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[sH0tgUn jUliA]

"But he could never control us because we already controlled him." - but when did they already control him. - speculations abound.

 

I think things started going downhill for him when they brought that reaper aboard Cronos, because we know that reapers can't be defeated conventionally. The batarians brought the Leviathan of Dis to study and it indoctrinated everyone in their military. 37 million year old derelict reapers still indoctrinate.

 

But I think he was careful and still had his wits about him until after Sanctuary when he injected himself with reaper nanides and became "brainwashed and crazy." This is what is often misunderstood about The Illusive Man plot.

 

************

 

Now onto the other part. The End. I killed off Shepard. It was so anti-climatic. The "epic ending" was so anti-climatic it should have, in my opinion been cut, and after the crucible docked, Shepard sits there and dies, the Crucible fires, the Citadel fires the beam through the relay system and it kills all the reapers. The End. That's what we were waiting for. But instead we got dragged up to the next level to talk to this glow boy who did a 10 minute information dump. It doesn't fit. I chose the happy ending this time. Synthesis is the happy ending.   The only thing is that Shepard dies. Big deal. Shepard's life sucked. I wouldn't want to live it. Everyone is happy and working together. The Geth are alive and helping the Quarians. The Krogan are reclaiming what was lost and moving beyond that - way beyond that. The reapers are actively helping the Asari and Turians rebuild. Everyone is smiling. EDI is alive and is not alone. Why was I not having tears of joy? Why was I still sitting there thinking "who wrote this crap?"

 

The basic ending we got should have been rewritten while they had the time to write it - hey, back in March 2011. The Original Ending sucked. And the Extended Cut sucked.

 

But I'll tell you after playing it, there are so many crazy things that still don't make sense about that ending that it is conceivable that Shepard is laying dying on the ground in London and all this crap is happening in her head. Why? Where did Anderson come from? Where did The Illusive Man come from? The Illusive Man just appears. Shepard was shot in the shoulder by our friend Marauder Shields, and after shooting Anderson is now bleeding from the rib cage just opposite where she shot Anderson. It's where Jesus was wounded with the spear.

 

And the ending: Control - Shepard uploads and controls the reapers, also by default controls access to reaper tech; Destroy - Shepard destroys reaper tech; Synthesis - Shepard gives everyone free access to reaper tech, which due to synthesis is now "good" reaper tech instead of "bad" reaper tech. And it works this time because "you are ready."

 

See, before synthesis, reaper tech was da evulz because it was "power we weren't ready to wield" and "power we shouldn't have" and "an abomination" and "nothing good ever comes from reaper tech." But AFTER synthesis, suddenly it's "good." We became ready to use it because instead of us taking it from the gods (the reapers), the gods bestowed it upon us. Barf.

 

I still hate the ending because it's stupid because it doesn't belong in Mass Effect. It's a direct ripoff of Deus Ex. Warning to the writing staff - Do not play the next Deus Ex game when you're writing the ending to Mass Effect Next. Casey Hudson played DE:HR and we paid for it.

 

By the way, EDI is expecting the first of her 12 iChildren.

[fraggle]

I have a theory on this. Like, if the source of the Reaper signal is removed, indoctrination process stops/slows. So when Saren destroyed the Arca Monolith the signal stopped and TIM was able to work against the Reapers in ME2. But then in ME3 he gets pieces of the human Reaper on his station and signal is reestablished. He starts to dream of control, establishes the Sanctuary, tries to sabotage Alliance plans all while still thinking that he works against the Reapers. And then comes the final stage, implants. 

 

I do like that theory a lot! Would make sense I guess

[ImaginaryMatter]

Thessia - The Illusive Man knew where the archive was from the Mars Archives. He could have taken it any time. After all he was banging Asari Matriarchs.But needed Shepard to activate it - Space Jesus was needed.

