Thread 717548904

In hindsight was Mass Effect 3's ending really that bad or did gamers overreact? Have you forgiven them anon?

It's so bad that even Mass Effect fans could tell it's bad. And they played Mass Effect 2

>>717548904 (OP)
It stung when I first played it. Playing through it again through the trilogy it was still bad, but not as bad. 2>1>3 btw

>>717549029
2 > 3 > 1, turdbrain.

>>717549243
none of them are good but ME 1 gets points for the novelty's sake of managing to dumb down RPGs even further with shitty cover-based third person shooter mechanics designed for the Xbox 360

For me the endings are less important the game itself, which was completely forgettable. I could piece out ME1&2 in my head, but I can't remember anything from ME3 except the endings and the spirit kid.

>>717548904 (OP)
>devs say it won't be just some a b c ending
>it releases as a red green blue ending

>>717549374
>none of them are good
go away

I didn't play it on release. But when my friend told me how he chose an ending, then you see the scene where the Normandy crash lands and the door opens then it ends, that sounded fucking terrible so I can understand why people were pissed. Even when I did play with the extended cut it was unsatisfying.

It just seemed fucking retarded how for 3 games over hundreds of hours you build the Reapers up as the literal embodiment of evil, like Sauron and Mordor from Lord of the Rings, they kill your friends, do horrendous unforgivable shit, only to then say "oh well actually, they're just the jannies of the galaxy. They're not actually bad bro". It just kills all momentum or reason to be invested in defeating the big baddy when you know that. People seemed to think the Destroy ending was the best but it still feels shit because you get rid of all the synthetics and destroy the mass relays.

It feels like have your orgasm ruined at last minute. So it just dribbles out instead of getting huge nagasaki hiroshima style explosion of cum.

I play DA2 before it. It wasn't rocket science what was going to happen to ME3.

>>717550339
>oh well actually, they're just the jannies of the galaxy.
I thought this from the first game because it's just a classic sci-fi AI dilemma. Keeping all life primitive fulfills the condition to preserve life in the long term. All of the info you need to put it together is in the first game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TYT1QfdfsM
The dumb part for me was everything else surrounding the reapers like the leviathan or the human reaper or the starchild.

>>717548904 (OP)
It was bad. Very bad.

It was that bad but gamers should have seen it's coming
>also "le it rpieed of ttgl"
Go fucking kill yourself beanernewfag

>>717548904 (OP)
It was bad. You can compare it to Game of Thrones ending, where you feel that the "creators" don't give a shit anymore, they just want to be done with it. I mean, they used a fucking stock picture for Tali.

>>717548904 (OP)
Overreact.
Many could not come to terms that the trilogy story ended. And while everyone threw around meme terms like "hurr pick one of three colors", the actual ending let you decide the fate of machines like you were always supposed to, irrespective of your Shepard's disposition. Not all of it made sense, but that's the case with every story.

>>717548904 (OP)
It's terrible from a story writing perspective. Absolutely nothing was built up and it came completely out of left field and didn't make any sense whatsoever. The definition of a bad ending. I mean seriously if this isn't an example of a bad ending then what is?

>>717552724
The starchild was an idiotic concept to introduce at the very end of a trilogy when there was absolutely nothing foreshadowing its presence in any of the games up to that point.

>>717551873
>I thought this from the first game because it's just a classic sci-fi AI dilemma. Keeping all life primitive fulfills the condition to preserve life in the long term. All of the info you need to put it together is in the first game.
True, it was. I remembered the specific scene. I think what would have helped was if they gave us more of that throughout the rest of the story. Like take ME2 for example; the entire game is about how bad the Collectors are and how shitty it is they work for the Reapers. The game shows you how horrible and inhuman all this is and then you understandably as a player associate the Reapers as being cunts that you need to stop. Then in ME3 they market the game playing off of saving Earth, your home and making you care. Then you're told why you're wrong at the end.

What I'm describing is emotional, not logical I understand. But that's kind of my point - The narrative gets the player so into the feeling of 'Saving of Galaxy from the big bad evil Reapers' only to pull that rug out from underneath you before you can get the payoff. Again it's you fucking the beautiful woman enjoying the roller-coaster ride then right before you cum she says "Yeah err, this ain't honey. Here's why what you're doing is wrong".

