Would people really have liked this game if the ending had been better?

I took Brad's advice and bought Leviathan and From Ashes and started playing one of my two characters and have hated almost everything about it. My biggest problem now is that ever since the downloads completed I can't start the damn game. It won't even let me play without signing into Origin, which I don't want to do because I don't even have XBOX Live right now. It won't even let me play it.

SO far, I have only just gotten into the real meat of the game after the tutorial stuff and have done most of the Turian Homeworld Mission. I think the level design for the combat areas here is terrible. I see from looking around the boards that this is because most of these areas were designed for multiplayer first, then shoehorned into the singleplayer game. That sucks. Originally I didn't care that they were adding multiplayer to a trilogy I've been perfectly fine playing in single player, but now it seems like having it there really does have a negative impact on this game.

Also the terrible Jessica Chobot model and character. WTF? I don't even have a problem with Chobot, but I don't understand what this character is doing here. Is there some large group of fans somewhere that want this? Please, no more "celebrity" cameos in my fantasy games. ever.

And the Citadel was pretty disappointing. I know there's a war going on and it doesn't make much sense to run around shopping and going to nightclubs, but couldn't a game with this many disks have a slightly larger environment for such an important location? I guess that's probably got something to do with multiplayer as well.

My real problem though is that I only ever get two dialogue options for anything other than information gathering and it's either the touchy-feely paragon option or the heartless renegade option. I've played this character as a paragon in the two other games and not everything I said to people was "I understand your feelings...", but in this game if I want to sound like a professional commander, I end up with instant Renegade points.

If I can ever get back in, I might play more to see if the game ever redeems itself, but so far I'm not impressed.

TLDR: who cares about plot holes and Deus Ex Machina endings? The game itself sucks.

Welcome to the woes of Bioware's wholesale adoption of 'the dialogue wheel.' :(

@oraknabo said:

TLDR: who cares about plot holes and Deus Ex Machina endings? The game itself sucks.

THANK YOU.

I finished ME3 last night. I had no problem with the ending and I enjoyed the game for the combat gameplay.

I don't understand your position, as I witnessed neither a poor ending or shit gameplay.

The citadel is pretty big. It has 5 levels, including several shops and a night club. Maybe you missed it.

The chobot thing was whatever.

The only missions that were "designed for multiplayer" are the N7 missions. Everything else is single player only.

@project343 said:

Welcome to the woes of Bioware's wholesale adoption of 'the dialogue wheel.' :(

The...same one they've been using since the first Mass Effect?

@project343 said:

Welcome to the woes of Bioware's wholesale adoption of 'the dialogue wheel.' :(

there's nothing inherently wrong with the dialogue wheel. the first ME used it perfectly. they give you the freedom to ask tons of questions via the 'investigate' option, and all without having to hear them repeat a dialogue choice that you've already finished reading (like with traditional chosen-dialogue systems). it was ingenious... but only for the one game. then again ME begins and ends at ME1 for me... so i'm biased.

@Undeadpool: I think he means the one they've used since Baldur's Gate, except they made it round instead of a list.

Game was bad, had a better time with multiplayer

I like the game so yeah.

Do we really need to being this up yet again?
Where were you a year ago!

The game definitely has its fair share of issues besides the ending. 

@oraknabo said:

"Would people really have liked this game if the ending had been better?"

"SO far, I have only just gotten into the real meat of the game after the tutorial stuff and have done most of the Turian Homeworld Mission. I think the level design for the combat areas here is terrible. I see from looking around the boards that this is because most of these areas were designed for multiplayer first, then shoehorned into the singleplayer game. That sucks. Originally I didn't care that they were adding multiplayer to a trilogy I've been perfectly fine playing in single player, but now it seems like having it there really does have a negative impact on this game."

"TLDR: who cares about plot holes and Deus Ex Machina endings? The game itself sucks."

Correct on all points... also no side quests. Stripping down of choices in the dialog. Trying to humanize a character that I spent 2 games building only proved to make him seem like an entirely different person from "My Shepard".

There are one or two great moments if you play renegade..but ultimately a grade C sequel to an A+ franchise...

@Canteu said:

The citadel is pretty big. It has 5 levels, including several shops and a night club. Maybe you missed it.

