make Shappard give the call beacuse she's awesome.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
Sure i'm just beeing flippant. But it's not really just in ME3, the series pretty much starts out with Sheppard being the best thing since sliced bread and you waltz around the galaxy deciding who lives and who dies while making life choices for random strangers.
One part sticks out in ME3 tho, in the assualt on earth Sheppard is giving the attack order. Why? She's just a commander. You can't throw a stick without hitting an admiral,councilor, general, captain or whatever but nope, let's make Shappard give the call beacuse she's awesome.
I know what you're saying. In ME1, I see that mostly as a Spectre thing though. Saren was the same way, it seems.... worse actually (even before ME1, in the novels.. he was a bastard).
I'm satisfied with ME1 and ME2. Very.
As for Gears of Effect HALO 3...... *I mean "Mass Effect" 3. Naw, it was only good for MP and that was fairly simplistic and got boring quick. So.....
ME1 and ME2 amazing.
ME3 a substantial step backwards for BioWare and the series.
But.... 2 outta 3 ain't bad. So, I guess.
I see they are rumored to be distancing themselves from the original trilogy with ME4.
Says a lot about ME3 to me.
My Shepard went the distance, Fought The reapers, Mated Quarian Stylee, Killed Geth, Cured the Genophage, Rescued Miranda's sister, Helped all the other races, Gathered military and resources, and then at the end shot a tube and the reapers were gone.
Yep. Seems very legit.
Still at least he didn't like blue or green.
I see they are rumored to be distancing themselves from the original trilogy with ME4.
Says a lot about ME3 to me.
My Shepard went the distance, Fought The reapers, Mated Quarian Stylee, Killed Geth, Cured the Genophage, Rescued Miranda's sister, Helped all the other races, Gathered military and resources, and then at the end shot a tube and the reapers were gone.
Yep. Seems very legit.
Still at least he didn't like blue or green.
Agreed. But.... you know your Shepard loves him some of that smelly good stuff.
Oh.... Kai Lame..... Does your lameness know no bounds.....
The Reaper plot was always the least interesting aspect to me. It was cliched and doomed to be concluded by some MacGuffin superweapon, based solely on how OP the Reapers are presented as. The side stories, characters, and politics were always the best parts of ME.
^This! The Reaper plot was always horrendous. If they wanted a big war as their finale, they'd have been much better setting up something like a Council-Terminus War, a resurgent Rachni invasion, a rising Yahg threat, etc.
Heck, the Reclamation of Rannoch and Genophage arcs could have been phenomenal games on their own.
^This! The Reaper plot was always horrendous. If they wanted a big war as their finale, they'd have been much better setting up something like a Council-Terminus War, a resurgent Rachni invasion, a rising Yahg threat, etc.
Heck, the Reclamation of Rannoch and Genophage arcs could have been phenomenal games on their own.
I think a DA2-esque ME game could be fun. Like, the story just deals with a single system of multiple planets that's going through great political and socioeconomic changes, and you're some random dude who can unite the systems or just make a ton of money off of everyone.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
I think a DA2-esque ME game could be fun. Like, the story just deals with a single system of multiple planets that's going through great political and socioeconomic changes, and you're some random dude who can unite the systems or just make a ton of money off of everyone.
I could have fun with a whole game just in Omega.
I think everyone's major problem with ME3 was the fixed storyline that never favor ME2's pro-Cerberus Renegade playthroughs. Things would be very different if it have another set of main story involving you joining Cerberus and never return to Alliance. Like its the same ME3, except in reverse, like DAO's Darkspawn Chronicles.
You start in Alliance's jail cell, Anderson come to b**** at you, reapers came and James is revealed as a Cerberus' sleeper agent and he get you out safely with Normandy in tow (no Alliance's retrofit, still the same Cerberus ship, Ken and Gabby is on the ship, so was Chakwas and Joker who really hate you btw, you get Kelly Chambers instead of Traynor, and you get an option to bring Khalisah in your ship and you still get Cortez as shuttle pilot and he sided with you because you kill the collectors and think saving collector base was justified). You get Miranda in your main team, plus Kai Leng. Garrus won't make much fuss about you joining the Cerberus especially if you let him go into the dark side and him abandoning Palaven to be with Shepard.