 

The problem was that they tried to give Shepard a personality in ME3. While this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, they really didn't have the writers with the ability to do it. See, to do something like that you need to make the character pre-defined and not a brick anymore. You don't jerk the player's chain by giving the illusion of the brick, and then take it away with the dream crap, and try to show stress periodically. You have to have some additional scenes where the character is definitely showing signs of stress. They'd have to make the story more edgy and less PG-13. For some players, Joker's line about Shepard being under more stress than during the Skyllian Blitz or at Torfan came as a shock. WTF? The doctor never said anything to Shepard about that. But then there were a lot of disconnects.

 

Shepard also needed some missions where they got their asses kicked at least a couple times before Thessia, just to get us used to the fact that this was not going to be an easy war. Missions where once we got in, the intel was bad and we were outnumbered and our goal changed from recovering an artifact to evac without getting wiped. Sh*t happens. Have Shepard's plot armor fail a few times and end up in med bay so that Dr. Chakwas or Michel actually have to do something besides sit on their asses. And make the default selection Chakwas. If you happened to miss the two of them in Huerta, Chakwas automatically reported to the Normandy so that you had a ship's doctor.

 

A some earlier defeats might have made Thessia have the effect they wanted. But no, you got the Krogan working with the Turians, and the Salarians threw in their help. May have made peace between the Quarians and Geth or at least solved that problem, and Hackett is happy no matter what. There are no consequences to your actions. You've been working miracles.

 

That Cerberus soldier dying in front of Shepard on Sur'Kesh made no sense. What were they trying to do with that? In fact, what did The Illusive Man want with the Krogan anyway? That was kind of out there. It didn't make any sense. You'd think he'd want to delay the reapers. But I guess the plot there was da evulz. Perhaps it was because they didn't want the Reapers invading Sur'Kesh just yet, and they couldn't have the exchange go smoothly, and needed mooks for you to shoot, so Cerberus. That was the depth of the Salarian-Krogan plot.

 

Unless the reason was that TIM wanted to clone Bakara and breed an army of Krogan. But that was never covered. Would have been interesting if Wrex or Wreav found out beforehand that Cerberus wanted to cure the genophage. Ah, but that was already done with Saren and couldn't be recycled. Would have been an interesting mission failure.

 

I agree with a lot of this. ME3 really does have a problem with the "show, don't tell rule", or more importantly, since the story is in an interactive medium "do, don't show, don't tell". The child PTSD/stress thing really highlights this disconnect. We get occasionally get told Shepard is stressing out but for most of the game most of his actions, mechanics don't really reflect that (plus, those options where you can say you're fine). If the child was really a symbolic representation of his guilt over so many humans dying everyday you think he would have more of a reaction to the husks rather than increasingly becoming more efficient at dispatching them.

 

Losing is a bigger but maybe more subtle issue. For a game that is about the world coming to an end, there seems to be an awful lot of... winning. Nothing about the mechanics really reflects anything characters bring up in expository dialogue or in text entries. Shooting wise Shepard and friends can now blast through enemies more quickly and spectacularly than ever before, so for the most part the Reapers are mooks. The multiplayer makes it even worse as the body count goes up even further -- you can only kill so many hundred of Reapers before the idea of them being unstoppable machine gods starts to wear thin. I could maybe overlook it if the EMS system was different, but that's a system built to support this -- like there's literally a bar that measures effective military strength that largely only goes up. The galaxy, again in a mechanical sense, is following a linear path up; the Reapers invade a system and the only consequence is a slight annoyance when doing fetch quests. I feel like these are important points because the only interaction we have with the Reapers is across the barrel of a gun, which is designed to empower the player.

Ultimately, I think the game adheres too closely to the power fantasy, militaristic tropes of other shooters that the doom and gloom starts to seem out of place in a game where the end of civilization is taking place. Sometimes I can't help but feel that's the primary driving force behind Cerberus's inclusion as such a predominate enemy... to provide more, different dudes to shoot at. That's probably why they are on Sur'Kesh.

