I don't even understand what the synthesis ending means. So the toaster is alive? All organics now have synthetic characteristics? Are they all immortal now? I always say that all endings are hard, and that most long series gaff up the ending, but this reeks of "Oh crap we have no idea how to solve it so let's just deus ex the hell out of this". You can really feel Karpyshyn's absence in this game, because the collectors are never talked about again, and it never ties into ME3. The story goes that Karpyshyn had a different ending (the dark energy theory), and while that may have been just as bad, at least it's something different.
As to Andromeda, it's not even that it's bad at this point, but it's so dreadfully boring. It's full of filler generic quests with a lot of destroy this to get planet viability up or deliver this to this person. The world-building is also super bland with only 2 major new species in a galaxy. I played ~20-30 hrs and after blowing up the Xth generic kett base I decided just to stop. There are so many better games for Alex to stream.
Man this was my first time going through the story since I played it in 2012, and what a disjointed mess the story is:
- We're 90-95% of the way through the story, and at this point in the story we still don't know what the Crucible is or does even though there's a Manhattan Level Project going on to build it. I know they're saving it for the mega-expo dump at the end, but I guess some bread crumbs would've been nice.
- Hey the Citadel's at Earth now! No mission, no distress call, just hey we moved it that cool? Literally moving the pieces on the board to wrap up the plot.
- Kai Leng is just the biggest dork that get his ass kicked across the galaxy and is supposed to be intimidating. I think not having a good 2nd antagonist really hurts the pacing of the game.
I feel for the writers because it does appear with ME1/ME2 they wrote themselves into a corner, and you can clearly see them struggling to land the plane. I think Schier's book alludes to a lot of issues with development of this game.
Tonally, just a completely jumble. Telling relatives their loved ones are dead, a marriage proposal, a big "NOOOOOOOOOO!" jump-in-front-of-a-bullet, eavesdropping on conversation and dropping off cultural relics like you're a UPS delivery truck, Joker getting relationship advice for a robot, pulling the plug on someone..... just a thousand different directions that sort of cancel each other out.
I love Mass Effect, but ME3 for me never really hit the "The Universe is Ending" feeling that it was supposed to. It doesn't have to be like grimdark or anything, but the highs (Tuchanka, other stuff coming up), are canceled out by the stupid eavesdropping and dropping stuff off and other busywork.
Agree with everyone to not do the Shore leave stuff right now... you'll be missing stuff if you start it now.
It may be the peak dissonance of "The galaxy is on fire, but let's have a party!", but I'd be lying if I said I didn't love it and find it a great coda to the series.
I think maybe start the mission chain after the next Priority stuff and save the party until right before the Point of No Return (tm) maybe works best timeline wise.?
Iridium884's comments