Mass Alex: Mass Effect 3 - Part 12

So is there an episode missing or is it safe to watch this following episode 10?

When Alex said he got stuck in the cockpit I got PTSD from the infamous stuck bug there.

Honestly every single time he goes in there I worry it'll happen to him.

@seventytwotransformations: From what I've read (haven't done it myself, but I'm sure there's some YT video of it), if Thane isn't there, Captain Kirrahe (the salarian who helps you on Virmire in ME1) saves the councilor (if he survived in your playthrough). If neither are there, Leng just smokes the councilor.

I guess you ignored the beginning of my response where I pointed out that I never said your other concerns were invalid, so let me clear this up since inference doesn't seem to be your strong point:

I think your other concerns about the game are perfectly valid opinions, which is why I think making shit up about Mass Effect 3's character design diminishes your argument and is symptomatic of people who really want to nitpick flaws about the game - many of which, in all honesty, I consider to be pretty subjective.

For example, I don't want to waste time contesting why I think the sidequest system isn't "dumbass" because incidental dialogue for minor questing allows the player to contribute to the state of the world without having to get into a conversation with NPCs for every dumb small fetch quest to be done, why the Citadel doesn't need to be bigger in order to waste the player's time walking through gigantic empty zones to reach each objective, why a numerical arbitrary score is perfectly acceptable shorthand for player progress in the game, and that plenty of people out there think characters like EDI and Vega have perfectly reasonable or inoffensive character writing to go with, which you decided to write off because they didn't 'look' interesting enough to you.

Oops.

Each of these issues that you have with the game are issues that I recognise as valid because you (and plenty others) don't find those elements enjoyable and I'm not going to dispute that. What I am disputing is that the game already has enough to criticize without making shit up, and hopefully now you can carry on with your day safe in the knowledge that some random fucko on the internet didn't simply dismiss all your negative views on it, I guess.

Good day.

iirc some rando Salarian agent takes a bullet trying to body shield the Councilor

I love how Alex off the cuff comes up with a more interesting twist on Udina than the Mass Effect writers did in years of development.

@seventytwotransformations I believe the Salarian Councillor dies and then Kai Leng zoidbergs out of there so Shepard can chase him and the rest plays out the same.

@bludgeonparagon: finally a real response. My list is a shorthand of deeper issues I've had with the game but sadly I didn't have my dissertation of ME3 grievances on hand because its a video comments section not a forum cerca 2012 but here we go, albeit slightly condensed.

EDI is absolutely well written and is a worthwhile addition but the model design detracts from her overall character. Does it completely invalidate her? Nah, but I find the design lazy for a cheap quick sex appeal trope during the first introduction. Officer Meathead gets more backstory to flesh him out beyond the obvious stereotype that he embodies but as you said it's mostly inoffensive and in my opinion completely forgettable and a waste of a character slot like Jacob was in 2 but worse.

War Assets thing makes sense for having some sort of progress bar which I guess my bigger issue over it was from the "ehh" layout of the Normandy where the war room has nothing interactive except for the dumb progress bar that would have been easier to see in a pause menu or private terminal but sure that's just a personal preference.

I'm not looking for the citadel to be a massive wasteland I just wanted something more connected like Omega from 2, not the random small levels you load into via an elevator but sure it's preferences again like how I actually would enjoy more talking to NPCs for side quests like the past games did because their writing was generally engaging which leads me to my bigger problem with the game in how dialogue is handled and the conversation wheel took a complete back seat in this game. There's too many conversations you passively take in with nearly zero interaction. I get streamlining the shooting gameplay because the series was always on a slope towards being a shooter first, RPG second if not minimal but the biggest appeal to me was how the game handled interactive speech with solid writing which ME 3 pulled back on the interactivity in strange ways.

Then of course there's other problems like what you touched on in a separate reply such as how this game handles there not being specific characters present due to past game choices by simply slotting in some fucking rando to play the role but we don't have time for that shit so I'm ending it here. I'm done dissecting this flawed game outside of PMs.

some random fucko

lol you said it, not me.

I honestly don't understand the problem people have with Leng. In the greater scheme of things is is just a henchmen for the Illusive man. He bearly speaks a couple of sentences in the whole game.

His abilities are no more out there then any other character in the game. He never struck me as anything but a henchmen. Cerberus trying to take over the Citadel as a plotpoint makes sense since at this point the Illusive Man is probably already indoctrinated and knows how important the Citadel is gonna be.

@cale: it exists, it just hasn't been added to the playlist

Also I never noticed this before, but Kai Leng's animations are almost completely recycled from Phantom animations, from his Idle pose to the actual fight choreo (The spin kick Thane does is an animation you can use for the Drell species and the Infiltration Unit classes in Multiplayer)

@seventytwotransformations:

Kirrahe is killed instead...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oih4JznCaSo

Apparently, if he is also dead, the counselor dies.

Alex is the first person to ever choose James for any missions in human history.

