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[Poodlestrike]

I'm very interested to hear your defence of the reaper's long term plan and goals.

I'm not him, but in light of Leviathan (which is, admittedly, after the fact), I'm inclined to think that the defense of the Reaper's logic is that it's faulty in-universe as well as out. They built machines to help them manage and protect their empire and client races, and that intelligence developed a fault which led it to believe that the best way to do that was to kill everything. The stuff the catalyst spews sounds stupid and/or crazy because it is.

 

[Prologue]

Give me a 1080p collection with

as the cover picture, I'll be forever happy.

 

[Ralemont]

I'm very interested to hear your defence of the reaper's long term plan and goals.

In terms of how the Xzibit meme doesn't apply? That's easy. The Xzibit meme suggests a contradiction that doesn't exist. "The Catalyst wants to protect organics from synthetics so he builds synthetics to kill organics." But this completely dismisses how the Catalyst views the harvest. First, he doesn't think he's killing organics. He's preserving them in Reaper form, and Reapers are undeniably living entities. Second, he views organics as an entity, and that by cutting off advanced organic development and letting the lower races evolve, he preserves both "organic life" as an entity and advanced organic culture in Reaper form.

All right, so the Catalyst's logic makes sense from his A.I. point of view.* So now we say that the Catalyst's logic doesn't make sense from our point of view, which is true. But that's the primary means through which any protagonist/antagonist conflict is generated, so that's not really a problem either. You're supposed to disagree with what the Catalyst is doing.

*The real "lol logic" argument here is why the Catalyst sends Reapers to do the harvest when he's supposed to be preserving organic life, since Reapers have a chance of being destroyed.

Give me a 1080p collection with as the cover picture, I'll be forever happy.

Where's Kaidan?

Spoiler

lol just kidding no one cares

 

[Ascenion]

My guess is they are scared of fan backlash after ME3, and don't want to commit themselves yet to any particular ending. So ME4 will be concurrent with ME3, in a different area of space (the path finder / arc concept) to put some space between the new games and the ending of Me3.

We'll find out the cannon ending in ME5, if it ever gets made, once they can see and test how the public reacts to ME4 and if it still sells.

I dunno about you, but to me it's painfully obvious Destroy was canon.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

In terms of how the Xzibit meme doesn't apply? That's easy. The Xzibit meme suggests a contradiction that doesn't exist. "The Catalyst wants to protect organics from synthetics so he builds synthetics to kill organics." But this completely dismisses how the Catalyst views the harvest. First, he doesn't think he's killing organics. He's preserving them in Reaper form, and Reapers are undeniably living entities. Second, he views organics as an entity, and that by cutting off advanced organic development and letting the lower races evolve, he preserves both "organic life" as an entity and advanced organic culture in Reaper form.

All right, so the Catalyst's logic makes sense from his A.I. point of view.* So now we say that the Catalyst's logic doesn't make sense from our point of view, which is true. But that's the primary means through which any protagonist/antagonist conflict is generated, so that's not really a problem either. You're supposed to disagree with what the Catalyst is doing.

*The real "lol logic" argument here is why the Catalyst sends Reapers to do the harvest when he's supposed to be preserving organic life, since Reapers have a chance of being destroyed.

So you're saying they're preserving organics merely in the sense that they built something out of organic construction materials? They're totally destroying their whole civilisations, killing their people etc. We are given no indication that they are being used as anything other than raw materials. I might at least at a stretch be willing to entertain the notion that this isn't totally illogical if they were uploading people's minds to some kind of computer database or something, but the Reapers and Collectors just babble on about genes and genetic compatability and stuff. If the writers intended for the Reapers to be actually preserving culture, intellect or anything other than the particular atoms that they were using at the time of their harvesting, they had plenty of opportunity to show and/or explain this, especially considering you have extended conversations with the architects of this plan.

