retrovirus

Despite being a game that failed its landing spectacularly, the journey of the main story in ME 3 for the most part conveys the tone of having to fight a seemingly one-sided, impossible war well. There's a large combat memorial wall newly installed in the Normandy that you see every time you go down to the lower deck, listing all the names of your dead crew members, and it's impossible to ignore while exiting the elevator to the lower decks with the camera angle they give you, and you walk by it all the time throughout the game.

After the Rannoch mission ending in peace between Geth and Quarian, Legion sacrificed itself to provide the Geth with upgrades against the Reapers, and I was sad to see it go. But coming back to the Normandy and seeing "Legion" on the wall; this literal collective of programs that had become so much more be recognized as an individual who fought and died to defeat the Reapers, I cried my eyes out. That memorial was never going to change and the name will remain there for all time, and whenever I had to walk past it to perform other gameplay functions I felt a pang of sadness. The natural framing of the camera forcing you to contend with this constant reminder of loss did a great job of achieving the tone they wanted.