Would be good to have a look inside the War Asset map properly and check out what has been accumlated so far.

For those wondering what happened to part 11 you can still find it in the many GB video apps out there (it was on my Apple TV and Windows Store apps) so it must be a website bug

As with episodes 3 and 4 when episode 5 went live, you can still find episode 11 on the site in the premium videos feed.

https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/mass-effect-3-part-11/2970-20267/premium-video

is a new episode out yet?

Where is episode 11?

ME3 is bad for a lot of reasons, but the voice acting is so so good. Javik and femshep do such an excellent job.

Edit: Apart from Diana. Holy shit.

Thane is probably one of my favorite video game characters; the scene at the end of this episode always makes me sad. I wish things could have gone different for him, but there's also something about him sacrificing himself to help save the Citadel than him quietly losing the fight to Kepral's Syndrome.

I agree but also the cinematic quality of action pieces and some scenes of ME3 seems way higher than that of 2. It feels to me like they moved their effort from conversation cutscenes to more story ones. And it's not like there aren't well done conversations in 3, it's just that they don't involve Shepard as much. For example, Garrus and Jokers joke-off in this episode, or a bunch of the James-Cortez banter. Also, I think the shooty bang bangs are better and have more options than that of 2, but I say that as someone who likes both of their shooting.

The salarian councilor dies. Alex didn't advance the story enough for me to say for certain, but I think saving that councilor will allow Alex access to Salarian help in his War Assets despite him choosing Krogan aid over the salarian dalatrasses warnings. I think if Thane died in ME2, you don't get that safety net. I'm like 70% sure of this.

@wiseblood: What an absolute monster

This was the last Mass Effect 3 mission I was able to play as my 360 died while starting the following fetch-quests. To this day, I don't know what happens from here in the game but it felt almost fitting to see it end with Thane's story. He's truly the most interesting character in this whole franchise and I love that final scene with the poem.

Tears graced my cheeks while seeing it again. God, I needed that.

Would like to add that I'd like to see Pt 11. I feel like I missed something at the start of this episode o.O

Mass Alex: Mass Effect 3 - Part 11

If Part 11 isn't showing in the episode list, here it is.

@cyrribrae

Between watching this and playing through Andromeda finally I gotta say, maybe the writing in Mass Effect was never actually that good? on a re-watch 2 really fell flat for me, in this Shepard gets to neatly clean up basically every major lore moment from the series, and huge chunks of Andromeda just don't make sense on a technical level, also has some ROUGH colonial/savior shit.

They're gonna let Cortez die, aren't they?

@blackout62: I was hoping they would remember to talk to him when he was talking to James in the armory....

@gawdspet: At the same time, I'm realizing now that Bioware really shuffled him off to the dark corners of the cargo bay.

They literally buried their gay.

He is actually a mildly enjoyable romance option for Malesheps though

Another skipped week. Losing interest in paying money for this site after the last 6 months.

They go all on about swords but I mained an N7 Shadow so I can't say anything other than God, was I amazing. I had cloaks, did cool flips, had a Raiden ass sword that shot lightning, could do the Kasumi cloak and then show up right behind a guy to backstab thing and then pump 'em full of shotgun because I ran the most basic assault rifle and shotgun at X level because it lowered my cooldown to next to nothing so I was constantly zipping around the map putting a sword through dudes and being a detriment to good teamwork.

The only downside was realizing that, aw crap, my multiplayer character is cooler than Shep. My Shep was an infiltrator. Why did no one let him have a sword? In fact, come to think of it, a lot of the multiplayer characters were cooler gameplaywise than Shep.

I know. That makes...<checks notes>... TWO this season. What the fuck? I'm sure that wasn't anything else going on or any chance of technical problems due to working remotely that may have affected their schedule. Get your shit together, Giant Bomb.

Right? He should have been dancing on a platform above the galaxy map in leather chaps at all times, bathed in disco lights and In the Navy by The Village People should have started playing gradually louder as you approached him. I can't believe Bioware were so insensitive as to BURY him in the cargo hold with James and make his sexuality completely incidental to his personality and character. That's just unrealistic.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike parts of the Mass Effect trilogy..but all the things you are pointing out are shallow cliches and tropes that nearly every major scifi and fantasy show use.

EDI being a sexbot/overtly fanservice? Did you forget the entire Asarirace?

Kai Leng being a bad villain? Not fitting with the story/writing? Did you even play or watch the first two games of this series? Nearly every other major baddie is some scenery-chewing Star Trek TV show wannabe.

And a lot of those baddies give you stupid James Bond level death traps to easily escape from.

In Mass Effect 1 Your main character somehow stumbles upon the last dying "living" diary of a dead race and it "conveniently" dies shortly after you learn critical plot information from it and "

YO 50, JUMP OVER THAT BIG ASS RAMP

into the motherfucking Citadel.

You spend 20 minutes having a "my dick is bigger than yours" conversation with Sovereign, a being big enough to dwarf most capital ships of the Alliance navy, when it could have just fired one of its many fuckoff lasers and blown up half or the entire planet you were on.