>>717551873
leviathan dlc is the worth me3 dlc because they double downed on start child retardation and even further unraveled any remaining mystery about the reapers

The ending was undeniably bad and people were right to shit on it (especially before the extended ending DLC which still didn't fix all that much), but I do find it annoying how it clouded everyone's judgement about ME3 as a whole and people act like the game has ZERO good writing or that it's the worst game in the franchise just because Bioware went full retard at the end. I'm in the camp that thinks that there was a ton of kino shit in the game before the ending that's well above anything that happens in the previous two games, plus, you have that multiplayer mode which I dumped a shitload of time into.

I still prefer ME2 a bit more just because I like the filler arc plot and how it's structured, but I've definitely spent the most time playing ME3.

>>717548904 (OP)
Imagine taking a character you made 2 games prior, and all the save data with it, and seeing everything you worked on get shit on in a very clearly rushed and poorly thought out ending. Imagine the company fucking it up so badly they had to create an extension of that ending to even begin to explain just what the fuck happened.

The whole thing was a shit show that people were understandably upset that their grand adventure spanning 3 games led to a wet fart.

I'm still upset over these.

>>717553729
Any military that had weaponry with effectively unlimited ammo would completely stupid to abandon that for equipment that requires constant reloading and maintenance . Logistics are a huge part of warfare and something that basically solves the supply chain issue is not an advantage you would easily abandon

>>717548904 (OP)
It was that bad. There's zero reason for Control, Synthesis, and Refuse to exist as options or for Shepard to pick them.
But it also makes no sense for Starchild to offer Destroy as an option to Shepard and the existence of the other options weakens Destroy (forcing it to destroy EDI and the Geth as well to make the choice more "equal").
The whole concept for the ending was bad and should have been thrown out.
>but what about my choices throughout the trilogy impacting the ending!
Doesn't matter, players don't actually care. Making "everyone dies" endings that people only watch on youtube is a waste of time and money. Players just want a satisfying story more than anything.
Veilguard tried to address this complaint by showing the factions fighting in the final mission and their success depending on your standing with them. And guess what? No one fucking cared.
They should have scrapped the retarded War Assets system too.

>>717554392
It is when you want to radically change the gameplay of the sequel when people were abusing the infinite ammo system to either shoot forever or fire a shot so powerful it could kill the large Geth weapon platforms in a single shot and wait 5 seconds to cool down and do it again.

>>717548904 (OP)
The original ending was bad but it didn’t make the entire game bad it was still kino. The expanded ending was merely passable.

>>717553098
The leviathans as a species taking over the galaxy and having the Reapers made and the Reapers turning on them and driving them to near extinction completely breaks down if you think about it for more than 5 seconds
They're fucking massive squids that are fully aquatic and are still that way all these gazillions of years later
Yes, they can mind control other living beings (this is never properly explained btw), but that doesn't even come close to explaining everything. It's absurd

>>717554836
>either shoot forever or fire a shot so powerful it could kill the large Geth weapon platforms in a single shot and wait 5 seconds to cool down and do it again.
Isn't that an issue of the weapon modding system that they completely scrapped until they reworked it in three, and then proceeded to remake the original system and all its fuck ups in andromeda.

>>717548904 (OP)
the rejection ending is the only one that makes for a satisfying conclusion, and the game treats it as a nonstandard game over

>>717554836
>at the end of the game when you have explored every nook and cranny, and levelmaxxed, you shouldn't be powerful
fuck off

>>717555326
>yeah but lovecraft did it so its fine

>>717548904 (OP)
Destroy with the extended cut is okay.
The Star Child and the way EDI and the geth also happen to die are still dumb.
Leviathan and Citadel DLCs do make up for it.

>>717549627
How can you forget Tuchanka, Rannoch, and Kai Leng?

>>717548904 (OP)
Post the full image

>>717555423
It's only satisfying because it gives the illusion of player agency, whereas the other options feels like the developers have a gun to your head.
In the story itself, it's a pathetic power trip from Shepard since it's just an infinitely worse version of Destroy.

>>717555756
Is the Citadel dlc where you get the sweet pistol, but have to endure constant quips from every character and fight your clone?

>>717553468
This, a lot of the stuff on ME3 was pretty cool. Anything with Garrus and Tali was great, as usual. Those are pretty much the "canon" duo you gotta go with most of the tome.