[Iakus]

I agree with a lot of this. ME3 really does have a problem with the "show, don't tell rule", or more importantly, since the story is in an interactive medium "do, don't show, don't tell". The child PTSD/stress thing really highlights this disconnect. We get occasionally get told Shepard is stressing out but for most of the game most of his actions, mechanics don't really reflect that (plus, those options where you can say you're fine). If the child was really a symbolic representation of his guilt over so many humans dying everyday you think he would have more of a reaction to the husks rather than increasingly becoming more efficient at dispatching them.

 

Losing is a bigger but maybe more subtle issue. For a game that is about the world coming to an end, there seems to be an awful lot of... winning. Nothing about the mechanics really reflects anything characters bring up in expository dialogue or in text entries. Shooting wise Shepard and friends can now blast through enemies more quickly and spectacularly than ever before, so for the most part the Reapers are mooks. The multiplayer makes it even worse as the body count goes up even further -- you can only kill so many hundred of Reapers before the idea of them being unstoppable machine gods starts to wear thin. I could maybe overlook it if the EMS system was different, but that's a system built to support this -- like there's literally a bar that measures effective military strength that largely only goes up. The galaxy, again in a mechanical sense, is following a linear path up; the Reapers invade a system and the only consequence is a slight annoyance when doing fetch quests. I feel like these are important points because the only interaction we have with the Reapers is across the barrel of a gun, which is designed to empower the player.

Ultimately, I think the game adheres too closely to the power fantasy, militaristic tropes of other shooters that the doom and gloom starts to seem out of place in a game where the end of civilization is taking place. Sometimes I can't help but feel that's the primary driving force behind Cerberus's inclusion as such a predominate enemy... to provide more, different dudes to shoot at. That's probably why they are on Sur'Kesh.

It's why I say the game was designed only around a no-import Shepard.  Not a Shepard with a "good" import.  I mean this is a Shepard where

 

Chakwas is the only survivor of the SR2 crew captured by the Collectors.

Wreav is in charge of the krogan

Eve dies (but hey, these two mean it's possible to save Mordin, so yay I guess)

Jack and Thane died on the suicide mission

Kirahe died on Virmire

Kai Leng kills the salarian Councilor (no Thane or Kirahe to stop him)

thus it's very difficult to talk the VS down a the confrontation

Legion VI, so peace between the geth and quarians is a nonstarter

Miranda dies to Kai Leng

 

This is the Shepard the game was designed for.  It's not a failShep, but it's close.  It's a Shepard who screwed up so much the only way he/she can succeed is by climbing over a mountain of bodies.  Friends included.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Because Mass Effect 3 was a great place to start the series.

 

Don't worry about the other two games. Even if you didn't play them, you can just jump in and play this one and still get the best results.

 

Mass Effect 1 was not available for PS3. They made the default ME2 game the worst possible start for that one, too. People who had PS3s got punished.

 

But in the end it didn't matter because of the way things happened in ME3, you could still end up with over 5000 EMS and unlock both the Destroy Breath Scene and Synthesis by using Multi-player! It was a total power trip for the player. Shepard > Master Chief slaughtering mooks right and left, killing 160 meter tall reapers on foot. Then you get that ending. Pick your favorite color. Yeah!

 

And the sad part? The real sad part of the whole thing? I picked synthesis the last time and have the feeling today of closure for the first time. No head canon required. Shepard is dead. I still hate the ending.

[aoibhealfae]

I just play as tragic C/SS Shepard and gave her a pre-made PTSD as a default. She already have a lot of nightmares and insomnia and stuff even before the Prothean beacon. Eden Prime was nearly destroyed, she nuked Virmire, a lot of people at Citadel died because of the Heretic Geth and Sovereign. Then in ME2, she's definitely more stressed because of the resurrection, Cerberus, people abandoning her and not trusting her. The big breakup. Then she saw what Collectors done to those hundred and thousands of people in the collector's ship and at the base. She could only rescue her own crew but not even one Horizon colonist. She had to come back and announce to everyone that ALL their missing family and children and babies was pulped to create a reaper. Then she got hit by that Object Rho and received even more reaper visions and she had to send an asteroid to a relay and create a supernova that wipe out another hundred of thousands of people.

