Mass Effect 3 SPOILER THREAD: LOTS OF SPECULATION FROM EVERYONE

Status
Not open for further replies.
To be fair, the guy ends up giving the game a 5/10. Even if he didn't like the end that much, I don't think the rest of the game is a 2.5/5 material. Yeah, and I know I'm only looking at the score to say this.

He's not rating the rest of the game, he's rating the game.
 
To be fair, the guy ends up giving the game a 5/10. Even if he didn't like the end that much, I don't think the rest of the game is a 2.5/5 material. Yeah, and I know I'm only looking at the score to say this.

The ending makes me feel the game is much worse, even though I totally loved it in retrospect.
It's a reasonable review.
 
I understand, not going to discredit his review based only on the score. Was just making a point at how the review could be considered 'negative'.
 
The review is actually quite positive about the game, the reviewer spends a great deal of time explaining what he likes about Mass Effect 3 and he quite happily says :-



Then the reviewer gets to the end of the game and it goes all downhill. That is why I called it an HONEST review. It is a review that praises most of the game but highlights the fact the ending takes such a big shit all over the game and the entire franchise.
The score isn't honest at all.A bad ending doesn't justify a 5 out of 10.
 
The score isn't honest at all.A bad ending doesn't justify a 5 out of 10.

Why not? He goes to great lengths to make an assertion and then justify with evidence why he feels that way. He looks critically at the game and considers it a failed piece of art, which should tell you how seriously he's taken the medium and the series. This is not some slapdash review cobbled together for hits.

He's not rating an ending. He is rating the totality of the experience. You need to do better than this if you're calling his review dishonest.
 
Here's how I would do my scores
3pts for gameplay
3pts for graphics
4pts for story

If multiplayer is invoked then
5pts for miltiplayer
 
Why not? He goes to great lengths to make an assertion and then justify with evidence why he feels that way.

He's not rating an ending. He is rating the totality of the experience. You need to do better than this if you're calling his review dishonest.

I'm not calling the review dishonest, just the score.The ending is a tiny part of the whole game, it's not bad to the point of making the rest of the game bad.

The score is negative, even if the review might be positive.
 
Ah Gears and Mass Effect.
Two of my favorite franchises born and killed in the same generation.
And all either had to do was stay true to what they established in the first game, and not take themselves so seriously in the final two.
 
gameplay should be above everything else.
That depends entirely on why a person is playing a game, certainly in the case of Mass Effect story is far more significant to most players than it is in, say, Call of Duty. I can only speak for myself, but for me, story/characters/setting are more important when it comes to Mass Effect than gameplay. Of course given that conversations are a major gameplay component in Mass Effect, it's hard to distinguish between the two, but you know where I'm coming from.
 
Funny how Gears had a better trilogy closure.

I have been trying to think of a game that had a less satisfying ending than ME3, but I have been drawing a blank. Even almost two weeks later, I still am scratching my head as to what the hell anyone at Bioware was thinking.
 
As how it should be done. That's why I like Spill's reviews. Their score is not a number but rather a suggestion.

Insofar as they still do reviews (video reviews at least), they don't really stick to their own scoring system. I mean, they've essentially created a rather complex points scale anyway with all the high rentals and low full prices and what not.
 
haCzo.jpg
 
I can't separate "story" from gameplay cleanly in an RPG like this.

Right, the entertainment is going to be synthesized* from gameplay, story, etc in a RPG like Mass Effect. Strength in one can prop up shortcomings in other areas. For me, ME1 and 2 pulled this off much better than 3, which has more issues in all its constituent parts.

*heh
 
That depends entirely on why a person is playing a game, certainly in the case of Mass Effect story is far more significant to most players than it is in, say, Call of Duty. I can only speak for myself, but for me, story/characters/setting are more important when it comes to Mass Effect than gameplay. Of course given that conversations are a major gameplay component in Mass Effect, it's hard to distinguish between the two, but you know where I'm coming from.

I can see how some people would prefer that, but I'd take the evolved gameplay of ME2 over the better storytelling of ME1 any day.

