New user, but semi veteran on a once perma banned profile.
I'm not satisfied with the story of the trilogy. Mass Effect 2's plot was utterly terrible with Shepard dying for no reason and the ending with the Human Reaper was stupid.
Mass Effect 3 had the worst ending in fiction. I'm glad that the next trilogy will be completely alienated from this one and set in Andromeda (if the recent leak is to trusted) and has no connection to the old trilogy. It seems that Bioware is finally learning.
With the exception of Priority:Earth,definitely. Especially Mass Effect 3.
New player. Played the trilogy over about two months time. Loved all of it. Except Diana Allers.
I really like these games - plot holes, odd dialogue and all. 
Having said that, I would like to have more time spent on main missions, races against time, against the bad guys, against the good guys. Maybe even have Cpl Toombs make good on his threats against sole survivor Shep in ME2, indoctrinate Capt Hannah, have gang Shep's past catch up with a bit more consequence. More head to head with Balak (less anything with Kelly Chambers so long as she still feeds the fish) 
.
Scanning the Keepers should have had more impact.
New player. Played the trilogy over about two months time. Loved all of it. Except Diana Allers.
You liked Priority:Earth?
You liked Priority:Earth?
*fangirl mode activated* OF COURSE I DID!! SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!
But no seriously. What's all the hate for Priority: Earth? Who doesn't love fighting off 18 Brutes and 167 Banshees defending the missile battery. Good times.
I liked Priority: Earth a lot! Sure, it has its mistakes and loads of wasted potential, but I was still enjoying it.
......well,ok,the fighting was alright. At least on Insanity.
But everything else is crap.
Love the entire series. My favourite game series and one of my favourite narratives in recent memory. I know I'm in the minority, but I genuinely love the way they concluded the story. (No, I'm not looking for a fight, that was just my honest reaction.)
Still, even with the best stories it can be fun to play the "Ooooh, but how would I rewrite it?" game, so let's go!
ME1
- Fix the inventory system. In general my comments aren't gonna be focused on mechanics but *good lord* the inventory system.
- Improve the writing re: Liara's romance arc. Not that Kaidan and Ashley's are the soul of subtlety and style, but Liara? It's clunky. She keeps talking to you in very technical terms about asari reproduction and sexual stereotypes and then suddenly there's an "unspoken attraction" between you. Sure, there's the mind-melding but if you play the DLC first that may not even have happened. I'd add a conversation or two where the characters get to interact more...humanistically than a "tell me about your people!" RPG-investigative-dialogue.
ME2
- Give guns stats again.
- Allow Shepard to initially refuse to work with the Illusive Man, and allow additional comments from a Sole Survivor Shepard. This'd be pretty easy to accomplish. Currently, the Illusive Man tells Shepard that the Council won't fund her and that he's her only option if she wants to investigate the disappearing colonies. Shepard then (perhaps grudgingly) accepts this. Later, Shepard goes to the Council and they do, in fact, refuse her. All you'd need to do is allow Shepard to tell the Illusive Man she didn't believe him and wants to talk to the Council immediately, cut straight to the scene where the Council do, in fact, refuse to help, and then there'd be better motivation for forcing the player to grudgingly accept that she must agree to work with TIM.
- Incorporate the Prothean Beacon into Shepard's resurrection. I have no issues with death-and-resurrection on a thematic level. It's fine, it's cool. But we lack any kind of information about how dead she was exactly and how long before her body was delivered to Cerberus. The Prothean Beacon could be used as a macguffin to explain why Shepard's brain was capable of being jumpstarted like a failed heart long after the rules of medical science would normally allow.
- Incorporate the Prothean Beacon into TIM's refusal to implant a control chip into Shepard's brain. The "because you're just so special, Shepard!" reasoning always felt very cheesy to me. Being afraid of garbling the only translation device for Prothean technology would be a much more pragmatic reason.