If they intended to show this as an AI gone rampant or malevolent genie type situation, they really should have gone into more details. For example, the Leviathans could have tasked them with preserving organic species in some way, but the commands were written in such a way that the AI interpreted it in a strict sense, and considered it only important to preserve samples of their biological material, not their culture or anything about their civilization. This doesn't get around the flaw you point out yourself (and which I've lamented in the past as well) regarding the stupidity of essentially sending your biological preserves into open combat. It also doesn't get around the broader problem of why the Reapers could possibly want to use the biological materials as construction materials for new Reapers. It is implied that somehow this allows them to take on the characteristics of their hosts based on genetic traits and comparability. This isn't a logic problem, it's just abysmal science and writing. I can't believe they did something so incredibly stupid. The final irritation is how in ME1 it's all "we are beyond your comprehension" when actually they can summarise their entire existence and goals in a twitter post without losing any meaningful information.

 

[prag16]

It's the their absoluteness that borders on faith and gravity of their solution that is garbage to me. From what I remember, Leviathan does indeed question it, but it's been a while for me too.

I'm very interested to hear your defence of the reaper's long term plan and goals.

I'm not him, but in light of Leviathan (which is, admittedly, after the fact), I'm inclined to think that the defense of the Reaper's logic is that it's faulty in-universe as well as out. They built machines to help them manage and protect their empire and client races, and that intelligence developed a fault which led it to believe that the best way to do that was to kill everything. The stuff the catalyst spews sounds stupid and/or crazy because it is.

They're not "killing everything". You all well know that they only kill life which has advanced beyond a certain point. Their theory is that if they let life advance too far, a tech singularity with super over powered AI will ACTUALLY destroy everything.

They don't exactly show us much proof to support their theory. However we don't have proof they're wrong either. Tech singularity related stuff is a common scifi trope (even in such popular franchises as The Matrix and Terminator). And don't give me "but but Geth/EDI" as proof. That's pretty insignificant on the timescale we're talking about here; many millions of years. We don't know what happened during all those other cycles to either support/dispel the Reaper logic.

You could argue they never let things progress far enough to "prove" their theory correct. That may be the case. But dismissing the whole thing with simply the xzibit argument is disingenuous.

Other arguments can be made, such as "just kill all the overpowered AI as it emerges". Maybe, but tech singularity theory posits that there's potential for things to happy VERY quickly once the "singularity" has been reached, potentially giving the Reapers no time to react. There are valid arguments to be made on both sides though, sure. The xzibit argument in a nutshell is not one of them.

FAKE EDIT: I still thought the ending was bad, but not because of this tech singularity related logic. The execution of it all with the deus ex machina, catalyst, and other nonsense is what pissed me off. Not the "Reaper logic" itself.

 

[wolfhowwl]

So you're saying they're preserving organics merely in the sense that they built something out of organic construction materials? They're totally destroying their whole civilisations, killing their people etc. We are given no indication that they are being used as anything other than raw materials. I might at least at a stretch be willing to entertain the notion that this isn't totally illogical if they were uploading people's minds to some kind of computer database or something, but the Reapers and Collectors just babble on about genes and genetic compatability and stuff. If the writers intended for the Reapers to be actually preserving culture, intellect or anything other than the particular atoms that they were using at the time of their harvesting, they had plenty of opportunity to show and/or explain this, especially considering you have extended conversations with the architects of this plan.

If they intended to show this as an AI gone rampant or malevolent genie type situation, they really should have gone into more details. For example, the Leviathans could have tasked them with preserving organic species in some way, but the commands were written in such a way that the AI interpreted it in a strict sense, and considered it only important to preserve samples of their biological material, not their culture or anything about their civilization. This doesn't get around the flaw you point out yourself (and which I've lamented in the past as well) regarding the stupidity of essentially sending your biological preserves into open combat. It also doesn't get around the broader problem of why the Reapers could possibly want to use the biological materials as construction materials for new Reapers. It is implied that somehow this allows them to take on the characteristics of their hosts based on genetic traits and comparability. This isn't a logic problem, it's just abysmal science and writing. I can't believe they did something so incredibly stupid. The final irritation is how in ME1 it's all "we are beyond your comprehension" when actually they can summarise their entire existence and goals in a twitter post without losing any meaningful information.