That's your opinion. I think the shooting in the ME series finally reached "competent" levels with ME3 but it's still pretty clunky. I sure as hell didn't get into this series for the gameplay.
Of course. And that competent level achieved in ME3 that prevents me from turn back and play ME1 again, it's just too clunky.
 
Funny how Gears had a better trilogy closure.

yup. Even with all the retconning (well, some anyway) and daddy issues, that was pretty much a-ok.

Tweaking Insane to be instant death ruined the co-op for me and my buddy though. Two guys fighting for dear life was pretty much the core 'Gears of War' experience. Making that four players and having to balance difficulty against it made that experience impossible. Which makes replaying the campaign on higher levels a no-go, sadly.
Horde mode was still awesome though, aside from the whole 'you need to unlock executions'.
Still: All in all that was 60 bucks well spent. Brimming with content, easter eggs, unique multiplayer maps, I mean: sheeeeeet.

ME3 is kind of shameful compared to Gears 3, in my opinion.
 
The more I think about it, the more I think the screw up started with ME2.

The collectors should not have been building a human reaper, they should have been building a 2nd Citadel, so the Reaper can come back from dark space. Shepard and team only partially succeeds in stopping them at the end. The 2nd Citadel is destroyed but the the Mass Relay part of it works long enough for all the Reapers to come through.

Shepard and company beats a hasty retreat to the Omega-4 Relay, and blows the relay up, in order to prevent the Reapers from coming through and quickly reach the rest of the Galaxy. Now the Reapers have to physically travel to the next Mass Relay, which will take a year or so, this buys the time for Shepard to try to warn the rest of the Galaxy at then end of ME2.

Also, while destroying the half finished Citadel, Shepard finds the construction plans for the 2nd Citadel, and it is through the reverse engineering of that plan that humans reach a greater understanding of what the Relays are and later come up with the design for the Crucible super device to fight the Reapers. The Reapers attack Humans first because this knowledge makes humans the most dangerous so they want to wipe human's out first. Shepard spends ME3 trying to rally the Galaxy and get all the species to help build the Crucible. Cerberus believes that humans can build it alone and does not want to share the knowledge with the rest of the galaxy, so that after the Reapers are beaten humans and humans alone can dominate the galaxy rather than share power with the rest. Players can go Paragon (work with galaxy), or Renegade (work with Cerberus).
 
I don't know if anyone remembers, but I wrote a review of ME2 that was fairly negative. Apparently my review of ME3 isn't getting nearly as much attention, because even though I'm saying a lot of the same things as my ME2 review, a lot of those points are now being widely repeated. Yes the review does contain spoilers, so be warned.

The ending didn't bother me as much, but I suppose it's because I'm not a big plot person. I don't think I would have been any happier with the ending if I saw little cutscenes tidying up every other race and character's story. Anyway, I thought the plot went out the window with ME2 mainly being about solving your teammates dysfunctional family issues and "a human reaper!".
 
The more I think about it, the more I think the screw up started with ME2.

The collectors should not have been building a human reaper, they should have been building a 2nd Citadel, so the Reaper can come back from dark space. Shepard and team only partially succeeds in stopping them at the end. The 2nd Citadel is destroyed but the the Mass Relay part of it works long enough for all the Reapers to come through.

Shepard and company beats a hasty retreat to the Omega-4 Relay, and blows the relay up, in order to prevent the Reapers from coming through and quickly reach the rest of the Galaxy. Now the Reapers have to physically travel to the next Mass Relay, which will take a year or so, this buys the time for Shepard to try to warn the rest of the Galaxy at then end of ME2.

Also, while destroying the half finished Citadel, Shepard finds the construction plans for the 2nd Citadel, and it is through the reverse engineering of that plan that humans reach a greater understanding of what the Relays are and later come up with the design for the Crucible super device to fight the Reapers. The Reapers attack Humans first because this knowledge makes humans the most dangerous so they want to wipe human's out first. Shepard spends ME3 trying to rally the Galaxy and get all the species to help build the Crucible. Cerberus believes that humans can build it alone and does not want to share the knowledge with the rest of the galaxy, so that after the Reapers are beaten humans and humans alone can dominate the galaxy rather than share power with the rest. Players can go Paragon (work with galaxy), or Renegade (work with Cerberus).

