There were a lot of high points story and mission-wise in the game. Mordin and the Krogans. The whole Quarian/Geth conflict and the mission inside the Geth Collective. Even what I'd consider the mid-tier story missions were pretty good. You had great moments with the Asari, Jack, Grunt, the Rachni, Garrus, Samara, and pretty much every other major character. Even the new characters were well done. You resolved the major plotlines and conflicts that were set up over the previous two games in a satisfying way. It was everything I could have expected.

But everything involving Earth - the opening mission, and especially the final mission - was a let down. A visually impressive let down, but a let down nonetheless. Compare ME3's final mission to ME2's final mission - in ME2 you flew in and saw all the consequences of your choices and preparation play out, you led your entire team into the mission and made strategic life or death choices. While the final boss was a little stupid, you got closure with the Collectors, the Collector base, and the Illusive Man, making choices that affected the start of ME3. The entirety of the final mission in ME2 was one of my favorite gaming moments in a long time.

Here, you go on the mission and watch a cool space battle take place without your help, where there's no evidence that any of your decisions mattered, go on an action mission, say your goodbyes to everyone, and then go on a corridor crawl culminating in the final boss battle - five Brutes and three Banshees! For each of these pivotal final battles for all the universe you pick two crew members and tell the rest to chill, same as always. And that's all before the much maligned ending. No character choice and no real influence from previous decisions. It was somewhat entertaining, but in a Call of Duty spectacle way, not in a Mass Effect way. As if to remind you of this, there was even another pointless turret shooting sequence in the middle of you saying your goodbyes.

Maybe I was expecting too much - but where were the choice and hard decisions? Where was Shepard leading his arrayed forces into battle? Shepard played a comparatively small role in this overall battle, and becomes nothing more than a really good grunt troop in the end of the day. After spending hours resolving centuries old galatic racial strife, uniting the races, and leading troops, he ends by running a couple of standard missions that could have been done by any other random people. There was at least some emotional closure with characters, but almost no actual interaction and the hallmarks of what make Mass Effect great.

And then the ending happened and gave a giant crotch kick to the universe, logic, and everything you've done in the series up to that point. Spent the entire game uniting races and overcoming division to battle a common foe? Nah, that's not true, synthetics and organics will always kill each other, Reapers are here to protect you by exterminating you, and don't question it. Now make one of three arbitrary, contextless choices, and we won't even show you what happens as a result. Oh, and your choices are affected by your EMS for unknown reasons. I really need a big fleet here to synthesize everyone. Now watch these explosions and condemn the entire army you gathered to a slow death from starvation in the Sol system! Ugh. I hope the indoctrination theory is true if only because I respect Bioware too much to have the ending as is be true.

There were a lot of high points story and mission-wise in the game. Mordin and the Krogans. The whole Quarian/Geth conflict and the mission inside the Geth Collective. Even what I'd consider the mid-tier story missions were pretty good. You had great moments with the Asari, Jack, Grunt, the Rachni, Garrus, Samara, and pretty much every other major character. Even the new characters were well done. You resolved the major plotlines and conflicts that were set up over the previous two games in a satisfying way. It was everything I could have expected.

But everything involving Earth - the opening mission, and especially the final mission - was a let down. A visually impressive let down, but a let down nonetheless. Compare ME3's final mission to ME2's final mission - in ME2 you flew in and saw all the consequences of your choices and preparation play out, you led your entire team into the mission and made strategic life or death choices. While the final boss was a little stupid, you got closure with the Collectors, the Collector base, and the Illusive Man, making choices that affected the start of ME3. The entirety of the final mission in ME2 was one of my favorite gaming moments in a long time.

Here, you go on the mission and watch a cool space battle take place without your help, where there's no evidence that any of your decisions mattered, go on an action mission, say your goodbyes to everyone, and then go on a corridor crawl culminating in the final boss battle - five Brutes and three Banshees! For each of these pivotal final battles for all the universe you pick two crew members and tell the rest to chill, same as always. And that's all before the much maligned ending. No character choice and no real influence from previous decisions. It was somewhat entertaining, but in a Call of Duty spectacle way, not in a Mass Effect way. As if to remind you of this, there was even another pointless turret shooting sequence in the middle of you saying your goodbyes.