The Reapers underwent changes during ME2's development.

An ex-BioWare employee that worked on the first two games wrote that he intended for EDI to be talking about how the...

Reapers were using nanotech disassemblers to perform "destructive analysis" on humans, with the intent of learning how to build a Reaper body that could upload their minds intact. Once this was complete, humans throughout the galaxy would be rounded up to have their personalities and memories forcibly uploaded into the Reaper's memory banks. (You can still hear some suggestions of this in the background chatter during Legion's acquisition mission, which I wrote.) There was nothing about Reapers being techno-organic or partly built out of human corpses -- they were pure tech.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

So you're saying they're preserving organics merely in the sense that they built something out of organic construction materials? They're totally destroying their whole civilisations, killing their people etc. We are given no indication that they are being used as anything other than raw materials. I might at least at a stretch be willing to entertain the notion that this isn't totally illogical if they were uploading people's minds to some kind of computer database or something, but the Reapers and Collectors just babble on about genes and genetic compatability and stuff. If the writers intended for the Reapers to be actually preserving culture, intellect or anything other than the particular atoms that they were using at the time of their harvesting, they had plenty of opportunity to show and/or explain this, especially considering you have extended conversations with the architects of this plan.

The Catalyst does state that the Reapers house the cultural aspects of a species as well as their genetics. We never see this, but we never really get much of a glimpse at what Reapers *are* but I remember Legion making some vague statements about how when he was connected to the Reaper consciousness it was implied there were countless "minds" that composed the whole. Also I believe the synthetic ending talks about how the Reapers shared the culture of harvested species with everyone afterward.

If they intended to show this as an AI gone rampant or malevolent genie type situation, they really should have gone into more details. For example, the Leviathans could have tasked them with preserving organic species in some way, but the commands were written in such a way that the AI interpreted it in a strict sense, and considered it only important to preserve samples of their biological material, not their culture or anything about their civilization.

The Leviathans told the Catalyst to find a solution to the problem where organics kept developing AI that would then genocide them. The Catalyst eventually extrapolates this problem to a galactic level with the implication that one day ALL organics would be exterminated by synthetics if given a long enough time line. The Reaper Harvest was created as a kind of holding pattern to stop this from happening until a permanent solution could be found.

This doesn't get around the flaw you point out yourself (and which I've lamented in the past as well) regarding the stupidity of essentially sending your biological preserves into open combat.

Yeah this is pretty dumb. Probably more of a stylistic choice than a completely logical one.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

They're not "killing everything". You all well know that they only kill life which has advanced beyond a certain point. Their theory is that if they let life advance too far, a tech singularity with super over powered AI will ACTUALLY destroy everything.

They postulate that organic and synthetic life cannot coexist, and that synthetics will wind up destroying organics. The Reapers themselves are an example of such a synthetic species, they are controlled by a single artificial intelligence and regardless of their own construction materials, they are not a naturally evolved lifeform. What they are doing is preventing the emergence of any new synthetics, and routinely destroying organic civilizations.

Your discussion of singularity is not something I recall ever coming up in the game itself. Considering they are themselves machine intelligences smart enough to advance themselves in principle, it seems an absurd fear, they are what they are trying to prevent, thus proving that conflict is not necessarily inevitable if they don't want it to be. The fact that they predate all other life, and built the relay networks means that they had adequate time, resources and technology to simply control the entire galaxy and foster the development of the species that emerge.

Even if we accept their motivations at face value, why not just stay in the milky way and monitor life-bearing planets? There are a finite number of them, they have all the time in the world to actually explore and map everything. They are theoretically capable of self replication and the creation of lesser intelligences to act as monitors during their hibernation (if they even need to hibernate). The explanation for their actions is not logical, extrapolated from goals, it is a relatively poor attempt at explaining their mysterious behaviours that only 'kind of ' works.