Too logical; no speculation. Sorry.
 
Still better than the shooting in ME1, and what made me love the new ones more than the first, yes.

Okay, so you played mass effect for the shooter section (which is fine).
However, I played mass effect solely for the universe and the character interactions.
This might explain why you seem to have less problems with the ending/story than me and a lot of others.
 
I'm not sure what scenario is worse.

A game I love in a franchise I love both being ruined by an atrocious ending.

or

If all of ME3 was complete dogshit so I didn't care that the ending was crap.

Come on now obviously the first option is better. If EA doesn't do anything I am sure there is going to be a retcon fan-made ending for PC come out in a year.

You know how Lucas keep re-releasing the original trilogy in more and more crap. I don't know anybody who consider those versions cannon. There is a fan-made edition of Star Wars that actually fix the technical error of the original print. Basically everyone is waiting for George Lucas to die so Fox can release a proper version in Blu-ray or whatever fancy disc format of the future.
 
The more I think about it, the more I think the screw up started with ME2.

The collectors should not have been building a human reaper, they should have been building a 2nd Citadel, so the Reaper can come back from dark space. Shepard and team only partially succeeds in stopping them at the end. The 2nd Citadel is destroyed but the the Mass Relay part of it works long enough for all the Reapers to come through.

Shepard and company beats a hasty retreat to the Omega-4 Relay, and blows the relay up, in order to prevent the Reapers from coming through and quickly reach the rest of the Galaxy. Now the Reapers have to physically travel to the next Mass Relay, which will take a year or so, this buys the time for Shepard to try to warn the rest of the Galaxy at then end of ME2.

Also, while destroying the half finished Citadel, Shepard finds the construction plans for the 2nd Citadel, and it is through the reverse engineering of that plan that humans reach a greater understanding of what the Relays are and later come up with the design for the Crucible super device to fight the Reapers. The Reapers attack Humans first because this knowledge makes humans the most dangerous so they want to wipe human's out first. Shepard spends ME3 trying to rally the Galaxy and get all the species to help build the Crucible. Cerberus believes that humans can build it alone and does not want to share the knowledge with the rest of the galaxy, so that after the Reapers are beaten humans and humans alone can dominate the galaxy rather than share power with the rest. Players can go Paragon (work with galaxy), or Renegade (work with Cerberus).

I had a similar idea floating around in the back of my mind, except the Collectors would have been building a new Mass Relay... though it pretty much amounts to the same thing as what you suggest.

Anyway, this seems like a much better way of kicking off ME3 and a far far better plot than ME2's.
 
Okay, so you played mass effect for the shooter section (which is fine).
However, I played mass effect solely for the universe and the character interactions.
This might explain why you seem to have less problems with the ending/story than me and a lot of others.

Nope, the story and the lore were what attracted me. But it seems that, unlike some of you, I grew to really like the battle mechanics (maybe because I'm not a huge fan of shooters, so I don't have other better parameters to judge the game).
 
I was just watching the various endings of the game on YouTube, I'm actually saddened how they are all pretty much the same video with the exception of blue/green/red magic space shockwave.

It's a shame as there is some cool stuff that can be salvaged, the music for one, the Citadel's explosion, little flashbacks of key characters, the mass relays firing off data bursts then exploding from outside the galaxy. But much like the intro to the game, blink and you miss it. Three games and 120hrs of gameplay, and for the super-nerdy various books as well, and a 2 minute video ends it all. I want shots of Reapers exploding across the Galaxy, lot's of little flashbacks of key moments of the journey you have taken, people celebrating on Thessia/Rannoch/Praeven as Reapers shutdown and explode around them, and then a short musical number with people dancing and clapping on the Forest Moon of Endor.

And it seems the 'Red Magic Space Shockwave' ending is the one that offers the most closure as to what you've been fighting for over the three games, its just a shame that there were just arbitrary clauses attached to it. I'm surprised that Space Casper didn't also add "Oh yeah, and everyone in the galaxy will get a custard pie in the face, and bowel's will be voided due to background brown noise. Don't ask why, you have a tiny brain that can't comprehend the explanation".
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom