@Oldirtybearon said:
I don't understand how people say it's an actively bad game, though. The combat was polished and highly enjoyable, the story was as high stakes as the final chapter needed to be, and the game was full of emotionally charged moments that resonated with Mass Effect fans. I just don't understand how people say it sucked. If you're a wagon jumper and ME3 was your first Mass Effect game then sure, it probably wasn't going to make much sense or be that enjoyable. But that's the players' fuck up, not the designers. They catered to their audience with ME3, as they should have.
Yeah the original ending was the shits, but they added the Extended Cut. Replaying the game with that, the whole final act felt far more cohesive and enjoyable. That's the key word though, enjoyable. Mass Effect 3 wasn't a fun game and, given everything we'd heard about the Reapers and what they do, it shouldn't have been. With every mission I felt the tension of those Cthulhu Space Gods breathing down my neck and near the end when I thought "maybe I've got a snowball's chance of winning," that felt like a huge victory. No other game has done that for me this year. No other game has made me feel the incredible highs and dirt-deep lows that Mass Effect 3 did. A game should be commended for evoking that reaction out of people, not slammed.
Hey, if that's not your (or anyone's) bag, then sure. But to actively dismiss Mass Effect 3 because of a shitty ending (that got fixed) is asinine, and it kind of pisses me off that people are so eager to shit on it.
Consider this: when Bioware announced the plan of a trilogy for Mass Effect where each decision and variable would follow through into the next game for the sake of continuity, people laughed at them. Outright laughed at them. Others wondered how in the hell they would be able to pull that off. If Mass Effect 3 did nothing else, then it outright proved that it could be done. That a three part story could be told with consistent continuity between games that was entirely dependent on the choices you made. That's a hell of an achievement. Especially when you consider just how deep Mass Effect 3 pulls from the first two games to give you that personalized narrative.
To me it felt like the way they changed the visuals/effect of abilities vastly diminished their impact.
There were a few good Tali and Garrus moments, but the rest didn't really grab me.
You felt tension troughout the game. ME3 smashed my suspension of disbelief. So there was nothing to feel tense about. When the game announced that it had been 3 weeks since the reapers reached earth. The fact that there was still a resistance or that earth wasn't shattered was just silly. I imagined a transformers version of a reaper having tea with Anders while discussing peace. Which seemed just as likely. When the reapers attacked Thessia i snapped my fingers, and after that the planet was seemingly uninhabitable.
Which leads into another issue which is time. ME3 vs ME2 is like TES4 vs TES3 in this respect. In all of these you have a fair amount of time to devote to leisure or unimportant tasks. ME3 & TES4 have big threats at the doorstep so you shouldn't really do that, but that isn't the case with the other two. Now i understand the need for this ominous presence, but i still felt like i shouldn't waste time at the citadel. On the other hand i wish i had the time. So in this respect it forcefully removed an aspect i liked about ME2. Which had been fine if there was something there to increase and decrease drama. So it didn't become a monotonous one speed affair.
I really wanted to like mass effect 3, but i didn't.
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