 

[Ralemont]

So you're saying they're preserving organics merely in the sense that they built something out of organic construction materials? They're totally destroying their whole civilisations, killing their people etc. We are given no indication that they are being used as anything other than raw materials. I might at least at a stretch be willing to entertain the notion that this isn't totally illogical if they were uploading people's minds to some kind of computer database or something, but the Reapers and Collectors just babble on about genes and genetic compatability and stuff. If the writers intended for the Reapers to be actually preserving culture, intellect or anything other than the particular atoms that they were using at the time of their harvesting, they had plenty of opportunity to show and/or explain this, especially considering you have extended conversations with the architects of this plan.

We've known that all the minds of the Reaped are uploaded into a single synthetic consciousness since Legion's conversation after the Suicide Mission (start at 1:00). Additionally, I don't have a source but the original ME2 script had EDI describing the liquifying process as a sort of destructive analysis; it wasn't just for genetic material. In fact, Legion reveals that the heretic geth from ME1 were promised a Reaper shell to upload into similar to how Legion's geth wanted to build a megastructure themselves to upload into.

The Catalyst supports this: (4:55 here).

Anyway, I wouldn't call the Catalyst a case of an insane or corrupted AI. It's functional properly, it simply wasn't built with the proper programming to limit its behavior. Does this make the Leviathans into idiots? Sure. And yeah, there's bad science here, but Mass Effect has been science fantasy from the start. Synthesis takes it a step too far, though.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

Considering they are themselves machine intelligences smart enough to advance themselves in principle, it seems an absurd fear, they are what they are trying to prevent, thus proving that conflict is not necessarily inevitable if they don't want it to be.

They don't fear it though. It's what they're programmed to do.

 

[inky]

The Reapers underwent changes during ME2's development.

An ex-BioWare employee that worked on the first two games wrote that he intended for EDI to be talking about how the...

That makes a bit more sense considering how Sovereign talks about his race in ME 1. "Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal" and "We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution" and "We are each a nation".

Man, Sovereign was so cool, precisely because he really felt that he was beyond your understanding. You had to stop it of course, but no sense in explaining why. So then they went and tried to explain it and guess what? Not only is he really actually very easily understood, it's fucking nonsense.

Fuck me, why am I in a Mass Effect thread again? Ugh.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

An ex-BioWare employee that worked on the first two games wrote that he intended for EDI to be talking about how the...

I wish this made it into the games. Because what we see is that somehow they goopify poeple, feed them through tubes, and are used to build a giant human-shaped reaper. Realistically, all Reapers should look identical and there should never have been a human shape at all.

I recall that there is evidence in dialogue and codex that people are literally used as construction materials, but I don't have time to actually looks this up now. The ME wiki says that they are but it's not directly sourced.

We've known that all the minds of the Reaped are uploaded into a single synthetic consciousness since Legion's conversation after the Suicide Mission (start at 1:00). Additionally, I don't have a source but the original ME2 script had EDI describing the liquifying process as a sort of destructive analysis; it wasn't just for genetic material. In fact, Legion reveals that the heretic geth from ME1 were promised a Reaper shell to upload into similar to how Legion's geth wanted to build a megastructure themselves to upload into.

The Catalyst supports this: (4:55 here).

Never seen that Legion convo before. It's just weird that he talks about it there like it was something that had ever been mentioned before. Feels like it was dialogue that was left over from stuff that got cut elsewhere.

Was that conduit statement in there before the extended cut?

 

[televator]

Your discussion of singularity is not something I recall ever coming up in the game itself. Considering they are themselves machine intelligences smart enough to advance themselves in principle, it seems an absurd fear, they are what they are trying to prevent, thus proving that conflict is not necessarily inevitable if they don't want it to be. The fact that they predate all other life, and built the relay networks means that they had adequate time, resources and technology to simply control the entire galaxy and foster the development of the species that emerge.