Maybe I was expecting too much - but where were the choice and hard decisions? Where was Shepard leading his arrayed forces into battle? Shepard played a comparatively small role in this overall battle, and becomes nothing more than a really good grunt troop in the end of the day. After spending hours resolving centuries old galatic racial strife, uniting the races, and leading troops, he ends by running a couple of standard missions that could have been done by any other random people. There was at least some emotional closure with characters, but almost no actual interaction and the hallmarks of what make Mass Effect great.

And then the ending happened and gave a giant crotch kick to the universe, logic, and everything you've done in the series up to that point. Spent the entire game uniting races and overcoming division to battle a common foe? Nah, that's not true, synthetics and organics will always kill each other, Reapers are here to protect you by exterminating you, and don't question it. Now make one of three arbitrary, contextless choices, and we won't even show you what happens as a result. Oh, and your choices are affected by your EMS for unknown reasons. I really need a big fleet here to synthesize everyone. Now watch these explosions and condemn the entire army you gathered to a slow death from starvation in the Sol system! Ugh. I hope the indoctrination theory is true if only because I respect Bioware too much to have the ending as is be true.

Pretty much. I mean, gameplay wise it's not widely different from any of the games. It's just that in Mass Effect 1 and 2, you saw shit happening during the final mission. In ME2 particularly, you saw your decisions actively playout in cutscenes during the final mission.

In Mass Effect 3, the only acknowledgement of your choices during the final mission is a fleet check-in. And I suppose who you can talk to at the end is the result of choices-made, but it's not as direct a reflection.

I agree 100%. I was expecting to see the benefits of uniting the galaxy. Instead all i got was more shooting with Shepard. I wanted to it feel like a gigantic battle. I was expecting something huge because of the whole galactic readiness system, it meant nothing at all in the end.

Yea the last hour was pretty dissappointing really. The last missions in ME1 and ME2 were far superior. It is a real shame that the ending couldn't live up to what has been one of my favourite game series ever.

Also, I really dunno how this DLC they are planning is gonna fix the ending because in my opnion they would have to change a whole lot to get the fan's approval.

Sort of wish it was like Mass Effect 2, where you setup squads to retake earth in a suicide type of mission and whoever you select really matters in whether they live or die... but that didn't happen... just one long combat sequence.  Yeah it wasn't  the best mission in the world. 

I didn't mind the last mission, I think I was far too amused that red telephone boxes had survived that far into the future.

@GunstarRed: Also that they were made for humans approximately twice the size of Shepard.

@GunstarRed said:

I didn't mind the last mission, I think I was far too amused that red telephone boxes had survived that far into the future.

How else would you know if you were in England?

Ill agree to an extent though I loved that whole "last goodbyes" and it was easily one of my favorite moments in the entire game because I was rather impressed with just how well they pulled the emotional elements off and made me give a damn. I just hated the actual mission part since all those brutes and banshees were such a pain in the ass to me. I hit a peak where I didnt wanna deal with them anymore and just ran to hit the button to trigger the cutscene.

The biggest problem I had with it was the pacing. It just stops while Shepard goes around talking to everyone, and during the middle of that there's a totally unnecessary and boring turret sequence. And it seemed a little silly that everyone was either there or next to a machine that could do a full body scan and transmit a hologram of it to Shepard (and that the dude operating it knew who Shepard meant each time, even though he just said stuff like "Jack"), but that's nitpicking.

It was a bad mission, and I'd go so far as to say it's worse than the ending itself. Shooting waves of enemies while "protecting" some missiles is poor design. Even from a Call of Duty perspective, it was a bad mission.

@GunstarRed said:

I didn't mind the last mission, I think I was far too amused that red telephone boxes had survived that far into the future.

Or that everything else was grey. They stuck out like a sore fucking thumb.

Anyway, on the final mission I do indeed agree. I've said it before and damn it, I'll say it again: It would have been so much better if the Crucible were chopped out of the picture altogether and the ending revolved around Shephard alternating between commanding different groups of different ground troops and actual fighting, and the finale was a massive set piece/boss fight where you had to kill Harbinger. In a spectacular way, of course, with the possibility of several different armies sacrificing themselves (depending on who you agreed with and what you did earlier in the game) in order to give Shephard the chance he needs.

