Regardless, we can all agree that not having Edi as a relationship choice was a crime fit to be judged by only the likes of the Hague, amirite?

Poor effort, Evan. With the cake, I mean. 

Brilliant! Honestly, all the side excursions don’t make
a lot of sense in the sweeping narrative being told, but players would not be
happy if they weren’t there to flesh things out. I think the “guy with the
metal detector on the beach at Normandy” is apropos.

 I do think, BTW, some people are jerks even in the most
dire of situations.  

Nothing scintillating here.  Just wanted to say how excited I am about the new site.  It’s great to see Evan as well.

Also, I’ve heard others hate on the dream sequences. I thought they were fine and were at least an attempt to humanize Shepard. So much of the game has others regarding him as a superhero. I think the dreams were an attempt to show that even the great, but never promoted Commander Shepard has doubts, worries and regrets.

Regarding the endings (spoilers I guess?), I’m just going to crosspost what I said in the original review, since it’s a lot of stuff and I don’t really have time to go over it all again.

”
Couple of things - 

- ME3 is bringing up a lot of clashing over the delineation between player and character. Bioware has always kind of waffled on this, saying that it is a “third person story” and that while you control Shepard she is not a player avatar, but they also talk about “your Shepard” and “your story”, and besides, the control that the player exerts over Shepard in effect does make her the player avatar, no matter the voice and backstory grafted on. Her choices are our choices. When ME3 is good, it lets Shepard get out of the way and lets the player interpret and experience the impact of his/her choices and the rapport Shepard has with other characters. When ME3 is bad, it shows Shepard reacting to things and being bothered by some white kid in Vancouver and having nightmares. 

Leaving aside that a psychotic space racist renegade Shepard wouldn’t suddenly give a fuck about these things, even if it makes sense that within this world Shepard would be stricken by that death and haunted by it throughout the game, it throws a spanner in the works of the player / character divide. I and a lot of other people recognized the kid for what he was, a cheap narrative tool (a big flashing *FEEL EMOTION NOW* sign, specifically).

Because Shepard exists as a player avatar in addition to a (arbitrarily sketched) independent character, showing how Shepard feels about something and giving the player no control over it is in effect telling the player what he / she should feel about it, which is a big no-no. When it works (such as the super renegade ending to the Tuchanka mission) it works well, but when it doesn’t work, it’s a disaster, and whenever that dream sequence came up it stopped the game cold in its tracks. That part of the game was abjectly terrible and mercifully short (if only I could say the same about the ending). It didn’t help that it was pretty much entirely ripped from the first Max Payne game, right down to the slo-mo running, which, pro-tip game designers, that shit is never fun for anyone. 

- Not since Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 have we gotten an ending to a game that is less internally coherent and so obviously cut up within an inch of its life. There’s one part in particular where you will go “Hey why are those guys there?” and the more you think about it the more you realize it makes absolutely no sense at all (and is pretty much physically impossible).

Back when Lost ended there was a lot of hubbub over how that show closed out, about how they had copped out on a lot of the mysteries or straight-up ignored them, and the creators in response made a distinction between “character-driven” and “plot-driven” narratives. Lost in their view was a character-driven narrative and thus the show had to end in a way that focused on the characters and the relationships they had.The thing is that the ME series is very character-driven, at least from the fan perspective, but it seems like, especially with the ending, that Bioware considered it a plot-driven narrative. I was hoping for something more along the lines of Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal, where you have both big climactic “Let’s Do This” convos with your party and denouements afterward.There were no denouements. To get that ending and not know what happened to all the characters (the only elements that were consistently good throughout the whole series!) is such a massive bummer. And in all likelihood we’ll never know. Internet people are hoping for an epilogue DLC, as they do, but Bioware wouldn’t do that (not to mention the precedent it would set in the already testy paid content arena). 

- What you have to realize with ME3 is that Bioware was handed a very, very rare opportunity, one that any game studio that gives a shit about story would kill to have – the opportunity to tell one story over three full-length AAA games. Game development is a rough business, getting published is difficult, and to take the long view, to plan out a series over 5 years, that never happens. 5 years in real time is 25 years in game development time.