You interject yourself into multiple intergalactic and interspecies conflicts that have been going on for longer than our race has had a unified government and end up not getting a backhand that re-arranges your spine....

This is an Action Adventure series that has RPG elements and is based on pretty accessible SciFi. Yes, there is lots of text and audio and imagery behind the scenes to flesh things out. Yes, there are characters and scenes and dialogue and bits of story that will captivate you and move you....

But in the end its no more hardcore SciFi or fantasy than any of the Star Wars or Trek vehicles - its there to give you a fun ride.

If you want to get into things to really nitpick the games about, how about the "hey player, fuck you!" sandwich that is the suicide mission at the end of ME2? There's no reason why Tali died in Alex's playthrough, and in many many other people's playthrough there's no reason for their character(s) to have died other than "oh yeah you can't put this character here because meeeh fuck you". All of the great and wonderful and terrible things your team members have survived and made better/worse mean nothingat this point. [remember that Alex had made sure his entire team was loyal, he had researched all upgrades for all abilities, didn't dawdle once he was inside the omega relay...]

And the things that make people actually seethe with anger is the way EA bent over the writers, the programmers on forcing the game out early, on providing poor messaging to the consumers on DLC and the beginning of the Loot Box bullshit. And as for actual story things to complain about? Things that were actually worth getting on the forums back then and risk getting treated like trash by EA? we can't talk about those things yet

So yes, you are nitpicking.

I was just about to say - wIth everything going on with COVID, the protests and demonstrations for Black Lives Matter, the crushingly painful shit that police are doing to people in the US - energy and time REALLY can be spent elsewhere instead of being pissed that Mass Alex missed a week or 2.

I'm not going to go as far as to say check your privilege, but maybe with a lighter touch we can maybe set out expectations maybe a bit lower in these more difficult times.

I probably don't need to say it, but if you feel like your subscription isn't worth it or if you feel unsatisfied with it, or maybe even that money you spent is a regretful purchase because money is tight, talk to Rorie about a refund or something? I'm sure they'd understand.

@heatdrive88: You talk like this website is free. I'm an essential worker, I've not stopped through all of this. I've been in hospitals, testing sites, protests, hospice centers, ICU's, food giveaways etc and always make deadline. I don't think it's a far stretch to expect to get what I pay for on schedule. Just because your world has slowed down doesn't mean all of our lives have. The idea that this staff who have easily shown they can deliver remotely doesn't deserve judgement is silly. Most jobs can't just say "whoops" and get by with missing a deadline and I'll hold my hard earned dollar to it.

@beef_whisper: I understand you are probably stressed, and I'm sure many are thankful for the work you put in - I can't parse exactly what your job is, but surely it sounds important. You're absolutely free to hold your criticism and opinion to the Giant Bomb crew - I didn't say your critical opinion was invalid. Sorry if you thought otherwise, this was certainly not my intention.

My only point was that for the sake of your dissatisfaction, I don't believe Giant Bomb's publishing schedule is as rigorously galvanized in stone as you're expecting it to be. It often operates with a fluidity to their own editorial decisions day-to-day, and whether or not those editorial reasons are exactly communicated or not is also entirely up to them. For this particular week, I'm not aware of any reason why Mass Alex was not being put up on the site.

Maybe it's personal, and everyone was a little too bummed out to record it when it was scheduled. Maybe Alex or Vinny needed some personal time off to take care of something family/house related. Maybe it's a technical problem and a bad streaming connection broke it, or a video encoder corrupted the video files. I just don't know - but I just don't have the personal impetus to seek out exactly why, to be fair.

With that being the case, at least in my opinion, is why I suggested that maybe you should re-consider if your membership is worth your hard-earned dollar - to meet your personal expectations of what you believe that you should receive?

For the record, I'm not positively sure what you mean that I talk like this website is free, as I have enjoyed being a longtime subscriber myself. If that makes me somewhat complacent, then yeah, my personal expectations are just lower. I'm satisfied enough by all the livestream content they've been putting out. But at least I hope I sound like someone that comes to this site for the same reason that many of us do - to laugh, cry, and be entertained from simple and good things that come from decent, real people in these disturbingly hard times.

That Thane scene wrecks me every time

o7

Thane..... :'(

Kai Leng is such a dumb and poorly executed concept. Alex's initial reactions to him appearing are spot on.

The Joker Garrus back and forth jokes were hilarious.

I can see why people were so pissed off back when this came out about characters acting irrational and out-of-character. Just IMAGINE a high-ranking politician using a coup attempt to seize more power, even going so far as to try and have opposition members of his own government killed in the process.

Thank GOD we don't live in a world like THAT.

@rvone:I LITERALLY remembered him being voiced by Quinton Flynn, that's how annoying I found him. (Don't get me wrong, I like Flynn when he's used well, but Kai Leng is SUCH a fucking waste of potential).