How would (You) rewrite the Mass Effect plot? You can change anything starting from ME1

>>717355165 (OP)

There's literally nothing wrong with the endings, none of you can even say what's wrong with it, you just saw the hate train and since you're lonely friendless losers desperate to be part of a community you jumped in to be one more in the crowd

What youtuber told you the game ending was bad? Asmongold?

>>717355518
>There's literally nothing wrong with the endings
Everything is wrong.

>What youtuber told you the game ending was bad? Asmongold?
I played both games on release. KYS yourself, retard.

quick bump

>>717355165 (OP)
The initial premises are pretty cool, Humans being newcomers to a galactic civilization, Shephard being a super special agent for the council, mysterious ancient alien artifacts littered throughout the galaxy serving as the foundation for galactic civilization as we know it, but the artifacts have a hidden dark purpose...

This is all great.
To me though Mass Effect is at its best when it's ignoring the reapers and focusing on interesting stories within the galaxy they created.
I could kind of care less about the galaxy-ending plot set up by ancient aliens to cultivate and harvest lesser civilizations.

cont.
(maybe, I'm bumping the thread but I've also mostly made my point. )

>>717359653
>To me though Mass Effect is at its best when it's ignoring the reapers and focusing on interesting stories within the galaxy they created.
They should have been left mostly as a mystery, to be honest.

>>717359813
>Write a giant universe with untold opportunities for fun games/stories
>laser-focus on john whitebread for 3 games
>once that's over ditch the entire setting in Andromeda

>>717359813
Yea I think that's just what I'm getting at.
I'd have ME1 be more of a political story about humans and their place in the galaxy, and keep the Prothean artifacts stuff creepy but a mystery.

I throw the entire Reaper invasion plot out entirely, relegate them to a persistent background threat working through intermediaries like Saren and the Collectors and have every game be a self-contained adventure. Trying to spread a single story arc over three games failed miserably anyway, so why bother?

Idk man just make more branching questlines. ME3 felt like you were on rails. Choosing to cure the genophage or not, choosing to side with the Geth or the Quarians, the whole game should be different after these points, like every main quest should be completely different depending on what you picked. But instead you're just off to the exact same next location with maybe 1 squadmate unavailable.

I'll be really blunt.
Mass Effect was riding on the coat-tails of Halo, with the success of Halo 1 and 2.
(I had written something about Bioware doing the ancient aliens thing the same year as Halo in 2001, with the Rataka in Kotor, but apparently Kotor 1 was 2003, 2 years after Halo 1).
The Reapers and all their artifacts are kinda just a worse, less mysterious version of Halo's Forerunner, with John Shepard being a Captain Kirk'ed up Master Chief (although not nearly as charming as Kirk or as cool as Master Chief).

Halo's whole thing gameplay-wise is being a linear straight shot through a story building to a clear climax.
Mass Effect is at its best when it lets you explore and experience smaller stories in its galaxy. x.
It's torn between wanting to be a linear action game like Halo and an RPG like Kotor.
Hindsight is 20/20 and idk how much value there is in speculating on what could have been like this - but I'd have pivoted away from the "Halo-ness" of the whole thing.

It's not like I can blame the Bioware guys though. Halo was such a big deal.

they jumped to "save the entire universe" way too fast in the series overall

1 was semi self contained with sarin representing a larger looming threat of the reapers, and maybe we never should have actually fought the reapers, maybe they should have been somewhat mysterious.

>>717355165 (OP)
Others have already mentioned changing the pacing and story, especially >>717359653
>>717360542
>>717360957

But I would especially rewrite the beginning to Mass Effect 2, no reason to kill off Shepard and then just bring him back lol. Then making Cerberus the bad guys and indoctrinated in Mass Effect 3 and the ending of ME3 in general needs a major rework, would probably keep Cerberus morally grey and not indoctrinated.

ME1 is mostly fine.

ME2 onwards is a disaster.
First, ditch the whole thing about Shepard dying and being ressurected, that was just stupid.
The collectors are also stupid, ditch them.

Don't reveal what the Reapers are, instead make multiple characters make up multiple possible theories as new evidence about them come to light. The more, the better.

Make ME2 have an actual plot instead of being 95% about recruiting companions and doing their questlines.

Also ditch the whole thing about Liara becoming a Shadow Broker, that was also beyond stupid, keep her as an acherologist.

Focus more on inter-species tensions, the batarians in particular seem like a great antagonist for a game, everybody loves killing batarians.

A full reaper invasion should probably never happen because it seems to require absurd tools to deal with them. Maybe send 1 single war-focused Reaper to destroy the civilization.
Make a full-scale invasion a distant threat.
But also keep the second game at least partially focused on understanding the reapers and looking for countermeasures, leaving all that for the third game was a disaster, the second game should have been used to preprare the story and setting for the third, instead of mostly being filler.

...Don't put the most important story content in DLCs. At least not in the second game, as it would affect the prepraration for the story of the third game.

These are the most immediate changes, but it would probably require considerably more. Perhaps ideally even making a quadrilogy instead of a trilogy, so that you have two games to make the build-up for the return of the reapers while exploring other aspects of the universe and politics.

Who should I cheat on Ashley with in ME2?

Maybe make the second game about going beyond the Perseus veil to find out more about the Reaper threat? Maybe the Geth are trying something else to wake up the Reapers. Maybe you can meet other civilizations that are cut off from the Council races and solve their problems. Shepard doesn't die and Shepard keeps working for the Council as a Spectre.