What?! There are some things this game does better than Mass Effect 2 (and 1), but the exploration and "town" parts are definitely not better.

The citadel has devolved into a set of corridors with a couple of people to talk to, the important (quest related) people are almost always at the end of said corridors, therefore you must slog trough the same corridor time and time again if you want to do everything in the game. It gets old really fast. The whole citadel was only fun the first time I got there, by the second time I felt like I had already seen everything, despite having not fully "explored" the place.

As others have said before me, there are a lot of things wrong with ME3, not just the ending. Not a bad game by any stretch (people who think it´s bad should probably take some time off from gaming) but it´s not excellent either. I enjoyed bits and pieces of it, but not the whole experience like I did with ME2.

@Undeadpool: @development: There is absolutely nothing wrong with the dialogue wheel as a more approachable way to manage dialogue choices. That said, ever since the dialogue wheel's adoption, Bioware has removed a lot of the nuance from their trees, and made everything incredibly predictable, safe and formulaic.

I preferred the gameplay and environments in 3 to ME2.

Yep, welcome to the disappointing world of ME3

@project343: I'm not so sure about that. Yeah, ME3 was a lot of Upper Right/Lower Right, but it was also the third game in a series and until someone pointed it out, I REALLY didn't miss the "neutral" options as I almost never used them in the first place. I feel like the "wheel" gets a lot more hate than it should because of DA2, even though the actual DIALOG was just as (if not a little more) nuanced, it just involved a lot less reading than in DA: O, which had PLENTY of, "Virtuous, Selfish, FUCKING EEEEEEEVIIIIIIIIIIIIL" dialog options itself.

@Superfriend: Did I say it was better? No.

I just said it was pretty big, and had things that the OP said it didn't.

I just finished the game last week and I wasn't totally disappointed in the gameplay as a whole or the ending. But, to me it seems like all of the issues laid out are also the same design choices that were made in Mass Effect 2. The whole series has evolved from exploring these huge planets in ME1 to just walking straight down the corridors provided to you in ME2 and 3.

My biggest problem was that all the characters seemed much shallower than the first 2 games, but maybe that is because you have already met them all before. This game is just way too focused on Shepard getting his job done, and there is just no significant time spent developing everyone else around him.

With all that said, I think ME1 is the best game in the series.

The level design isn't taken from the multiplayer. There are a few side missions, the N7 ones, that use multiplayer maps and that's it.

The Chobot thing is bad and pointless, though you can totally ignore her if you don't want to deal with her so it's not a big deal.

The Citadel does in fact have shops and a nightclub. I think that stuff opens up a little bit later.

@Superfriend: The Citadel in Mass Effect 2 was no better, it was basically a straight line and there was almost nothing to do there other than visit shops. Tuchanka was even worse. Omega was well done and Illium was pretty good but don't pretend that the Citadel has been anything other than shitty after the first game.

@Canteu said:

@Superfriend: Did I say it was better? No.

No, but you called the citadel in ME3 "pretty big". It´s not. Not at all.

@Superfriend: Kinda is.

But don't get me wrong. I loved walking slowly for minutes at a time doing absoloutly nothing between finding my quest givers in the first game.

And anyway, I'd rather have small, concentrated and populated areas, than huge, pointless and devoid of live areas. What's the point of padding my time with pointless eventless video game commuting? I do enough of that in real life.

If you have a problem with the overall cutback EA/Bioware made on the RPG and story elements of the game then no the DLC or new ending won't make it better for you.

For me personally i can overlook it while messing the old mass effect because in the end i was still enjoying the game. The ending even with the fixes still feel like they let a kindergarten class run wild in the story broad room when writing the ending. The DLC don't help much, only happy distractions that have shined some much needed light on some things. Also the story bits brad grow over is not all that, the reasoning behind the Leviathan DLC is still kinda of dumb.

@Canteu: Maybe they just haven't let me into those areas yet, but the parts they have let me into are really boring compared to the last 2 versions.

@Hizang: All I've heard all year was that the game was great except for the shitty ending. Brad says it's fine with Leviathan. I disagree.

While I agree that ME3 most certainly had a lot of issues besides its ending, I still found almost as much to like as well. As such, imma copypast my Pros and Cons list from that other thread to abbreviate what and why I liked/disliked!

