DTKT

@babblinmule: @babblinmule said:

@Lord_Punch: I guess its because the original rulers of the galaxy created an army of synthetics so fecked up in the head and so powerful that they didnt want to even risk anything like that happening again. Especially since, right or wrong, they believed that organic life will inevitably create something so fecked up in the head and so powerful.

That's still a terrible logic. And really, the only thing they say is that Synthetics always end up revolting and killing organics. That's it.

Sounds like the good old MMO recipe with a TES shrink wrap.

:sob:

The game just ends up being a clusterfuck when 3 teams engage in the middle of the map. Healers are absolutely overpowered. A team with at least one healer will almost always come out on top.

Basically, the game comes down to CC spam + heal spam. And that'S how you win.

@sully said:

I have nothing against her or her performance, but she "wore" a low-cut top in the game, the camera focused on her ass a couple of times as she walked in/out of shots, and you can have sex with her in the game. How surprised can she be about how her role would be seen by gamers?

I doubt she had anything to do with that. I think she just provided the voice work. Bioware was left with the anims. They probably reuse a lot of stuff from Miranda.

That ending bit is a small nugget for people with a high enough EMS.

tl:dr IT DOESNT MATTER AND IT'S IRRELEVANT.

Shepard story is over. Mass Effect is trilogy and the fact that Shepard is alive or dead is 100% useless.

The indoctrination theory is hilarious. Bioware made an ending as bad that fans created an alternate reality where the "bad" was just a screen for another reality.

Bravo.

@Diachron said:

@JasonGeorge said:

@Diachron said:

Well I pushed to the end faster than I would have normally because I didn't think I'd be able to remain spoiler free much longer.

And now that it's over.. I have to say-- I was fine with the end. In fact, the more I mull it over, the more I like it.

I'll never know to what extent I've been swayed by the sheer force of the hype (expecting the worst). It's also true that I tend to be pretty forgiving of endings in general (the less explicitly they're written, then more room I have to make up my own resolutions).

I guess I shouldn't say this out loud-- I may be lynched! ;^)

Nope I'm glad you liked the ending, I didn't, though I suspect I hated it less than most people. But kudos to you for not calling people entitled, crybabies, or whiners for expressing their opinion.

Just the opposite-- I can see where much of the heat is coming from. And now that I'm finally free to read all the details, I can dive into the counter-arguments to the ending. There's a lot of good points made that I hope don't get lost in general rage.

For my own part, what I like about the end is the room it gives me to connect my own dots, and to leave certain dots unconnected. I often feel boxed in by neat resolutions, and I think the attempted scale of the ending is appropriate to the vast scale of the life/death cycles in the game itself.

What I can't imagine however, is that BioWare thought that an ending this abstract would be popular. I'm very curious to see where this all goes.

The issue is that the abstract part of the ending is one of the dumbest thing I've ever seen. It's pseudo "high-minded", it's not well presented and it doesn't make any sense.

And we're back to the entitled thing.

And the "happy ending" stuff. The entire coverage of this has been truly one of the lowest point of the press.

You guys should be ashamed.

@The_Nubster said:

@DTKT said:

But you bring up a good point that there is tons of criticism that does indeed belong inside a review. I think I've come around and agree with you there. So, then let me pose a final question to you and let you have the last word. Are there criticisms that are fair for a review and some that should be directed outside of a review? Is it fair to criticize a game for not being something it isn't trying to be, such as non-linear? Or are all criticisms always fair since, they are by their very nature, a matter of opinion?

To a point, yes. If ME3 is a linear experience and it actually hurts the quality of the experience, then it should be mentioned in the review. The gaming landscape is constantly shifting. Even more so when you have blockbuster games like Skyrim coming out. You bet that ME3 is going to be compared to Skyrim. It might even suffer from the lack of any real exploration or the fact that it's a more linear experience than skyrim.

And that's totally fair by my standards. You cant review games in a vacuum, it's simply not possible.

That's dumb to say. I don't know how else to phrase it, but that's dumb. To compare two games isn't wrong, in itself, and it makes a lot of sense sometimes. With the smattering of FPS games coming out, it makes sense to compare Battlefield 3 and MW3. Even if they're not enitrely the same offering, they have similar mechanics and are worth comparing and contrasting in terms of their design, their feel and the overall value of the package. They exist in the same bubble: modern first-person shooters with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer.

However, to compare two totally separate games and write it off as 'acceptable'? To compare a third-person sci-fi action/RPG driven by story with a primarily first-person RPG set in a fantasy sandbox? The games are not trying to be similar; Mass Effect isn't trying to ride on the coattail of Skyrim, or even attempting to compete in the same space as it. Mass Effect is being aimed at an entirely different audience.

In a review, if a reviewer states that Mass Effect 3 sucks because it isn't as open as Skyrim, the skills don't progress the same as Skyrim, there are no fucking dragons like in Skyrim, that's a review that you should not listen to. If two games that are trying to accomplish two different things are put side-by-side in a review, then that means that the reviewer is playing the wrong game. You can't compare Mass Effect and Skyrim the same way you can't compare Sudoku and a Rubik's Cube. They have similar elements and, when boiled down, can both be classified as the same thing, but they're not being marketed to the same group. Sudoku is a number puzzle and a Rubik's Cube is a spatial/colour puzzle, just as Skyrim and Mass effect, while both RPGs, cater to wholly different audiences. As a fan of both Skyrim and Mass Effect, I do not to go Skyrim to form a crew to whom I become emotionally attached to, and I don't go to Mass Effect to wander around for hours and work on my stealth skill.

To even suggest that Mass Effect is going to be, or should be, compared to Skyrim is brainless. You can't compare games just because one game did new things that push the genre forward, because the other game might not benefit at all from including those things. It doesn't make sense, and it shouldn't happen without solid reasoning.

Damn, you jumped on that hard.

Expectations always change. That's what I meant to say. If the Skyrim comes out and is amazing, ME3 is bound to be seen in a different way. You are right, it might not be "fair" nor even a valid comparison, but it will happen.

But you bring up a good point that there is tons of criticism that does indeed belong inside a review. I think I've come around and agree with you there. So, then let me pose a final question to you and let you have the last word. Are there criticisms that are fair for a review and some that should be directed outside of a review? Is it fair to criticize a game for not being something it isn't trying to be, such as non-linear? Or are all criticisms always fair since, they are by their very nature, a matter of opinion?

To a point, yes. If ME3 is a linear experience and it actually hurts the quality of the experience, then it should be mentioned in the review. The gaming landscape is constantly shifting. Even more so when you have blockbuster games like Skyrim coming out. You bet that ME3 is going to be compared to Skyrim. It might even suffer from the lack of any real exploration or the fact that it's a more linear experience than skyrim.

And that's totally fair by my standards. You cant review games in a vacuum, it's simply not possible.

Then, there is the fact that the situation with gaming "reviews" is really messed up. When scores matter for bonuses and when money is involved, I see no easy way out. And really, that's why I would never really expect a developer to be 100% fine with reviews. It's really hard to not care when part of your paycheck depends on the score given by a bunch of humans.

And really, great story Patrick. That's why I love GiantBomb.