>>717556065
I liked the quips.

>>717548904 (OP)
No, it genuinely was that bad. Especially the base version. They added a bunch of shit via updates and shit later but even with all that its really just not good.

Hell, even with the good ending mods its not ideal, even if that's probably as good as it'll get.

>I-IT'S JUST THE ENDING THAT'S BAD

Don’t trust any redditor saying “It’s great, only the ending is bad.” The bulk of the game is a rushed mess of dumbed-down mechanics, bad writing, and forced combat, with only occasional flashes of the old charm. It’s a textbook case of missed potential and studio meddling.

Ignoring the infamous ending let’s talk about the rest. The story introduces a Deus Ex Machina, insisting you must use it to beat the Reapers, then suddenly says resistance forces are somehow holding them back. Which is it? Why is this even a thing when you’ve killed Reapers before both in this game and in others? Cerberus is butchered from a morally grey ME2 faction into cartoonishly evil supervillains with unlimited resources, regardless of past choices.

Most old squadmates get sidelined with shallow ME2 Zaeed/Kasumi-style “conversations” and little plot impact. Neutral dialogue options are gone, Shepard auto-talks constantly and the gritty ME2 style or ME1’s Syd Mead vibes are replaced by a generic plastic-looking sci-fi world. Characters even get weird face-lifts Kelly and Bailey look decades younger for no reason (Something that fucks up everyone in ME1 and 2 in the terrible remaster).

Gameplay is polished but bloated with Dragon Age 2 style forced encounters, turret sections and filler firefights. Multiplayer is fine but drained single-player resources. DLCs range from meh to decent but “Citadel” doesn’t fit the story because BioWare insisted on keeping its terrible endings (likely to be retconned in ME5).

Everyone knows Kai Leng is fanfic-tier garbage so no need to dwell there

TL;DR: It’s not just the ending, Mass Effect 3 is a botched compromised mess from top to bottom.

>>717556368
same. the citadel DLC was cringey as hell but as a final 'okay just have a silly last mission/party with all the squadmates' sort of experience, it felt fitting, like a guilty pleasure or something that you aren't really meant to take that seriously.

>>717548904 (OP)
The whole game is awful. People who go "lol teh ending is bad" are essentially saying "the worst part about getting brutally raped by 15 guys was when one spit in my face at the end."

>>717556439
>Everyone knows Kai Leng is fanfic-tier garbage so no need to dwell there
Kai Leng is one of the most hilariously inept losers in vidya imo, I couldn't imagine him being a fanfic character unless the writer for him is a masochist.

>immerse yourself as the uberchad of humanity
>spend 150 hours uniting the Galaxy
>make lifelong friends
>meet the love of your life
>feel the pain of losing those you care for
>take on the noble role of being the man solely responsible of having the weight of everyone's future resting on your shoulders
>the ultimate gamer power fantasy across multiple games for hours on end
>reach the apex of saving all life in the Galaxy
>finally reach the end
>"Um ackshully CHUD, here's why you're wrong" ;)
>choose the give up ending you feel like a bitch
>choose the destroy ending you feel like an asshole
>choose the synthesis ending you feel like a degenerate
>choose the control ending you feel like a cuck
>no real difference literal colors and very minor cutscenes with no satisfying epilogue
>the extended cut is a slideshow that makes it slightly less shit but still trash

>>717548904 (OP)
On launch it was that horrendous but the dlc made it alright. Nothing crazy, still probably a letdown to some, but nothing people would be writing articles over if it came out today.

>>717556439
people love the melodrama of the geth conflict, but me3 completely ruined geth imo
instead of actually original synthetic lifeform they devolved into regular pinocchios who want to be like organics with the help of reapers completely shitting on your legion loyalty mission choice in the process

>>717557304
You could real sense the writting staff struggled to understand the concept of the geth. In 3 Shep is practically pants on head retarded to just accept giving all geth 'reaper code' without understanding or questioning total geth numbers. Though that same mission seemed to imply geth aren't producing new individual geth code

I don't know what any of you are talking about. My playthrough of ME3 was fucking great. I don't know what you mean by starchild or colors, though. I just had a kino last conversation with Anderson before firing the Crucible.