 

So for me, there's no dissonance. I don't have the illusion that Shepard was alright in the head by the start of ME3 and she wasn't that too overconfident with her abilities (although this does vary and depending on your dialogues choices), she's just plain stubborn to give up. With post-Thessia, she's simply sick with the years of self-censors and all the lies she told everyone to get their morals up. It wasn't a sudden display of emotions being forced into the story, its just a display of what she already have inside. It was her real reaction to the destruction of Earth and Palaven and other homeworlds, her frustration about the council and all the politics she have to do to get people working together, the people who died because of her, the people who died believing that she would rescue them, all the people lost in ME1 and ME2.... and her general frustration against Cerberus and The Illusive Man who made it harder for her. So, everything make sense for me.

 

I don't RP extensively. I don't have a strict rule of who Shepard is suppose to be so I don't assume the story have to follow my intended RP. The game is limited in that way and it works for me. I'm used to Asian RPGs so I wasn't used to western RPGs and the perception that the game should be written to suit the gamer's RP playing. I mean, Final Fantasy would have been a lot different if they adopt western RPGs style. No default romance. Characters with more dialogue options etc.

[aoibhealfae]

Your Shepard reminds me of Ripley.

 

It's funny how the origins really make a big difference.. Even an Earthborn/SS vs Colonist/SS.

Right? But its not the first time people associated FemShep with Ripley. Spacer/SS reminds me of Original Starbuck (BroShep) and Kara Thrace (FemShep). Spacer/WH reminds me of Johnny Rico. Earthborn/Ruthless reminds me a bit of Han Solo or Firefly Mal... especially Earthborn/WH.

 

Ah, Mass Effect and SciFi movie/tv marathon...

[aoibhealfae]

All the SS remind me of Ripley a little, but I think the Colonist has that sadness about her the most.

 

Yeah, I'd say Earthborn/WH is Solo/Mal. Something along those lines. Default Shep (Earthborn/SS) is kind of unique to me. I don't know other media that reminds me of it. It's why I still like it, despite it being default.  

Maybe Defiance's Nolan? Although he is more a renegade war hero. Or Wolverine... hmm.. Earthborn/SS is kinda like an anti-hero bad ass character, rough childhood and horrifying military experience. He sound familiar though....... wait, I think I've read a lot of romance with his type. Have you read the synopsis for the reboot Terminator: Genisys? Sarah Connor sounds like Earthborn/SS.

[themikefest]

I think Mac Walters read something about PTSD in Time magazine and thoughtlessly put it into the game.

I would suggest to him, if he wanted to include PTSD in the game, to go visit a VA hospital and talk with veterans who suffer from PSTD. He can get first hand experience from them.

[ImaginaryMatter]

It's why I say the game was designed only around a no-import Shepard.  Not a Shepard with a "good" import.  I mean this is a Shepard where

 

Chakwas is the only survivor of the SR2 crew captured by the Collectors.

Wreav is in charge of the krogan

Eve dies (but hey, these two mean it's possible to save Mordin, so yay I guess)

Jack and Thane died on the suicide mission

Kirahe died on Virmire

Kai Leng kills the salarian Councilor (no Thane or Kirahe to stop him)

thus it's very difficult to talk the VS down a the confrontation

Legion VI, so peace between the geth and quarians is a nonstarter

Miranda dies to Kai Leng

 

This is the Shepard the game was designed for.  It's not a failShep, but it's close.  It's a Shepard who screwed up so much the only way he/she can succeed is by climbing over a mountain of bodies.  Friends included.

 

That's an other thing too. With imports/playing more of a completion-ist run Shepard can shirk a lot of personal loss. There's definitely a right, most optimal way to do things in these games most of the time that rewards investment. It creates a weird situation where people who play recurringly are less likely to experience the stuff that makes the game more coherent. With a 100% run the game is very routine, with most of the game being dialogue explaining where to go and Shepard shooting his way through things to get there. Conversations like the Citadel ones and squadmate conversations are good but they are overwhelmingly optional.