Pros

• Great shooting and controls.

• Porting over your character from ME2 meant that you could start straight from where you left off, complete with all of your abilities and what level you're at. Better and more diverse set of abilities to learn as well.

• The entire Tuchanka mission was fantastic.

• The Quarian/Geth conflict was pretty good as well.

• I actually grew to really like Kaiden in this, especially because of how 'self aware' he became concerning how a lot of people didn't much care for him in the original game.

• I'm Garrus Vakarian and this is my favourite spot on the Citadel!

• I also liked how you'd see your party members dotted all over the ship, even talking with one another, and weren't simply delegated to their appointed cabins waiting there for Master Shepard's arrival.

• Lot of great moments with Liara, like when you're talking about that box containing all of your history.

• Soundtrack was a solid mix of tracks from across the entire series.

• Charging towards the Citadel while all of the soldiers and makos are being torn apart was incredibly thrilling.

• Multiplayer was pretty fun from what I played of it.

Cons

• I hated how Shepard's dialogue options were skimmed down to two, and not to mention how often Shepard was running on auto-pilot during so many cutscenes and conversations with your crew.

• For as much as I enjoyed the shooting, there was a bit too much of it overall. Not nearly enough diplomatic scenarios.

• James Vega, while not offensive/bad or anything, was still just such an incredibly boring character.

• Every new squad member introduced from ME2 couldn't join you. I could understand with certain characters like Thane and Mordin, but other such characters like Grunt, Jacob and Samara were all lazily pushed aside. And while I actually think EDI was an alright character, concerning how she tried to further understand and emphasise with humanity, she could have still very easily just been left on the ship and I would have much preferred one of the ME2 characters in her stead.

• The doling out of what few party members you have was too broad. For like the first half of the game you only have four, and Tali only joins in the third act.

• So many of your large-scale decisions didn't matter. Obviously they couldn't have accounted for all of your decisions, but stuff like whether the Council died or deciding on whether to destroy or keep the collector base -- didn't make a single iota of a difference. Plus anyone who died in prior games conveniently had a backup on the bench, except Garrus and Tali, which annoyed the Hell out of me because if they died in ME2, that's it, your squad of party members was then made to be even smaller.

• Sticking Javik behind DLC is horse shit.

• The original ending was of course a farcical bunch of nonsense, but what I disliked even more was how the actual Take Back Earth mission was made up of more rote arena combat. What is supposed to be the greatest battle in the history of ever was almost impressively made to feel like ''just another mission''. There was no sense of scale or anything like that.

• Those Gotta Fetch 'Em All quests they ported from DA2 were a damn travesty.

• Playing that silly cat and mouse game with the Reapers on the Galaxy Map was poorly implemented as well. Even the planet scanning in ME2 wasn't that bad.

I disagree, so whatever.

@Canteu:

No it's not big, by having that space you create a feeling of a 'world' where events happen in rather than a 'building' you go to get quests. The quest system in ME3 is dumb anyway, listen to folks and do stuff for them without even talking or engaging with the world. If I could program a controller to periodically run through every area automatically pressing X in the citadel (which wouldn't take overly long) I could dock at citadel come back 30 minutes later and that would count as questing.

I'm a fan of the list-style dialogue as opposed to wheel-style, with the wheel I feel things are more compounded and limited and it's not as good for me. in DA2 it's snarky, mean, good. In ME it's paragon or renegade simple. In DA1 your dialogue choices meant more and you wouldn't just decide 'I'm going to go to the top right/bottom right" for each dialogue choice to decide your character.

The dialogue wheel could even be good it, could have just as many options but it designed it to be "this half is your moral choice" "This entire half is investigation" it just feels so limiting. and dull.

I agree to some extent - there was some level design that was sort-of janky at times, they seemed a bit afraid to give some hints about what direction you're supposed to be going in at times. This also gave me several points during the game where I thought "Wait, what am I doing again?"

I didn't know or particularly care who Jessica Chobot is, but that character model was... a bit scary. She didn't look very healthy. But that's totally beside the point, it had no impact on my enjoyment of the game.

By and large, I thought the combat and action parts were just fine - it got a little long in the tooth by the end, but for the most part, I enjoyed it. The large selection of weapons, as well as the customization, was nice.

The fact that you entirely lacked a neutral answer sucked. I didn't care for that at all. Everything became very binary all of a sudden, and I felt forced to go down a certain path just to get my Renegade points. The push/pull Renegade/Paragon system did not work. If they want to do something like that again, they need to make a way different approach altogether. Forget randomly rewarding you with Paragon and Renegade points after conversation, give the player some choices instead, and let the dialogue be less guided by "moral" and rather by individual opinion. It's worked OK in the previous game, but this time it was just too much.

I had all the DLC, I thought Leviathan and From Ashes was great, but it's baffling that it wasn't in the main game. The closure it brought to the story was cool, giving an adequate explanation for everything that's happening, as well as the origin of the Reapers. I just wish more players had seen that stuff. Also, the explanation that Leviathan gives you about seeing the world through those orbs? That... was really stretching it, but whatever. The writers were probably in need of a 5-minute idea.

There was a smaller selection of characters you could bring along, but overall it was fine, I'd rather have fewer characters that are brought more to life during my missions, than a shitload of people that don't necessarily have anything worthwhile to say.

The whole "galactic readiness" thing was some weird bullshit, some sort of twisted incentive to make you use their peripheral games or multiplayer. No thanks. Regardless, I got the best ending, and it was... well, it was alright. I can see why people would think it's a bit dodgy, and it sort of is, but with the DLC, I felt like my questions about the Mass Effect universe had been answered to my satisfaction. I'd gotten a reasonable amount of payoff on me ME1+ME2 save, there were some details in there that related to minor choices, and some to major - other major choices were seemingly totally written off, and in the end, I imagine the difference between my playthrough with those save games, and a polar opposite savegame, would not be that different. Some changes in dialogue here and there.

Overall, I think Mass Effect 3 had astronomically high expectations, and could only do so much to deliver. The idea of what Mass Effect 3 should have been was probably far beyond the scope, budget and ability of any current developer, which is totally unfortunate, because it would be great to see a game with a thousand possible permutations and endings.

I don't think Mass Effect 3 was a bad game, by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn't what we had all hoped it would be, either. It wasn't really shockingly good either, but having been invested in the series, it was good enough that I generally had a good time playing it. As soon as I was finished, though, I had absolutely no desire to play a Mass Effect game ever again.

I have absolutely no problem with the game aside from the neutered dialogue that made the game nearly unplayable in some scenes due to my complete lack of control, and once I did have control the choices were either good or bad and you never knew what you were ACTUALLY going to say.

I do feel like I should point out Mordin's final mission, Tali and Legion's final scenes on Rannoch, and Grunt's actions in the Rachni cave are some of the best moments in ME history. Even if the game has flaws and was one of the lower points in the series, I wouldn't have had it any other way.

@Camoufrage: I'm sure there are good scenes, but I'd almost rather have them just finish the trilogy with a movie than a game. I played the first two games to play a "Guns + Conversation" game and now the conversation sucks. I can play any number of other games if I just want to shoot things and use powers.

@oraknabo: The conversation system is horrible now, I'll give you that much. Neutered to all hell. And yes, the combat isn't worth a damn in ME because no one cares how well you can shoot. Bioware seems to think so, though.

I disliked the game from top-to-bottom, the whole thing felt like a chore. Also, the crowds in the citadel had hilariously bad animations/graphics.

@GenocidalKitten said:

The side quests

I ended up doing every side quest in the game, and at some point they just become chores there is nothing interesting or fun about them, and the quest description doesn't even tell you WHERE to fetch the stuff at leading to me wandering around the galaxy finding places that I don't have 100% completion in and usually just finding fuel reserves that, for some reason are marked as valuable things in that system.

Why can't I bring Grunt or Wrex with me for the entire time?

This is really all I wanted, to have a Krogan constantly at my side along with Garrus.

I actually really enjoyed the game but, if they fixed these three things then the game would be almost perfect.

Yeah, the side quests felt so tacked on in ME3. The decision to cut Grunt as a playable character was a bit of a head scratcher given the events of ME2.

I would have liked ME3 better if not for the rampant glitches. I don't know if it's EA or Bioware, but somebody needs to do something about those fucked up servers of theirs. If you're going to insist upon tying multiplayer to single player, you'd best maintain your online interface. It's nearly been two weeks since the war map has displayed properly, at least on the PC version. All I see anymore is "System Offline."

Oh, and then there's the in game glitches. I shouldn't have to use the Gibbed save editor just to enable paragon choices when my rep meter is already maxed out. I won't spoil which one particular I'm talking about, but it is the final choice in the game before the ending.

We will never see the end of ME 3 talk will we? That horse will never be allowed to rest in peace.

Ugh.UGH!

@Colourful_Hippie: You know what? I mostly ignored all of the whining about this game, but after I got a copy for Christmas, I took Brad's advice and tried it anyway and I, who LOVED the first two, have not enjoyed ANYTHING about it so far. I'm sorry you're tired of hearing about this game--and you don't have to pay any attention to me--but I wanted to talk about it because I'm only just now playing the game.

@Undeadpool said:

@project343: I'm not so sure about that. Yeah, ME3 was a lot of Upper Right/Lower Right, but it was also the third game in a series and until someone pointed it out, I REALLY didn't miss the "neutral" options as I almost never used them in the first place. I feel like the "wheel" gets a lot more hate than it should because of DA2, even though the actual DIALOG was just as (if not a little more) nuanced, it just involved a lot less reading than in DA: O, which had PLENTY of, "Virtuous, Selfish, FUCKING EEEEEEEVIIIIIIIIIIIIL" dialog options itself.

It has nothing to do with the quality of the dialogue. Rather, it has everything to do with the complexity and unpredictability of the dialogue tree. The formula that they follow (left-side as progression-pausing query, right-side as forward movement, top being morally good, bottom being morally bad) and the lack of meaningful impact that these dialogue decisions have on the world is really what hurts things. If I walk into a pub in Dragon Age: Origins and pick the wrong line (of 4-5 options) infront of the wrong person, I can start a full-on attack without ever knowing. In Mass Effect (and less-so Dragon Age 2), those are very opaque outcomes that either result regardless of what tone you take with them, or they are simply the result of a black and white moral fork-in-the-road.

If I say the exact right line to Alistair (after meeting some very specific requirements) during one of his companion quests, I can completely change his outlook on life for the rest of the game, and drastically change later portions of the experience for him.

I love Mass Effect. But after spending a significant amount of time revisiting Bioware's non-wheel efforts, I can honestly say that the streamlining of those trees has done some nasty stuff to my favourite type of video game. I actually think Dragon Age 2 is a fair bit better with the wheel; it's certainly worse than Origin's more traditional system, but at least it doesn't boil the whole thing down to morality binaries that exclusively work to reinforce a morality bar mechanic (that, you know, you should always min-max for gameplay reasons). The idea of weighing the pros and cons of decisions in front of juxtaposed party members' stances forces you to at least move out of your 'never not top-righting!' mentality. It's no longer about 'meh, I want to do a "good playthrough"," and is instead a lot more about trying to suffice the likes and dislikes of those following you.

I think you can sum the change quite simply: the traditional system posed every dialogue encounter as a puzzle that could yield so many potentially interesting results depending on the precise choices you make throughout; the modern wheel is like tonally directing an actor during a film--it's the same basic script, has very little impact, but it flows a lot better.

ME3 was my third favorite game of last year. I loved it so tough titty. Also the Chobot thing is a little silly but its so easy to ignore I don't see what the problem is.

@project343: I could see that, particularly because no one's ever ACTUALLY explained it out before, but I'll honestly take their more nuanced approach to dialog in the likes of ME to the...absolutist approach in their fantasy. I mean dialog choices pretty much boiled down to:

"I'm the best person who ever lived."

"I'm a decent person."

"I am going to BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE AND MURDER YOUR FAMILY FOR NO REASON!!!"

Also: that explanation REALLY makes me want an Alpha Protocol sequel since it had the dialog wheel coupled with the puzzley aspect that you're talking about AND a Walking Dead-style countdown.

@TheSouthernDandy said:

ME3 was my third favorite game of last year. I loved it so tough titty. Also the Chobot thing is a little silly but its so easy to ignore I don't see what the problem is.

Because in the absence of greater flaws, people will hyperbolize minor ones in order to pile on.