- Show Miranda's slow disillusionment with Cerberus. As things stand, if you bring her with you on the last part of the suicide mission, she hands in her resignation to the Illusive Man, but it's not really clear why, since every time you told her about terrible things Cerberus did, she defended them or claimed them as isolated incidents. If you don't bring her, then you don't even know that she's thinking of leaving until you get to ME3. A conversation later in the game where she starts expressing doubts would help.
- Change the human-reaper boss fight. The concept of the reapers making new reapers out of species is so cool. But a.) they should make them out of every species they destroy, not just one-per-cycle (that would allow for all cycles to have minor victories over a Reaper or two without their overall numbers dropping), and b.) why does it look like an actual person? Why? It's so daft! That boss fight needs a serious overhall.
- Someone always dies on the suicide mission. Like Virmire, you can't get out of it clean.
ME3
- Put the Mako back in.
- Have Allers (or other substitute journalist) be more serious and sombre in tone. Reporting like a war correspondent, not a games expo presenter.
- Mention Emily Wong's heroic death in a codex entry or radio transmission or conversation somewhere.
- Replace Kai Leng. He's a terrible character. Make him someone we're actually invested in. What if Jacob didn't escape Cerberus and he'd been indoctrinated and was chasing us down. What if JACOB could be the one to kill Miranda? I mean, Jacob's character is probably the one that gets shafted the most in terms of character content. This'd be tragic, but...at least dynamic. I think it'd make a better story. I am also slightly hesitant about this playing into the Dead Bro Walking cliche - that's a valid reason not to do it, especially considering Anderson. I have no problems with Anderson's death because it much more clearly fits into the dying father-figure trope? But if it happened to both of them it might start looking like a pattern. Still, I think on its own merits it could be awesome so if those concerns could be addressed by adding or shifting the identities of other characters, or by adding an option to save Jacob at the end, I still think it could be a good idea.
- In the control ending, I'd make it a little clearer that the mass relays overload but don't actually explode. Currently it just cuts the animation sooner, whereas holding on a not-totally-destroyed relay would make this more clear.
- In the original ending, if you started down the road to one of the choices, and then turned back, you'd get a fail-screen saying you took too long and the crucible was destroyed. I'd change this so that it also just started a flat-out hidden counter. If you take more than, say, two minutes considering your choice after concluding your talk with the Catalyst, you also get the fail screen.
I wouldn't be on my fifth or sixth playthrough of the whole series if I wasn't satisfied with the overall story. 
.... technically, the fact that the trilogy is so unsatisfying is the reason why I kept replaying it....
Changes i would make are the addition of both Traynor and Vega much earlier in the franchise( Me1 or 2) .
If Bioware was to redo the trilogy with the same characters, I would have Sam and Steve in ME1. Maybe have James take Jacob's place, but not working for Cerberus
*fangirl mode activated* OF COURSE I DID!! SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!
But no seriously. What's all the hate for Priority: Earth? Who doesn't love fighting off 18 Brutes and 167 Banshees defending the missile battery. Good times.
If I had to describe it in one word it would be: repetitive. It is a long mission. So, long that the tension of it being the final fight dissolves and breaks apart. I suspect the feeling that many payers get when they hit the missile battery isn't one of taking a last stand but of accomplishing another long arbitrary set of monotonous video game objectives. There are different levels of tolerability for these sorts of things but I think Priority Earth pushes them too far. What the game should have been doing was use something like the availability of all those war assets to keep the mechanics fresh. Instead it's Shepard and friends doing what they always do, only for a longer period of time. This all has a way of making it tedious and taking the player out of the story, the exact opposite of what a final mission should be doing. After something like ME2's Suicide Mission I think many people were expecting something better.
Also, because visuals are important. There's nothing emotionally resonant about the scenery, it's another generic, monochromatic series of hallways with a blasted-out-ruin motif. There's nothing visually to mark that it's Earth other than the number of red phone booths that litter the place, which comes off more as comical (I've never been to London but I assume there's more to it than concrete buildings with phone booths every where). It's also a dark, desaturated level which becomes visual exhaustive. You don't need color but there needs to be some level of contrast.