 

What makes it more odd is that most of the loss that does happen is more at the hands of Cerberus rather than the Reapers, even more so with optimal play throughs. I think everything else I said is a very hard issue to tackle in a game with save imports, especially considering there isn't much precedence for it (so I guess BioWare did pretty well considering), but the Cerberus thing to me is just bananas.

[Daemul]

It's why I say the game was designed only around a no-import Shepard. Not a Shepard with a "good" import. I mean this is a Shepard where

Chakwas is the only survivor of the SR2 crew captured by the Collectors.
Wreav is in charge of the krogan
Eve dies (but hey, these two mean it's possible to save Mordin, so yay I guess)
Jack and Thane died on the suicide mission
Kirahe died on Virmire
Kai Leng kills the salarian Councilor (no Thane or Kirahe to stop him)
thus it's very difficult to talk the VS down a the confrontation
Legion VI, so peace between the geth and quarians is a nonstarter
Miranda dies to Kai Leng

This is the Shepard the game was designed for. It's not a failShep, but it's close. It's a Shepard who screwed up so much the only way he/she can succeed is by climbing over a mountain of bodies. Friends included.

This is true and I've said it many times, Bioware wrote the story around default Shepard and it shows in the coherency and consistency of the writing.

Btw it's not Failshep, its RealisticShep.

That's stupid then. From what I gather, it didn't dwarf ME1/ME2 sales. Which tells me that they were mostly dealing with faithful fans, who were going to import. Not so many new players that it'd really count. Why write around "who might play", and not "who does play"...

According to the stats 40% of players imported a save into ME3, so most of the people who played the game played as default Shepard.

The thing with video games is that the longer a series goes on, the more the playerbase recycles and the smaller the original playerbase becomes, so the people who play the first game in a long running series aren't the same ones who play the last game in the series. Its pretty much made up of newer players by then, which is why gaming companies try to make their games accessible as possible to newcomers, to get more people to come in so that they can replace the older players who stop playing the games.

I can guarantee you right now for example, that the percentage of gamers who played both the first ever COD and COD:Advanced Warfare is in the single digits, and that's me being generous.

Because Mass Effect 3 was a great place to start the series.

Don't worry about the other two games. Even if you didn't play them, you can just jump in and play this one and still get the best results.

Mass Effect 1 was not available for PS3. They made the default ME2 game the worst possible start for that one, too. People who had PS3s got punished.

But in the end it didn't matter because of the way things happened in ME3, you could still end up with over 5000 EMS and unlock both the Destroy Breath Scene and Synthesis by using Multi-player! It was a total power trip for the player. Shepard > Master Chief slaughtering mooks right and left, killing 160 meter tall reapers on foot. Then you get that ending. Pick your favorite color. Yeah!

And the sad part? The real sad part of the whole thing? I picked synthesis the last time and have the feeling today of closure for the first time. No head canon required. Shepard is dead. I still hate the ending.

Meh, I enjoyed the ME2 default, it was way more fun than my boring ass perfect import, which I have now deleted.

[GreatBlueHeron]

The biblical references were. done. to. death. Although I'm an atheist, I don't mind some religious references, but the space jesus thing was excessive. How about some references to some non-abrahamic religions (if there must be religious references---and don't go for greek or roman. How about something different?)?

Which leads me to the lazarus project. The building sequence looked cool, but the entire thing is unbelievable. Space magic indeed.

Medi gel on geth stations and ships? Huh?

Medi gel heals legion. Huh? (Maybe I missed something in the lore...are they part organic?)

The retcon of cerberus, although I didn't discover this until I finally played the first game (ps3, so I played two, three, then one).