Mass Effect 3 is the most mechanically sound game in the series and strikes the best balance between RPG and shooter. Narratively it is a much more focused and impactful experience when compared to the meandering of ME2 that essentially left the plot in neutral. Also the original ending is fine. The EC is a bit depressing and insulting.

IMO

@StarvingGamer said:

Mass Effect 3 ... strikes the best balance between RPG and shooter.

How can I play a role if I only get two choices and neither one is the one the role I want to play wants to say? There is barely any RPG in this game. Two choices is no better than one.

@Undeadpool said:

@project343: I could see that, particularly because no one's ever ACTUALLY explained it out before, but I'll honestly take their more nuanced approach to dialog in the likes of ME to the...absolutist approach in their fantasy. I mean dialog choices pretty much boiled down to:

"I'm the best person who ever lived."

"I'm a decent person."

"I am going to BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE AND MURDER YOUR FAMILY FOR NO REASON!!!"

I don't think you and I were playing the same game(s) (assuming you're talking about the Dragon Age franchise). Typically, they do accommodate passive/friendly and hostile responses, but more than that, you also had 2-3 lines of grey territory stuff. None of the major conflicts could be easily broken down into 'this is morally good, and this is morally bad' (see: Werewolves/Elves, Anvil of the Void, Mages/Templars, garnering support from corrupt/shitty people to try to gain you an advantage in the Landsmeet).

And the unpredictable nature of their traditional setup also leaves a lot of the morality up to you to decide between, not the writer's breakdown of the situation. You could certainly make the point that letting the Rachni live would cause rather extreme political repercussions given the fact that they posed a massive threat to the galaxy prior to the events of the game, and obviously, that they could rise again and repeat their tendencies of the past. It's like putting a dog down after it went nuts and murdered some kids (regardless of their sentience).

I think it really is a whole different animal. And while I haven't spent a meaningful amount of time with Alpha Protocol, I do remember having to really sit down and think about every single response. In that way, it does sound very similar to the traditional Bioware dialogue framework.

@oraknabo said:

@StarvingGamer said:

Mass Effect 3 ... strikes the best balance between RPG and shooter.

How can I play a role if I only get two choices and neither one is the one the role I want to play wants to say? There is barely any RPG in this game. Two choices is no better than one.

I think he may have been talking about the mechanics of the combat, in which case, I tend to agree. Mass Effect 2 nearly removed all semblance of the 'RPG' from Mass Effect, and Mass Effect 3 restored a lot of those systems into a much tighter combat system. See: the more nuanced skill trees, the skill interaction, the abundance of loot, the weapon customization.

@project343 said:

@Undeadpool: @development: There is absolutely nothing wrong with the dialogue wheel as a more approachable way to manage dialogue choices. That said, ever since the dialogue wheel's adoption, Bioware has removed a lot of the nuance from their trees, and made everything incredibly predictable, safe and formulaic.

Well you can chalk that up to one of the first choices they made when they designed the first Mass Effect, which was the Paragon and Renegade system. That actually limited the game's story a lot, mainly the ending and not only the ending to ME3, but for ME1 and ME2. Think about it, you only ever had two alternate endings for every ME game which could be distilled into a Paragon and Renegade choice. It wasn't the dialogue wheel that it did it, it was the early design choice. There was hardly ever room for a neutral opinion and in the first two games you were punished for not being either a complete nice guy or a complete asshole.

@oraknabo:

Anyways, the ME3 multiplayer was not developed by the main ME3 team, but another team that was working on a spin-off ME fps. So to say that the multiplayer detracted from the single player game content is misguided. I mean I think it's safe to criticize ME3's single player campaign for a reliance on playing the multiplayer, but beyond that I don't agree with what you said.

ME3 had plenty of problems than just the ending.

1. Most of the missions felt like Gears of War Horde Mode, where you stood in the middle and just shoot waves of enemies over and over

2.The characters i cared about in ME2 were pushed into crappy side missions, i wanted to save the world with the characters i had grown to love.

3. You had to play online to get the galactic readiness up but i don't want to play online, Mass Effect is single player experience.

4.You were also forced to do dumb and pointless missions when the world was ending??????

@project343 said:

@oraknabo said:

@StarvingGamer said:

Mass Effect 3 ... strikes the best balance between RPG and shooter.