Which is of course totally backed up by one of the end choices being that you control the Reapers yourself and become galactic god that oversees the development of all the races. There's no ands, ifs, or buts in the way its presented and if we're to take reaper logic at face value doing the same here paradoxically flies in the face of reaper logic. Unless someone wants to get into some form of special pleading against this argument...

 

[Ralemont]

Was that conduit statement in there before the extended cut?

Nope, lol. They reworked and/or added a significant amount of stuff to the Catalyst convo with the EC. The Catalyst always talked about "preserving" advanced organic life in Reaper form but that's the farthest he ever got in the vanilla convo.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Nope, lol. They reworked and/or added a significant amount of stuff to the Catalyst convo with the EC. The Catalyst always talked about "preserving" advanced organic life in Reaper form but that's the farthest he ever got in the vanilla convo.

I was thinking that didn't sound familiar but I only got up to that point once (before the extended cut came out). My second playthrough ran out of steam halfway.

I'll probably go through the trilogy again before ME4.

 

[wolfhowwl]

That makes a bit more sense considering how Sovereign talks about his race in ME 1. "Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal" and "We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution" and "We are each a nation".

This writer did say that the version of the Reapers that he hoped to see was the "post-Singularity evolution of organic races."

He also wrote Legion, the Geth, and part of EDI in ME2 and had a different vision for them than what they went in ME3. He also had this anecdote about some of the higher-ups at BioWare.

But Higher Paid decided that it would be cooler if Legion were obsessed with Shepard, and stalking him. That didn't make any sense to me -- to be obsessed, you have to have emotions. The geth's whole schtick is -- to paraphrase Legion -- "We do not experience (emotions), but we understand how (they) affect you." All I could do was downplay the required "obsession" as much as I could.

 

[HK-47]

This writer did say that the version of the Reapers that he hoped to see was the "post-Singularity evolution of organic races."

He also wrote Legion, the Geth, and part of EDI in ME2 and had a different vision for them than what they went in ME3. He also had this anecdote about some of the higher-ups at BioWare.

The conclusion to the Geth storyline in 3 was sad to see. I wanted to see their great super server station. ME2 Legion is one of the bright spots in the series.

 

[Machinehead]

This writer did say that the version of the Reapers that he hoped to see was the "post-Singularity evolution of organic races."

He also wrote Legion, the Geth, and part of EDI in ME2 and had a different vision for them than what they went in ME3. He also had this anecdote about some of the higher-ups at BioWare.

He wrote some of my favourite things in ME <3

 

[inky]

This writer did say that the version of the Reapers that he hoped to see was the "post-Singularity evolution of organic races."

He also wrote Legion, the Geth, and part of EDI in ME2 and had a different vision for them than what they went in ME3. He also had this anecdote about some of the higher-ups at BioWare.

That anecdote says a lot. Fuck internal consistency if it is cool.

The understanding of the Geth through Legion's dialogue was one of my favorite things in ME2. It was a little on the nose with the religious references, but they could explain the split (heretics) and how they reached consensus, while at the same time acknowledging himself as just Geth, a singular entity. And they could achieve all that, even introducing morality and ethics into their situation (the whole reprogramming them to "accept truth") without resorting to faux-existentialist nonsense that is left ambiguous for the sake of it.

After all, that was kind of the thing about Mass Effect's morality system. Sure, you could argue it was binary and simplistic, but it's an example of something in the game that actually manages to use that to its advantage. Where mechanically it is just a question of Paragon vs Renegade points, but you as a player get a bit more out of that. And the writing doesn't betray the simple Space Opera basis of the game.

 

[prag16]

Aside from some nitpicks in ThoseDeafMutes arguments that probably aren't worth, well, nitpicking, I agree with just about everything everybody has said regarding this "Reaper logic" discussion.