The over-importance of humans. By the end of the 3rd game, I was ready to sacrifice humanity just so I could stop hearing about how awesome humans are. (and no, I'm glad they didn't go with the dark energy sacrifice the humans plot---it would have made me upset. Picture it---space jesus times 11 billion or so. I would rather humanity disappeared without being saviors.).

The Terminator! Oh, the lol's that ensued when I got to the end of 2. How cheesy. First time I played I bust out laughing. Totally broke immersion.

The kid. No children the entire series and this one shows up. Confusion to the narrative because indoctrination was dropped as a plot line. So, the elements are leftovers....some of it I like, but the kid wasn't necessary. I never emotionally connected to the kid. The dreams were annoying to play. They should have been short cut scenes.

System freezes. During certain cut scenes in 3, I always get a system freeze. I'm thinking ps3 didn't get much testing. Also, the audio cut short in many conversations in 2. Again, I think ps3 didn't get much love ( did the other platforms have these problems?).

[DuskWanderer]

Here's what I hate about the series, broken down by game. 

 

Mass Effect 1 

 

The copy/paste environments - Fortunately, seems to have been fixed

 

The copy/paste characters - After the stuff on the Citadel, there was literally no point in bringing any specific character except to have someone to open boxes, the dialogue was copy/paste - Fortunately, seems to have been fixed

 

The fact that Liara was a required character - She felt optional and there was no reason to even bring her on the ship. Anything she could have done could have been handled by Shiala.

 

The Mako - That's been fixed.

 

The unnecessary large hub - That's been fixed

 

 

Mass Effect 2

 

The really small subtitles - That's been fixed

 

That I had to hug Liara

 

 

Mass Effect 3

 

That Liara had to not only be my bestie, but that she kept inviting herself to talk to me

 

That I couldn't point out how obvious Udina's plot was to Kaidan

 

That EDI's body was oversexualized

 

The so blatantly pro-krogan and pro-asari nonsense

[Iakus]

This is true and I've said it many times, Bioware wrote the story around default Shepard and it shows in the coherency and consistency of the writing.
 

Too bad people with "good" imports couldn't get some of that coherency and consistency too.

 

I mean, I've got less than perfect files too.  But why bother with them?  I've seen the best that can possibly happen.  That was bad enough.  

 

 

Btw it's not Failshep, its RealisticShep.

It's a Shep who got everyone killed who can possibly die in ME1, and did zero prep work in ME2.  It may be "realistic" Shep, but a sorry excuse for an action hero.  Perfect for an "artistic" ending, I guess.  

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Now you listen here, Daemul. I always had an import for ME2 and 3. You should have seen my first play throughs. I shot Wrex because I was having a bad hair day and I had a migraine. Wrex was giving me sh**. "Wrex, we're standing on a beach on a bright sunny day. I have a splitting headache, the sun is reflecting off the white sand, you're firing your shotgun making all sorts of loud noise and now you're giving me sh*t?"

 

And I shoved a gun in Conrad's face.

 

And I didn't save the council.

 

A bullet in the head solves everything.

 

Some things just have to be on record, okay? Not determined by the most negative option.

 

***************************************

 

It's kind of difficult to point out how obvious Udina's plot is to Kaidan when you're wearing armor with that Cerberus logo. - Credibility - Honest Kaidan, I'm not with Cerberus anymore.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Medi gel on geth stations and ships? Huh?

Medi gel heals legion. Huh? (Maybe I missed something in the lore...are they part organic?)

 

Supposedly, the Geth aren't purely metallic and are instead some sort of bio-synthetic material that basically works like organic tissue only with oil instead of blood -- or something like that. You can really tell this from the look of things like the Geth hoppers back in ME1.

[themikefest]

 

It's a Shep who got everyone killed who can possibly die in ME1, and did zero prep work in ME2.  It may be "realistic" Shep, but a sorry excuse for an action hero.  Perfect for an "artistic" ending, I guess.  

Don't knock the Shepard's that gets everyone killed. Well mine anyways. She did destroy the reapers. Mission accomplished