>>717548904 (OP)
I just remember egoraptor defending it for some retarded reason, he is never right about anything. Also:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VWmZb1Z0edY&pp=ygUVRWdvcmFwdG9yIG1hc3MgZWZmZWN0

>>717553729
It would've been alright if Bioware didn't change it at the last second to appease their mouth breathing play testers and stuck with the original design.

>>717553729
I'm still upset about that retarded shuttle to nowhere in ME2. It is imo the single dumbest moment in an entire trilogy full of stupid writing and really made me wish for whoever wrote that scene to be killed.

>>717548904 (OP)
i fucking loved it at the time. i did shit my own way and everything got messed up, tali fucking killed herself it was great and very memorable. i didn't give a shit about all the haters because games *rarely* have an actual ending, instead opting for infinite sequels. gameplay was fire, story was solid. yeah the pick 3 ending was gay but i was a libtard at the time so it hit hard when i picked green

>>717557967
christ, you are the exact kind of person EA was targeting with their "we want COD audience" marketing bs for ME3

>>717556439
The Tuchanka/Palaven plot gets praised but it's incredibly retarded.
Why does Shepard need a 50 IQ race whose only use is as ground troops? The Reapers are massive flying sentient spaceships. He needs scientists to help build the Crucible and possibly spaceships as they might help in distracting the Reapers in space warfare
In-universe Shepard is a massive retard if he rejects the Dalatress' offer of sabotaging the Krogan in exchange for the best Salarian scientists to assist with the Crucible
Even the asspull Miracle of Palaven struggles to explain why the krogan were actually needed (the turians do everything themselves)

>>717548904 (OP)
Even if the ending wasn't a complete nothingburger of 'well...actually your choices didn't matter at all. Now pick a colour', Kai Leng's existence alone would make ME3 absolutely terrible. DMNPC tier bullshit.

>>717558919
>DMNPC
DMPC, sorry.

>>717548904 (OP)
I eagerly await the mess that will be the next Mass Effect title
>Have to pick one of the three endings as canon
>All the woke shit they'll implant into Liara
>Broken, boring gameplay to appeal to roasties
It's going to be an absolute shit show

>>717549627
I still crack up at that "child" shilouette

>>717552724
I'll let you know that we know you're a zoomer faggot that didn't actually play the series when it released. NonI will no elaborate

>>717549374
kill yourself

>>717553468
Except plenty of people at the time had the same sentiment as you.

I like that ME3 removed the neutral options from the dialogue wheel. I always thought why the fuck are they even there, especially when the previous games punish you by picking them by depriving you of points you need for charm/intimidate.

>>717558734
Seriously look at how fucking massive this reaper is. It's bigger than the fucking city and there's tens of thousands of them. No amount of soldiers will help you when this thing can crush like 5000 people with every step.

>>717548904 (OP)
The ending is fine. Bioware shouldn't have lied about how diverse it could be for each player, and the players shouldn't have believed them given their track record, however.

>>717555580
I never said that, retard-kun, BioWare did when they removed the modding system and the infinite ammo from ME2.

>>717558734
the reapers arent very efficient for culling entire populations. their slaves would be doing the heavy lifting. so ground troops are still useful. i do think the reapers are a shit villain for vidya though. unfightable, unwinnable, unknowable. wow, awesome, so what the fuck can you do with that?

I liked it. People were just mad that thegame didn't give them a perfect ending for everything they did 15 years ago.

Deal with it. It was good.

>>717557304
I was absolutely baffled by the choice in ME3 to make them all individuals, like, that wasn't even remotely a problem with their existence? They were just different, like the Rachni. They had thought and consciousness specifically BECAUSE of their semi-hive mind status linking together in the consensus, making each unit an individual out of nowhere just makes no fucking sense.

Even Legion, who was 'more' of an individual unit than the rest, was still basically just a mobile server for a bunch of geth runtimes, he wasn't just 1 guy but like a city of people in one body.

>>717548904 (OP)
It was worse than just that bad. We'll see what they throw up next game but after Veilguard, I'm not hopefull.

>>717560452
The idea with an unknowable cuthulu enemy like the reapers was to moreso focus on the way that they affect the people and rest of the world (or in this case, the galaxy), they're more of an influence rather than actual direct villains (or at least, that's how ME1 set them up)

Thats why ME1 so heavily focused on Saren and indoctrination as a concept, Sovereign was THERE, sure, but he was more like a monster or a sentient natural disaster rather than someone that Shepard could have actual beef with.