At the bare bare minimum, I think the fact that such a discussion is possible pretty much destroys ANY chance of credibility for the xzibit meme, which was essentially my only point to start with.

They didn't directly mention a singularity, but an existential threat to organic life is one of the popular proposed endgames, so that's what I thought of as soon as I heard Reaper logic for the first time. Maybe projecting this concept onto the situation helped me not hate it as much.

The ending choices (well, not synthesis; that one's utter nonsense) give some options, if you don't believe the Catalyst. If we think their logic is crap, and we think they're wrong, we have the option to say, "Okay, cool, I guess I kind of see what you're saying, but instead of being so rigid with this genocidal mandate, let's just monitor everything, and use the Reapers to make sure things go smoothly." It can be argued that there's a ton of hubris in taking this path, but it's an option. Then of course the option to just throw everything away and leave it to nature is there as well.

In terms of scifi villain motivations, the Reaper logic worked okay enough for me, personally.

 

[The Artisan]

I dunno about you, but to me it's painfully obvious Destroy was canon.

how so?

that would kinda contradict the recent tweet.

 

[NarcissisticJay]

Absolutely love the series.. Haven't played a minute of it since I beat the updated ending one time back in 2012. Apparently had an EMS high enough and picked Destroy so saw Shep's name not get engraved and him breathing in the rubble. Seemed like an fitting end. I sorta looked at it as a last ditch attempt by the AI to save itself / trick Sheppard into not completely destroying it by whatever means it had let at that point.

That was my whole outlook on it and sort of why I didn't totally lothe the ending. Keep in mind I've never seen any of the other endings nor played any of the DLC.

Other endings might be for the best as I'm not sure how I would feel about not destroying the Reapers.. And in my mind that has been the Canon ending for almost 3 years now.

Great thread.. Looks like I need to check out the DLC.

What's the best way? Dust off the 360, wait for a sale?

 

[Laughing Banana]

That was my whole outlook on it and sort of why I didn't totally lothe the ending. Keep in mind I've never seen any of the other endings nor played any of the DLC.

...Not even Javik?

....Or the CItadel?

On another note: I actually liked the whole London level, it managed to portray a desperate battle very well. In fact, everything about it was great (well except that weird turret sequence) before the appearance of that stupid AI.

Oh, the fact that the Reapers weren't going straight to the Citadel was always a sour note for me as well---completely contradicted EVERYTHING about Reapers tactics as told in Mass Effect 1.

 

[NarcissisticJay]

...Not even Javik?

....Or the CItadel?

No.. My Xbox died shortly after, was on to new games when I replaced it. Still have my save.. Is all the dlc accessible at any point in the game?

The two you mention the best? I need a remastered edition. Not sure what made me click this thread.. The excitement is coming back

 

[JohnnyFootball]

On another note: I actually liked the whole London level, it managed to portray a desperate battle very well. In fact, everything about it was great (well except that weird turret sequence) before the appearance of that stupid AI.

Is this a joke? That part of the game was a complete and utter disgrace. It had the worst level design in the entire mass effect series. Just a bunch of bland corridors....

 

[JohnnyFootball]

I have to say that its nice for EA to put the trilogy and ME3 on sale for dirt cheap, but its beyond maddening that the DLC wont go on sale.

 

[Laughing Banana]

Is this a joke? That part of the game was a complete and utter disgrace. It had the worst level design in the entire mass effect series. Just a bunch of bland corridors....

Hahaha, nah, not a joke.

I mean sure if it's viewed independently as a "just shooting gallery" then yeah, I can understand how people may dislike it.

But with all the story, the character farewells, the music, and the general atmosphere around the level, I thought it's a pretty good one.

No.. My Xbox died shortly after, was on to new games when I replaced it. Still have my save.. Is all the dlc accessible at any point in the game?