You spend the rest of the game playing against your former squadmates (unless they're already dead), killing Liara on Mars. You found out about the reaperfied Cerberus soldier and justify it necessary sacrifice to fight against the reapers. EDI remains within the ship but you get Eva Core as she is. EDI's story progression became more and more sociopathic and pro-Reaper from the Reaper IFF. You get a tip from TIM about Javik on Eden Prime and spend the rest of the game fighting the resistance and alliance soldiers. You raid Grissom's academy and capture all the kids including Jack (but you can never have her along on the ship until she's Phantom-ized. You can summon her in the battlefield as extra companion), you kill Wrex, Mordin and Eve on Sur'Kesh and then detonate Tuchanka bomb, you went to Rachni system and recruit rachni queen/breeder to make proper Cerberus rachni army and use them to build the crucible, you can kill Jacob on Arrae, you found Morinth at the Monastery and recruit her and capture Falare for indoctrination (experimenting on Ardat-Yakshi and learning their abilities to mind meld sounds like something TIM would want a human-application on). You get Zaeed and Kasumi as optional squadmate and LIs and both of them are pro-C now.
If you kill the council and Udina was leading the new one, you get a sort of dystopian Citadel feel where refugees are more oppressed by human rule. Bailey building a resistance movement behind Udina's back with VS and Thane and you get to kill all of them. Migrant Fleet went to Cerberus for help against the Geth and they spent bitching about ME:Ascension event which Kai Leng says he's sorry for not being sorry, and you have an option to destroy the Geth (gain Tali) or double cross the Quarians (gain Legion VI). For Citadel DLC, you still fight your clone (default paragon instead) and Rasa but in the end you kill your clone and gain Rasa as optional squadmates. Oh and the party is still sad with most of your former squadmates being dead. Absolutely no looking at Normandy with sad music.
On Thessia, you fought Reapers and Asari commandos to reach the temple but when you gain the Prothean VI. You have to defend Cerberus base from Fifth Fleet and you spend your time arguing with Hackett about fighting against you when he should join Cerberus and fight the reapers. Hackett died in blaze of glory, Kai Leng had this redemption moment and tried to fight Shepard and you kill him in the end with no regrets.
Then you found out that TIM told the reapers about Citadel but he convince you that its necessary since moving Citadel to earth was good for the humanity. You still need to send the crucible to earth but the major plot would be activating the crucible to control the reaper. You found Anderson protecting the panel, TIM want you to kill Anderson and if paragon interrupt was taken, Anderson kills himself and then TIM spend another time arguing with you and the starkid about which Ending option you want to choose between control, synthesis and denialism. You kill TIM for synthesis and side with the starkid or you get two options; you volunteer yourself to use the crucible and TIM lives (and control the galaxy as supreme leader of the council with Shepard as Harbinger) or you fought with TIM about who get to control the reapers and he kill himself with it and you control the reaper, you get reapers to fix Earth, make the universe a pro-human dystopia where every human get huskified because living corpses is cool! And Renegade Shepard became God-Emperor of the milky way,
Renegade in style of ME3's story.... No emotional outbreaks, no dream kid, no moment of being human, unadulterated violence and nonsensical murders, the option of being complete psychopath, silent protagonist, ass**** and all.
p/s: and you can have rivalmance. Make your squadmates hate you enough that they want to sleep with you like in DA2 (Garrus and Tali). Kai Leng have a thing for japanese bondage and if unromanced, he hook up with Kasumi. You gain a sex bot LI between Eva Core and Legion VI (still not EDI). A lot of Miranda-mance now that the area underneath engineering is free.
I like the overall story a lot, yes, but I don't like what ultimately became of the Reapers after the ending. They went from evil lovecraftian gods that we don't and can't understand to AI-controlled servants of life with questionable methods. This is neither satisfying nor cohesive.
In the first two chapters of the trilogy, the Reapers treat you and the other organics with utter contempt. They are gods, we are ants. Their motives were not explained and did not need to be : the "reaping" is how they reproduce, and that's reason enough. The galaxy is their garden, civilisations are their vegetables. That's it. They do not care about you nor feel the need to explain anything : they are a monstrous threat that will destroy you and "life" because they are superior beings and it benefits them.
That's, at least, the impression I had after the absolutely amazing exchange with Sovereign on Virmire :
"Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. [...] There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign. [...] Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything. [...] Confidence born of ignorance. The cycle cannot be broken. [...]The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory they are extinguished. The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel. They did not forge the mass relays. They mere found them - the legacy of my kind. [...] Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays. Our technology. By using it, your civilization develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic life. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it. [...] My kind transcends your very understanding. We are each a nation - independent, free of all weakness. You cannot grasp the nature of our existence. [...]We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure.We are legion. [...] The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. You cannot escape your doom. [...] Your words are as empty as your future. I am the Vanguard of your destruction. This exchange is over..."
Someone said, on the gamefaqs board, that "that whole exchange felt like having a conversation with Satan". That made me laugh, but I see what he meant : Sovereign presents itself as the "Vanguard of our destruction" and is utterly condescending and arrogant about it (and people say the Leviathans are arrogant...). He will destroy us, he doesn't care and he is very threatening about it : "You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it" ; "Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable" ; "You cannot escape your doom". And most importantly, he proclaims that the Reapers are "the pinnacle of evolution and existence, [...] the end of everything".