>>717552724
The three colors were based and red was the correct one. People got mad about having a gay ending, because they got indoctrinated and assraped by the Reapers.

>blue
>control
The Illusive man tried to do this and he was indoctrinated.

>green
>synthesis
Saren tried to do this and he was indoctrinated.

>red
>destroy
Only Shepard did this and he fucking won.

>>717548904 (OP)
It was. The game was advertised and a mega series where all your choices mattered, but in the end of the day it all boiled to
>red ending
>blue ending
>green ending
If it at least developed those endings more, like explaining what happened to the galaxy after it, what consequences each had and whatnot, it wouldn't be bad, but it didn't (at least not in the original version).

Ideally, they should've also acknowledged some major choices you did, as well as the fate of each of your companions.

>>717560452
They were efficient when we knew less about their methods. Hearing it as them slowly going from planet to planet, culling the populations as they stay helpless and isolated from the wider galaxy...that's good horror writing. To a machine that has all the time in the world, what is a few centuries to enact total annihilation of a interstellar species?

>>717553729
THIS. There should've been more guns that had infinite ammo.

>>717560762
The game actually has a ton of interaction with previous choices and touches on basically every character from all 3 games, and wraps every major event in the story. It really shouldve had an entire epilogue though instead of abruptly ending after flipping the macguffin switch.

So we all agree that 2 was the peak of the series, and better than anything Japan shit out?

>>717560762
>never got around to playing ME until the LE came out
>played through the trilogy knowing that the finale was going to be ass
>get to it
>"That was shit, but I was expecting something legendarily bad."
>remembered that the LE comes with all the previous DLC
>look up the original ending without the extended ending DLC
>mfw

Holy shit I'm glad I didn't play the games until somewhat recently.

>>717559252
Surely Bioware has to actually try to make a good game now right? How has thst studio not gotten shut down when they haven't had anything decent for like 15 years ?

>>717558734
those 50 IQ idiots are walking tanks. Krogan's are powerhouses, even Thane himself alludes to it on his journal on the Shadow Brokers terminal. There's a reason they are terrified across the galaxy if they gett back to their old numbers.
I'm not saying they're unstoppable, but the Reapers DO have ground forces themselves and the Krogan's are a damn good defense line. Besides, following your logic, it's effectively 'doing nothing'. Sabotaging the Krogans with Dalatrass's plan still has Shepard getting Krogan support, and their full support of Wreav is in charge.

>>717561117
I still prefer 1. If only Andromeda didn't have such a shit story and awful characters...

With DAV they saw the nightmare that was ME3 choice importing and said fuck that LOL
I hate to imagine how much time and money they wasted with all the Mordin/not-Mordin Wrex/not-Wrex type bullshit. And they only had 2 years for that game
Some of the missions oddly work a lot better if the squadmate is dead though. The Ardat-Yakshi Monastery and Grissom Academy in particular. The characters in those missions step up and the stakes are higher e.g. one of the Grissom Academy students sacrifices themselves so the rest can escape

>>717562361
Yeah no one else has even attempted what Bioware did. You get some choices here and there but not entire characters and plots changed.

>>717562361
>Some of the missions oddly work a lot better if the squadmate is dead though. The Ardat-Yakshi Monastery
You can't get the edgekino ending to it if Samara is already dead.

>>717553468
>it clouded everyone's judgement about ME3 as a whole and people act like the game has ZERO good writing
The problem is that when you think about what's actually good about ME3s writing, nine times out of ten you're going to be thinking of a squadmates personal story or your relation to them as opposed to the actual plot of the game. It doesn't subtract from the merits of those character stories, but the writers do get a few cheat cards that they clearly relied on that couldn't be played for the main storyline. Would the conflict of Tali and Legion be anywhere near as impact impactful without the personalities of each being so memorable, and would it have distracted from the honestly kinda contrived finale to their stories?

>>717548904 (OP)
BioWare had to make Andromeda to move on from the Milky Way story, so yeah.