So in ME3 we have, for all intents and purposes, the only game of its type to ever exist – a game that continuously takes player input into account over 70+ hours of previous play. That’s longer than most TV series. It practically is a TV series, plus the magic of player input. And a bad capper to a good game is like a bad  capper to a good show. Like it or not, it leaves a black spot on the series that will persist as people continue to talk about it past its shelf life. And make no mistake, the ending was shitty, shitty, shitty, veering into hokey pulp metaphysics via a literal deus ex machina at the last moment, as if the writers couldn’t think of anything better than a DX:HR three-button choice (which, like DX:HR’s, is entirely unconcerned with any of the 70+ hours of content preceding it) followed by a series of endings differentiated almost entirely by color filter. The last 15 minutes of the game feel like they come from an entirely different series.I liked the game, I liked it a lot, but man, that ending was a shot in the gut, and not in the good way I was expecting. Hitting the dismount’s always hard, but Bioware is now one of the largest and most powerful game studios in existence and it’s baffling that they would fuck up with such gusto.”

Adding to that after some time to think it over, I would say that the dilemma posited by the Starchild is one that’s not really supported through the series – the only two galaxy-level threats in the series are organic (The Krogan and the Rachni), while the only substantial synthetic presence (the Geth) turn out to only be aggressive, on the whole, in defense of themselves. The geth enemies in the first and third games are desperate splinter groups, the geth in the second are defending their territory. The organic/synthetic conflict is easily assumed but there’s not much to actually back it up in the content of the series. It was just an easy out for the writers.

Also looks like I was wrong about Bioware covering their asses with DLC. My bad!

Okay, so who wants to hash out this ending business?  I finished the game after a few weeks as opposed to the very day it came out, so I’ve been late to most comment fests about it.  I know there are a million articles about it out there, but my voice is more important than all of them.

I have some problems with it, of course.  The Normandy in the ending cinematic makes no sense at all after the events of the game.  The differences between your three choices could’ve been clearer.

I have to wonder about those who say their choices throughout the trilogy don’t matter as much as they were led to believe they would.  Did they not play the full game?  After finishing, I was amazed at the many different story variations that were on Youtube, some huge differences based on things you did in the very first game.  Entire character storylines you’ll never see.  It’s pretty remarkable.  I also consider the ‘ending’ to be the entirety of the final Cerberus and Earth missions.  In its entirety, it’s a massive climax that I took more pleasure in than anything I’ve played in a long time.  I’m far more annoyed with the lazy photoshopped reveal of Tali and about not entirely sticking the landing in the last few minutes of cutscenes.

Endings are important, but I wonder if they’ve always been given THIS much importance.  This whole controversy has completely overshadowed the accomplishments of the game and series as a whole, and I think it’s a shame.  To totally digress a bit and compare it to sports, it used to be that one could enjoy and admire a successful season that doesn’t end in a championship.  Now it seems that sports fans consider anything without a trophy as a colossal disappointment or waste of time.  Regular seasons mean nothing to people anymore.

Tl; dr: ME3 is fantastic regardless of the last few minutes.

Now that I’m on a computer capable of playing video, I’m gonna comment on the video! Yes!

Re: ME and outlook on human relations or w/e, I thought it was actually kind of jarring how blatant the meatheaded jingoism was in ME3. I mean it was always sort of there, but not to this extent. Several points throughout the game Shepard or Anderson is all “I DON’T PLAY POLITICS” as though the rest of the galaxy is supposed to just fall into lockstep whenever humanity asks for something. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, bros, but every other race is getting fucked up by the reapers too. It’s never really considered that asking for large contingents of fighting forces to take back earth might be an unreasonable request at that time.

Re: ME and tech, it’s… neutral, I guess? Supposedly the original draft of ME3 took the series in a decidedly anti-tech direction but it’s already established in ME1/ME2 that the reapers basically left all this far-future tech lying around so that they could “guide” technological development of galactic races over time, essentially fattening up the livestock for slaughter (for reasons that are still unclear). It’s basically a really slow trap. I guess you could say it’s anti-tech, in that sense. 

Really it’s hard to tackle that question without considering the ending, or rather the “green” ending. The whole final sequence introduces trans-humanist elements to the game apropos of nothing. It’s part of why the finale feels so bizarre / unearned.

Great discussion. Pity the last minute or so was rubbish etc etc

The ‘sad child’ thing is well worth pointing out- it was one of the few times when Shepard’s reaction to something was wildly different from mine. If that dopey kid had listened he’d still be alive, plus OH LOOK LOTS OF OTHER PEOPLE ARE DYING TOO

GREAT new series