Most of Harbinger trash-talk in ME2 is of the same vein. Take what he says in Arrival, for instance : "You fight against inevitability, dust struggling against cosmic winds. This seems a victory to you, a star system sacrificed. But even now, your greatest civilizations are doomed to fall. Your leaders will beg to serve us. [...] Know this as you die in vain; your time will come. Your species will fall. Prepare yourselves for the Arrival". THIS is what I loved about the Reapers. They were threatening, god-like monsters that had nothing but contempt for our galaxy and our civilisations.
Then comes ME3's ending, where we learn that, in fact, the Reapers don't even have the free will that some of the "lesser" beings have (at least in the ME universe) and are simply obeying an AI that is programmed to preserve life at all cost. So what Sovereign and Harbinger really meant, I guess, is : "Look, it's not that me and the rest of the Reapers particularly want to destroy you. We don't care and would gladly leave you alone. It's just that you will inevitably create synthetics that will wipe out your entire species and perhaps even life itself (though that bit is unclear). I'm very pro-life so I cannot let this happen. So you see, I'm actually destroying you in order to save you from yourself and for the greater-good of life. I hope there are no hard feelings between us. With love, Sovy and Harby".
The tone simply doesn't fit. The condescending, menacing and immensely powerful "vanguards of destruction" that treat organics like meaningless creatures suddenly become obedient servants of life. "We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything" becomes " We are the flawed solution an AI came up with to preserve life at all cost from the inevitable organics-synthetics conflict that arise when civilisation reach a certain point". If that was the intent all along, the Reapers's speeches should have been written entirely differently (Imo). I also think it would have been better is they didn't talk or show emotions at all, like machines that do what needs to be done.
All in all, I'm really not a fan of this change of tone, and retrospectively, it really lessens my appreciation of the main villains of the trilogy. I'm a Lovecraft fan and would have been more satisfied if the Reapers had stayed precisely that : lovecraftian (even though they talk 
).
I think everyone's major problem with ME3 was the fixed storyline that never favor ME2's pro-Cerberus Renegade playthroughs. Things would be very different if it have another set of main story involving you joining Cerberus and never return to Alliance. Like its the same ME3, except in reverse, like DAO's Darkspawn Chronicles.
No.
We barely got one coherent story. Now you want to shove two in there within the same contraints?
Besides, we've seen Alliance. We've seen Ceberus. This is bigger then those petty divides. We should've been independent, and the leader of the resistance.
All in all, I'm really not a fan of this change of tone, and retrospectively, it really lessens my appreciation of the main villains of the trilogy. I'm a Lovecraft fan and would have been more satisfied if the Reapers had stayed precisely that : lovecraftian (even though they talk
I agree with most of what you said, but the pure lovecraftian feel went out the window with ME2's baby Reaper. Which would've fine. I don't think they have to be full lovecraftian to presever the power and awe they weilded in ME1. But it's a far cry from what we got, that's for sure.
Guest_john_sheparrd_*
Sure i'm just beeing flippant. But it's not really just in ME3, the series pretty much starts out with Sheppard being the best thing since sliced bread and you waltz around the galaxy deciding who lives and who dies while making life choices for random strangers.
One part sticks out in ME3 tho, in the assualt on earth Sheppard is giving the attack order. Why? She's just a commander. You can't throw a stick without hitting an admiral,councilor, general, captain or whatever but nope, let's make Shappard give the call beacuse she's awesome.
I know what you mean but compared to DA:I its nothing
Shepard after everything is still a human and just a damm good soldier thats why he is praised it makes sense
The Inquisitor though....the less said the better
ME is already a mesh up fanfiction based on a lot of scifi literature and tv show of our time. On its own, its not a unique piece of scifi epic but in its essence, what really enjoyable about the series was the individual characters arc. RPGs is already a pretty bad medium for a big epic since its based on singular narrative limitations and around Odysseus' hero journey. This is one reason why I'm disappointed that they (so far) discontinued the official book serials. The verse is much better being read and understood through a third person multiple POV narrative.
The Reaper is a terrible big bad based on Titanomachy. This ominous godlike giant horseshoe crab monsters waiting in dark space wanting to kill all advance organic life. Its hard enough to maintain the suspension of disbelief in ME2 but its bad that in ME3 we hardly see the severity of the situation on Palaven/Earth because everything happen off screen. I'm not a fan of retcons but I'm glad that ME3 end as it is because it means they can start over again. If the original writers had it way, ME would still be on the "the reaper is coming" fence until the next game.
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