I had an unfortunate mix of truth and sarcasm in my response. I didn't mind Priority: Earth. But I was being sarcastic about defending the missile battery. I just got bored with it. It really doesn't take that long, but it feels like a long time to stay hunkered down in a while you get swarmed. I don't actually know if you can clear out the baddies because I ended up making a run for the controls when I had an opening and then a cannibal just kind of shambled out of frame.
So yeah. I agree about the tedium but I didn't hate it.
The save points and where you can manually save are a mess, too. Wanted to try a different weapon set and crew and had to start far earlier than I anticipated.
.... technically, the fact that the trilogy is so unsatisfying is the reason why I kept replaying it....
Kind of like why I have the movie Green Lantern, it's so bad that I love it.
Although with the mass effect trilogy, the only part I really, truly have any major issues with is the last ten minutes and the alteration of themes that have been built up over three games.
That's what fanfiction is for.
(brand new to the forum btw first post here :) )
I completely agree with what others have said about how Bioware had to do SOMETHING right if people are so invested in the ME setting that they're expressing either absolute hatred or undying love for ME after the events of ME3 ... also I agree with the other person who said it's noteworthy that we're still posting comments on this game 3 years after it was first released, that tells you something right there about how the setting sucks you in and makes you care about the game and it's characters regardless of what side you're on far as the ending ;)
My munchkins keep me busy to the point where I can't plow through PC games as quickly as someone with more spare time could (not "knocking" people who can finish off PC games quickly either just saying that it's not my particular situation ;) ) ... so it's taken me years to finish all three ME games... played through ME2 and loved it so much I bought gift copies for friends enthusiastically telling them that you HAVE to play this and it's one of the BEST PC games ever ( which is still my firm belief ;) ) .. ME2 hooked me to the point where I went back and played ME1 this past year despite the graphics (even with mods) looking a tad bit, um , DATED :P compared to "modern day" games ... and liking it anyways since I felt doing so gave me the "whole ME experience" ... then imported that save into ME2 and went back and played that a second time and enjoyed it just as much as the first time ....didn't make the "newbie" mistake of not taking advantage of Zaeed as a free download and sprung for Kasumi Shadow Thief and Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC .. all of which to me really added to ME2 and made me enjoy it in a way I hadn't on the first playthrough...
I think it's that enormous buildup I just mentioned in the paragraph above, from ME1 and ME2, that left me satisfied with ME3's endings... do I wish they could have been better? Sure, would have loved to see more cutscenes showing dialogue between the surviving squadmates re: the impact of Shepard's decisions over the course of ME3 at the end .. and I can see how people would feel the endings are a little bit too much alike too ... I'm wondering if maybe Bioshock ran out of funding for the game at the very end forcing them to patch the ending together quickly?
For example let's say Shepard managed to get the Geth and Quarians to cooperate and they both joined the war effort... if you select "Synthesis" ending have a cutscene - maybe a "20 years later" sort of thing... where the Geth all work together to change the planet's atmosphere and introduce flourishing plant life , lush green fields and trees and so forth that come out of nowhere, tell the Quarians they can take off their suits, Quarians are all teary eyed in gratitude since their home world's been adjusted to the point where they don't have to worry about coming down with some deadly (to Quarians) disease anymore and hug the Geth with tears in their eyes .. okay cheesy as all hell :P but you get my point ;) .. if you go for the "Control" option same thing except Shepard has Reapers show up, work alongside the Geth (or Reapers show up if the Geth got wiped out by the Quarians during ME3) and accomplish the same thing in one year. Or if the Quarians got wiped out have a cutscene where one surviving Quarian family shows up in their ship saying they're the last surviving members of their race... friendly Geth come out from behind some rock outcropping or whatever telling Quarians no, there's other survivors, at best maybe one percent of the Quarians survived .. but the Geth will make things right again, and cue Geth homeworld being made better again.. just random examples here people may or may not agree with but ... hopefully you get the point, more detail would have been great ! ( I think in one of the endings you see a painted one-picture cutscene that shows the Quarians without masks having a conversation with the Geth but.. not the same thing as the full blown animated cutscenes I just mentioned)...