>>717553468
was 3 the one where the colonel father figure guy dies? that moment was kino

>>717548904 (OP)
yeah, absolutely. we were led on and lied to by the devs and journalists. I hope people never forgive the faggots responsible for this mess

>>717548904 (OP)
The ending was shit but also people expected too much from a game that only had 2 years of development time.

>>717553098
>leviathan dlc is the worth me3 dlc
Leviathan DLC is weird, it's one of the quests that's the most similar to the mission style of ME1, but it's rapes the lore. I wish ME2 and 3 were more investigation style stuff, like Noveria or Feros, instead we got generic shooter.

>>717549243
Being a contrarian is not a personality.

>>717558193
hey fagtard, ive been gaming since birth bitch. i've fucked more women than you've touched and i did it as a champion in rocket league, a plat teemo in league, beat dyson sphere program, factorio, bitch im smarter and taller than you. i watched my dead beat the original metroid while he watched me be super mario bros 3. thousands of hours in the fallouts, in wow, in all the gtas. YOU are an imbecile. stay sad, nihilist.

>fan-made theories better and more consistent than official canon
mass erect was shit
so was the shit they ripped it from (revelation space) which was a trilogy that got a 4th novel entry 20 years later

post top played

>>717565147
Correct. You're looking at the general consensus. ME1 is the least liked game in the series by far, and that includes the original botched ME3 ending. Excellent sense of self-awareness and self-criticism. You're on the right track and know what to change to develop a personality.

>>717565260
Literal fucking normalfag taste

>>717561230
>>717548904 (OP)
I'm not mad, because I read the leaks before the release and I knew the game's gonna be ass in advance, so I didn't have to buy or play it.

>>717560746
> Saren tried to do this
Did he? Its been a while since I played the first game, but I only recall him naïvely hoping that if he helps the reapers/proves he can be useful to them then he and maybe at least SOME other remaining peoples in the current top races might be allowed to survive the purge as helpers/slaves.

It was a desperate plan to survive, since Saren had completely given up hope that the reapers could be defeated. Other than that he was just semi-borged out in a similar way to TIM.

>>717560746
>synthesis
>Saren tried to do this and he was indoctrinated.
Wat

>>717549243
hilarious how it's been long enough that casualfags will out themselves so brazenly

>>717548904 (OP)
Bit of both. Saying that people would have been far less mad about it if BioWare hadn't blatantly lied about the ending possibilities.
Indoctrination theory is still gay and retarded, by the way.

>>717554392
>>717553729
It improved the gameplay.

>>717568214
No.

>>717567331
>>717567574
nta
Saren didn't want literal synthesis exactly like the ending of ME3 where humans and toasters become one, he just wanted organics to create a side by side union with the reapers because he thought (and of course his thoughts were eventually warped to fuck by indoctrination) that any other course of action would result in the death of everybody.
At least that's what I think anon was trying to say.

>>717548904 (OP)
it's not just the ending, mass effect 3 as a whole is a terrible game

Mass Effect 1 had a somewhat ok story (more of a lore dump than a proper story)

Mass Effect 2 had no core story, just companions recruitment/loyalty quests

Mass Effect 3 had a fucking mess of a core story as a consequence of the above and the ending was an asspull which made everyone feel scammed

>>717565260
>using rocket league and league of legends for posturing
truly peak /v/eddit

>>717568214
>>717568291
Forgive me for the food analogy
>ME1: attempt to fuse several types of food together in a unique way, end result is tasty enough but kind of weird and lumpy
>ME2+: aww fuck it, here's a good burger

>>717548904 (OP)
its not that bad, its worse.

>>717568214
if you're a mongoloid, sure

>>717548904 (OP)
The whole game is bad, the ending is just another drop of shit into the bucket

>>717568214
Correct, but /v/ isn't ready to admit that.

DA2 and ME3 made me a racist

>>717557304
The staff of 3 were completely out of sync with what's in the 1st and 2nd game
Hell the 3rd games writers feel like they just didn't talk to each other in some cases with them screaming that the Reapers were unbeatable indestructible monsters but then you get conversations with some characters and plotlines where they go "yeah resistance groups are hitting back and holding their ground"

>>717548904 (OP)
The ending was only the final problem of a giant pile of utter dogshit. ME3 fucking sucked ass from the start. The opening alone is a fetid turd. The fact that even the bottom dwellers known as Bioware fans hate it should say enough.