The two you mention the best? I need a remastered edition. Not sure what made me click this thread.. The excitement is coming back

Javik is a great character and the fact that Bioware blocked him beyond a paywall is really shameful. And yes, Citadel is the best DLC for ME3, many great fanservice and funny dialogue to be had, especially if you are a player that has followed the series from its very beginning. At least get those two, and Leviathan as well if you can.

I have to say that its nice for EA to put the trilogy and ME3 on sale for dirt cheap, but its beyond maddening that the DLC wont go on sale.

They did a while ago, and they went pretty cheap too.

 

[Kabouter]

Is this a joke? That part of the game was a complete and utter disgrace. It had the worst level design in the entire mass effect series. Just a bunch of bland corridors....

Yup agreed. And to be perfectly honest, I wasn't too amazed by the preceding Cerberus level either. Not to mention the effect created by having a several hour long section with virtually nothing but shooty bits.

 

[televator]

...Not even Javik?

....Or the CItadel?

On another note: I actually liked the whole London level, it managed to portray a desperate battle very well. In fact, everything about it was great (well except that weird turret sequence) before the appearance of that stupid AI.

Oh, the fact that the Reapers weren't going straight to the Citadel was always a sour note for me as well---completely contradicted EVERYTHING about Reapers tactics as told in Mass Effect 1.

Hah! Another point that casts doubt on Reaper forethought. Couldn't think to go for the keystone base for all galactic races from the start... Oh yeah these guys totally know what the future will be like between synths and organics.

 

[AlStrong]

I'd be curious to see a galaxy/situation where synthetics simply win and there was no preservation of organics. Although maybe it'd just lead nowhere - geth megastructure utopia.

...or pure energy life (the next step)? Creation of stars (anti-dark energy which blows up stars)! Which leads to rise of organics on planets, which leads to synthetics, which leads to pure energy life, which leads to stars, which leads to...

...bed time.

 

[scoobs]

Having just finished Dragon Age Inquisition, I could not help but think how awesome the new Mass Effect might be. Please be awesome.

 

[wolfhowwl]

Is this a joke? That part of the game was a complete and utter disgrace. It had the worst level design in the entire mass effect series. Just a bunch of bland corridors....

The worst thing is that it is just another bombed-out city that we all spent the seventh generation fighting through over and over again. There's nothing "Mass Effect" about London or an Earth that we never saw before.

I think it's an obvious idea to book-end the trilogy with another final battle on the Citadel. Sure the resolution occurs there but only after a boring slog that feels like it exists just to shoehorn Earth into the game for reasons.

 

[Hyperzephyrian]

I liked the London level. It wasn't significantly more linear than the rest of the game, or at least not enough for me to notice. Sure, I've played in plenty of bombed-out cities over the years, but not in Mass Effect. It was horrible, overrun with endless numbers of indoctrinated Reaper slaves, and black with ash and death; but that itself is unusual for the series, so I thought it was very effective.

 

[BouncyFrag]

The worst thing is that it is just another bombed-out city that we all spent the seventh generation fighting through over and over again. There's nothing "Mass Effect" about London or an Earth that we never saw before.

I think it's an obvious idea to book-end the trilogy with another final battle on the Citadel. Sure the resolution occurs there but only after a boring slog that feels like it exists just to shoehorn Earth into the game for reasons.

In the final push, I was hoping we could call in support from the various groups we had recruited just as we could in Dragon Age: Origins. Imagine the satisfaction of seeing a squad of Geth Prime's falling from orbit to aid in the battle or having Grunt and Wrex entering the fray with their Krogan brothers charging in behind them right when you are about to get overrun. Hearing "I AM KROGAN!" from Grunt in an epic cut-scene would have been incredible.

 

[DagnastyEp]

Mass Effect 3 came out 3 years ago today. Looking back, it was probably the most hyped I've ever been for a game. Especially after the phenomenal demo; I probably put over 20 hours into the demo MP alone, and played the story mission at least 3 times. I know for many others, ME3 was a disappointment - especially the ending, but I loved it.