Or.. and I know there's a LOT of people who will disagree with me on this and feel doing so would "cheapen" the death and emotional impact it made on us far as Mordin, Thane, any other squad members who had died along the way.. but to underscore the whole "control" ending as far as Shepard becoming one with what's arguably the most powerful and knowledgeable "race" (Reapers) in existence... have her reconstruct the dead squad members in "robot" form with memories reconstructed from Shepard's memories of them from their past lives , maybe have Reapers yanking surprised persons up in the air who know these deceased squad members well :P (friends and family members and the like of the deceased squad mates) and mind-reading the heck out of them to help reconstruct said memories.. maybe have the "resurrected" squad members angrily argue with Shepard that she/he shouldn't have done that and have the Shepard-Reaper-Construct leave in the middle of their rant - an ominous foreshadowing that power corrupts?
Would have also loved to have seen the surviving squad members toasting Shepard's memory and giving a speech about how Shepard impacted their lives on a personal level after the dramatic " We'll honor Shepard's sacrifice" cut scenes at the end ... maybe intersperse each squad member's speech with a part of the credits that roll at the end of the game and give the team that made ME3 their due, now we HAVE to read their names instead of just skipping by it ! :P ..
Speaking of the game designers.. someone mentioned that the Bioshock persons involved in making the game did not respond well to hateful comments made by fans re: ME3 here on the forum? I will go on record as stating that, while expressing your dissatisfaction with the ending is one thing, doing so in a "hateful" manner ... mounting personal attacks on the writers of the game in writing (hope it didn't go that far?) would make me REALLY uncomfortable to watch.. sure, fans are invested in the game I get it.. but it HAD to be a well written game for fans to care that much in the first place.. something just feels wrong about attacking the people who made this game we're all so invested in.. I read the info on ME 3 in wikipedia about the "take back mass effect" campaign raising $80,000 in it's first two weeks towards charity, complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission and BBB re: the games endings and thought to myself.. wow... on the one hand if this was what resulted in Bioware releasing the Extended Cut download I'm grateful for the download, didn't have to engage in multiplayer mode (not knocking it just saying gaming online w/others isn't my cup of tea) and still had access to the "best possible ending" ... but filing complaints with government agencies? I think about the emotional reaction of the game designers to stuff like that and.. I dunno man, after they put so much work into these awesome games it just doesn't feel right to me :( ..
Anyways... THAT'S the kind of detail we've come to expect I think given how freaking awesome the ME games are in general .. so I think our high expectations were part of the issue too, we expected a kick-ass ending that lived up to the legend.
But on the other hand I do get the whole cosmic " I will sacrifice myself for the sake of everyone ! " gambit too, it's a common theme that has appeared in various TV shows, comics and other books, movies, and so forth ... and while I can see why there's a lot of hate for the starchild too :P , I do understand the whole starchild is an AI going ' Holy crap my programming never took this into account at all ! Um... I'm gonna' let Shepard decide the fate of the galaxy instead ' :P .. which when you think about it puts the wrap-up to the trilogy firmly in the player's hands, just the way it should be ;) ..
When all was said and done the ending still hit me on an emotional level (just finished it last night actually, ME3, first playthrough)... holy crap , Shepard's GONE.. but saved the galaxy while doing so. I enjoyed the ME trilogy enormously and will still continue to heartily recommend all three games to all my friends who are into PC games to begin with.
Am I satisfied with the overall story of the trilogy? Hmm....
NO.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
Wish they'd done more with human biotics.... everything veered towards AI issues after ME2, but when Drew was around, he wanted to talk about biotics quite a bit. I know he had a story planned for them, but even with his dark energy stuff, they could have done something else.
Screw not making the games radically different.
As much as I agree with that one poster in the outlandish opinions thread who said that ME2 not being bogged down by the reapers was its strong suit, maybe have Eden Prime hit by the Collectors and not the Geth thus switching the plots ME2 and ME1 around?
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