@l1ama: Mass Effect exists in a universe where people are capable of fabricating things from magic hologram wristbands. We're not getting into the minutiae of "do the warships containing troops stock enough food for its inhabitants".
It's like arguing about the logistics of Star Wars or Star Trek, you can theorycraft all you like in any direction.
The one thing that will never baffle me more is the idea that people somehow crunched imaginary numbers and ran with the assumption that the destruction of the mass relays would lead to everyone dying out or something.
Mass Effect as a series has never bothered with such granularity in its soft science and to suddenly do so for the ending in particular I think is just absurd
The ending as is, is goofy but fine, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the precedent that the Gamer Discourse blowblack set in 2012 has reverberated throughout time to the point we're at now in 2020 - where militant fanbases take personal 'ownership' of videogames in a more literal sense than the marketing actually means.
I'd almost consider sacrificing the Extended Cut from existence if it meant never having to deal with that shit in an alternate timeline. All of Mass Effect 3's other plot resolutions are such a remarkable achievement anyway the game is excellent enough regardless of the ending, I think.
There's a few scenes in Citadel DLC where Mark Meer's more deadpan performance actually works out pretty well in his favour. My favorite is his interaction with Kaiden where he really comes off as just trolling the absolute shit out of his Canadian buddy, his flat line delivery is pitch perfect.
It also helps that the bespoke animations they pulled out for this scene really give the banter a lot of character
I'm sad Alex didn't get to witness Wrex and Grunt at their best though
My only hope before I actually watch this that at the very least he starts with a quiet start and gets to sit down with Wrex and Grunt for maximum meme
If you're looking for a good time with a sedate experience and have Game Pass, this game is an absolute no-brainer. Tonally it has this really incredible marriage between cozy whimsy and heavier themes (family, regret, death and loss etc.) that remind me a lot of a Miyazaki or Hosoda production. (The music also really helps in this regard)
This is very much 100% a session game though - couple hours at a time, I would not expect people to stay engaged for long enough to constantly binge this. The narrative just has too much down-time for that to be reasonable.
This game is a dumpster fire when played solo since it feels like the enemy numbers and health don't really scale - so battles take twice as long if you're going it alone.
Grab one couch co-op buddy though, and if both players get a handle on the tagging and reviving system the game really, really sings. Tagging out a toad lands right on top of the downed toad (which you can then revive to half health) so as long as both players aren't knocked out at the same time you won't trigger a team wipe while players rotate toads, which goes a long way in improving the pace of the game itself (which already has generous checkpointing for brawling sections).
I actually really like the combat system because of how loosey-goosey it is, with its infinite omnidirectional dashing, omnidirectional grappling etc. and just smaller things, like how you don't have to wait a whole-ass second for enemies to get back up to continue your combo like you have to for other brawler games. I think if people go into this combat system playing it the same way they would other beat-em-ups they're going to get extremely frustrated like Jason seems to be. (To wit, some have pointed out how the brawling kind of evokes Devil May Cry)
I think the aesthetic and humour are definitely going to be polarizing. Its storytelling gets pretty viciously self-deprecating and it does emulate the modern Saturday morning cartoon look to a tee. When the game fills up the screen with tons of enemies, it does have a legitimate readability issue because of how lavish the art and animation is. I think the idea that this is somehow an irredeemably bad game is a bit unfair though, to be honest - it has a very elaborate, deliberate design (that the developers obviously in put a lot of care and attention to detail) which is going to resonate strongly with some players and completely turn off others.
One example that I can bring to mind immediately is that in the hacking minigames are actually pretty elegant and engage both players in light puzzle-solving, timing and coordination, but players could very easily be turned off by how it brings the pace of the stage progression to a grinding halt.
I don't give a two shits about the tonal dissonance and the Whedon script (though I do rate Citadel below Shadow Broker) because this was the last piece of work ever done on this trilogy and by god I'm going to let the writers have fun with all these beloved characters.
bludgeonParagon's comments