Damn I can't wait for ME4.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

I liked the London level. It wasn't significantly more linear than the rest of the game, or at least not enough for me to notice. Sure, I've played in plenty of bombed-out cities over the years, but not in Mass Effect. It was horrible, overrun with endless numbers of indoctrinated Reaper slaves, and black with ash and death; but that itself is unusual for the series, so I thought it was very effective.

To me that entire part was the epitome of rushed and copy and paste crap.

Yes, other parts of the game and the series have been linear, but that is the one part where they needed to really make things stand out and it went in the opposite direction.

As I've said before, pretty much the entire third act of the game was crap. The gameplay basically devolved into a Gears of War cover based shooter.

 

[AlStrong]

Especially after the phenomenal demo; I probably put over 20 hours into the demo MP alone

I was just another one of those skeptical about the MP, and didn't give it a try until after I beat the game.

According to my stats, I've put in around 400 hours for just that mode alone. >_> Stopped playing before they added a ton of weapons/gears/characters though.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

They did a while ago, and they went pretty cheap too.

I guarantee you the DLC has never been on sale on PC. I was referring to the sale on Origin. Its a common source of frustration with PC fans.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

But with all the story, the character farewells, the music, and the general atmosphere around the level, I thought it's a pretty good one.

The character farewells were touching, but they were so lazily thrown in there. Those farewells didn't get anywhere close to what they deserved.

The Citadel fixed that.

 

[Bisnic]

It would be nice if Aaryn could chime in for the whole "ME3 was too much shooting, not enough everything else" to reassure people that we're not gonna get a game too similar to ME3 when it comes to "too much shooting" gameplay.

Aaryn, what can we expect with the next ME? Something more in line with ME1 or ME2 when it comes to how much "shooting", exploration and just walking around cities we'll do? Maybe even cooler stuff that you're not allowed to tell yet?

 

[Hyperzephyrian]

It would be nice if Aaryn could chime in for the whole "ME3 was too much shooting, not enough everything else"

Eh. I really don't think it was too shooter-focused, at least not compared to ME2. The weight system put powers and guns on a more even footing; not completely even, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I'd be more interested in a return of separate cooldowns, though I don't really expect that.

 

[Mindlog]

Either we get new info soon or it's time to start posting fanart.
It will be tasteful.
At first.

 

[RagingPhoenix]

Either we get new info soon or it's time to start posting fanart.
It will be tasteful.
At first.

Doubt we'll get any before E3. There though I expect all floodgates to be opened now we have DA:I out of the way.

 

[RagingPhoenix]

Is this a joke? That part of the game was a complete and utter disgrace. It had the worst level design in the entire mass effect series. Just a bunch of bland corridors....

The whole 'priority earth' was a joke, I expected much after what we were given with suicide mission in ME2. SO MUCH potential wasted there its a shame.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

The whole 'priority earth' was a joke, I expected much after what we were given with suicide mission in ME2. SO MUCH potential wasted there its a shame.

As I said before the game fell off a cliff in its entire third act.

 

[Ascenion]

how so?

that would kinda contradict the recent tweet.

What recent tweet?

 

[Ralemont]

What recent tweet?

Mike Gamble has been saying since the EC, and reconfirmed recently with a tweet, that there's no canon ending to ME3.

 

[Ascenion]

Mike Gamble has been saying since the EC, and reconfirmed recently with a tweet, that there's no canon ending to ME3.

I'm kinda behind in the thread then I guess. I do remember him mentioning that. That seems like it is going to bite them in the ass later. I still wonder why they made distinctively different endings for 3 vs. the variations of the same ending used in the other 2 games.

 

[Hyperzephyrian]

I still wonder why they made distinctively different endings for 3 vs. the variations of the same ending used in the other 2 games.

Because they

Spoiler

thought, at the time, that they

didn't have to worry about those choices being manageable in the future, since it was the end of the series. And because because people had previously (and rightly) criticized them for providing only shallow consequences for many choices.