Really it just needed the same choice system from ME2. Pick which races you want doing what from each thing. Chose a fleet to protect the crucible, one to attack the reapers, one to offer support for you on earth. Choose which races are fighting on the ground, which races are doing something like preparing the missiles, etc.

Each could have benefits and negatives. For example, if you put a better fleet to protect the crucible, you'll take more fleet losses, but you'll access it faster and save more earth lives. You can choose the krogans or rachni or whatever to help you attack an area, and they'll be there with you, but there might be repercussions, IE more losses because they weren't able to attack AA batteries.

Things like that. It had a lot of potential, could have been amazing, but instead it was just decent. I didn't hate it like some people, I thought the visuals were spectacular, but yeah, it could have been way better. This game really could have been something else if it had another 6 months of dev time.

I loved the final mission.

@dekkadekkadekka said:

@GunstarRed: Also that they were made for humans approximately twice the size of Shepard.

You know, for all those Elcor visiting London.

@MooseyMcMan said:

The biggest problem I had with it was the pacing. It just stops while Shepard goes around talking to everyone, and during the middle of that there's a totally unnecessary and boring turret sequence. And it seemed a little silly that everyone was either there or next to a machine that could do a full body scan and transmit a hologram of it to Shepard (and that the dude operating it knew who Shepard meant each time, even though he just said stuff like "Jack"), but that's nitpicking.

It was a bad mission, and I'd go so far as to say it's worse than the ending itself. Shooting waves of enemies while "protecting" some missiles is poor design. Even from a Call of Duty perspective, it was a bad mission.

I'll agree with this as well. The turret sequence was the most jarring thing I've seen. Turret sequences by their nature are pointless murder. Putting it in the middle of a scene that otherwise goes for an emotional connection with all the characters left in the series is just strange. I saw what they were going for in trying to get closure with the characters there (instead of in the ending), but it largely didn't work since everyone was expecting that closure post-Reaper battle. And yeah, the battles were just frustrating, not entertaining, and not well designed.

@believer258 said:

Or that everything else was grey. They stuck out like a sore fucking thumb.

Anyway, on the final mission I do indeed agree. I've said it before and damn it, I'll say it again: It would have been so much better if the Crucible were chopped out of the picture altogether and the ending revolved around Shephard alternating between commanding different groups of different ground troops and actual fighting, and the finale was a massive set piece/boss fight where you had to kill Harbinger. In a spectacular way, of course, with the possibility of several different armies sacrificing themselves (depending on who you agreed with and what you did earlier in the game) in order to give Shephard the chance he needs.

I think that was what I was expecting as well. You gather your forces and decide how to use them. Entire armies and their characters are destroyed or sacrificed, possibly again changing the entire power balance of the galaxy post-Reapers. You manage your party characters and can lose them depending on your decisions and what happens. That's what it was building to. Instead it was space battle cutscene, some of the worst combat missions in the game, and no decisions or real plot until the miserable ending.

Practically every mission in the game was just corridor shooting. 2 was similar but it mixed it up a little.

3 was mediocre from the get go and a step down from Mass Effect 2 in every area, even the planet scanning. (somehow!)

@Sooty said:

Practically every mission in the game was just corridor shooting. 2 was similar but it mixed it up a little.

3 was mediocre from the get go and a step down from Mass Effect 2 in every area, even the planet scanning. (somehow!)

I'd agree there was lots of corridor shooting, but the rest of the missions had plot points, interesting environments, and better combat. This lacked all of it. It was grey, combat filled, and nothing happened. You heard people on the radio talking about getting wiped out and beaten by the Reapers.

But you know what sucks? Hearing about things on the radio instead of seeing it or taking part in the battle. Instead it was you and your two team members engaged in your own solitary battles, same as always.

While I agree with everyone, the rocket launcher defense part of the final hour was the only combat scenario that I found in any way challenging in the entire game.

But that's really grasping and not really what I was onboard for in the first place.

Yeah, Earth kind of sucks. The tone of the beginning and end of the game resembled Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. Mass Effect isn't about humanity - we're the boring conduit to the interesting universe, the watson to the Sherlock of the universe.