How can I play a role if I only get two choices and neither one is the one the role I want to play wants to say? There is barely any RPG in this game. Two choices is no better than one.

I think he may have been talking about the mechanics of the combat, in which case, I tend to agree. Mass Effect 2 nearly removed all semblance of the 'RPG' from Mass Effect, and Mass Effect 3 restored a lot of those systems into a much tighter combat system. See: the more nuanced skill trees, the skill interaction, the abundance of loot, the weapon customization.

Yep.

@project343: I was more referring to the old Baldur's Gate/KotoR games, but even with Dragon Age I disagree. I think DA: O had an amazing illusion of moral gray area (a la The Witcher, which the dev team cites as a MAJOR source of inspiration, and it shows), but beyond a couple of choices at the end (which I absolutely loved), there was almost always a way out. The elves/werewolves could be brought to peace, no one had to sacrifice themselves to save the possessed child, etc. And ME2 is guilty of that as well, it's a problem with both games that they seemed to like the idea of a moral gray area that had an out more than they liked a straight gray area.

@StarvingGamer said:

@project343 said:

@oraknabo said:

@StarvingGamer said:

Mass Effect 3 ... strikes the best balance between RPG and shooter.

How can I play a role if I only get two choices and neither one is the one the role I want to play wants to say? There is barely any RPG in this game. Two choices is no better than one.

I think he may have been talking about the mechanics of the combat, in which case, I tend to agree. Mass Effect 2 nearly removed all semblance of the 'RPG' from Mass Effect, and Mass Effect 3 restored a lot of those systems into a much tighter combat system. See: the more nuanced skill trees, the skill interaction, the abundance of loot, the weapon customization.

Yep.

Seconded.

@mrpandaman said:

Anyways, the ME3 multiplayer was not developed by the main ME3 team, but another team that was working on a spin-off ME fps. So to say that the multiplayer detracted from the single player game content is misguided. I mean I think it's safe to criticize ME3's single player campaign for a reliance on playing the multiplayer, but beyond that I don't agree with what you said.

OK, I have just seen a lot of comments saying that a lot of the mission areas are copied from the multiplayer maps. Maybe that's wrong. I guess it was wrong of me to blame it on multiplayer without verifying, but I've actually heard it a lot.

Either way, everything about this game seems completely half-assed to me. It's why the Chobot thing bugged me. I know she's pretty minor to the game, but why does she have to even be there if she matters so little and since they did commit to putting her in there couldn't they have done a better job with her model? She looks like they handed her off to an intern to create.

----

I'm not saying you'd have to be stupid to like this game. I just want to understand what people even liked about it because it seems like a chore to play and I don't get the feeling that with all of the money and people and hours that went into making this game that anyone involved cared very much about delivering a quality product that lives up to the previous two,

I'm not usually a big complainer when it comes to games, and I could have easily just never have tried this game, but the combo of getting it as a gift, Brad's excitement about it and wanting to use the characters I'd built up through the other two games prompted me to. I was already coming off of a huge disappointment with Assassin's Creed 3 and now I'm just kind of mad and feeling like I'm done with AAA games.

Remember there was one point in the game where Admiral Hackett was like "Oh yeah, and I've got a message from your mother shephard, she's doing well"? And then there was no mention of her for the rest of the game.

I was like, what? That is so fucking weird. What the fuck is going on at Bioware?

And of course Game Informer magazine gave it a goty award.

@boj4ngles said:

Remember there was one point in the game where Admiral Hackett was like "Oh yeah, and I've got a message from your mother shephard, she's doing well"?

Is Shepard's mom in the books or something? I guess she went missing in the attack on Earth and they just wanted to tell him they'd found her, but it's weird that no one mentioned anything about it before that.

Shouldn't details of his/her parents change based on the background in the firs game as well?

@oraknabo: I haven't read the books or comics so I don't know but I was under the impression that they just focus on supporting characters so as not to conflict with any of Shepard's variations. As to whether the segment changes depending on background. . . Hmmm. I actually never thought about that but it would make sense. I think my character had a spacer background.

But the point is that it felt like some half baked idea that was originally supposed to be something more fleshed out but just came across as distracting and bewildering. The entire game felt half baked, it's the biggest bomb of 2012 imho.