>>717548904 (OP)
it's worse than many people claim these days. The entire game sucks, not just the ending and the multiplayer is a tacked on horde mode every shovelware game at the time had.

The massive coordinated response from the gaming press blaming players for daring to call it bad really tells you everything you need to know

>>717548904 (OP)
>last words of the trilogy were downloadable content
Hell yeah I'm still mad.

Mass Effect 1 was the best because it let you drive a monster truck and gave you unlimited ammo. The other two games sucked.

>>717548904 (OP)
It was pretty funny how badly it ended. I was really invested in the series and I distinctly remember thinking I must be missing the true ending even though I had 100% readiness and all that. Took me a solid week to accept that Red/Blue/Green was it. The game itself was a let down too, so many clearly cut corners. Truly is crazy how badly BiowarEA handled that franchise, Dragon's Age as well.

>>717548904 (OP)
>was Mass Effect 3's ending really that bad
it was worse. the worst ending of all media that's ever existed: no movie, tv show, game, or anime has ever even approached the depths of garbage ending that ME3 had. if you combined the endings of GOT season 8, end of evangelion, and attack on titan into one, it would still be about 10,000% better than the ending of mass effect 3. i fell into an actual full-blown depression for like two or three days after completing it. i'll still be seething about it when 95 years old on my deathbed.

>>717548904 (OP)
>promise branching story based on choices
>choices actually just change one or two things in self contained scenario
>rushed 3 endings that are 80% the same cutscene but recolored
>ending has nothing to do with choices you just walk into doors
>all 3 endings are massive "okay the universe ending threat is resolved just like that!" rugpulls
>not even the courtesy of giving you ending slides to see what your choices ultimately led to
literal scam

>>717561219
The ending isn't even that bad when you consider how bad ME3 was overall.

>>717548904 (OP)
The endings were hilariously bad but that was expected. They've written themselves into a corner the moment they've decided they need to write a concrete win against the Reapers once and for all. ME3 in general was pretty damn bad but it was especially bad because those were the times people still had big expectations from game franchises. Pretty sure Mass Effect contributed greatly to people becoming a lot more jaded about vidya.

>>717549029
while a complete waste of time masseffect2 wasnt that bad. well when you though hey the third games going to be good it was acceptable.
then 3 was shit and kinda ruined it.

>>717548904 (OP)
i havent played it because i didnt forgive them for mass effect 2.
really, i have barely any idea how bad it is,

>>717572164
>and the multiplayer is a tacked on horde mode

It was still easily the best part of the game. Actually getting to play as all the cool alien characters instead of just a human was fun and it fit well with the squad based gameplay

>>717548904 (OP)
I'm still mad to this day. I completed Mass Effect 3 on launch and despite the series being my favourite at the time I've never replayed a single Mass Effect game since. I can't when I know how hard the third game fucks the setting and plot over.

>>717572985
>Pretty sure Mass Effect contributed greatly to people becoming a lot more jaded about vidya.
it absolutely did. that was the first time in my life that i felt actual genuine hate for a video game and the people that made it. i've played plenty of bad games, but it was always easy enough to shrug, drop them, and never think about them again. ME3 has me seething and feeling a pit of rage in my stomach just thinking about it 13 years (and counting) later. no other game has ever come close. it was the vidya equivalent of getting cheated on.

>>717573254
This
Spammy and fun with friends and total fanservice material letting you play with all the aliens you wanted
It was simple and there was a grindy/p2w elements but playing as a biotic volus made it all worth it

>>717573403
>it was the vidya equivalent of getting cheated on.
This. I was genuinely depressed when I completed 3 due to how shit everything was. 1 and 2 made me feel like we were experiencing the video game equivalent of Star Wars and then 3 came along where they removed all the RPG stuff and dumbed down the plot in case newbies got confused. I hate EA so fucking much.

>BF6 EA shills playing damage control to a 13 year old PR fuckup
Hilarious

>>717573254
what they should have done is to make a proper mass effect co-op game with various characters

>>717548904 (OP)
Besides what other anons have mentioned already, ME3 was a horrible experience for me because it gave off the rotting dead stench from Bioware that could later on be seen with Andromeda. The studio that made ME all those years ago isn't there anymore, a bunch of shit happened during all the time between ME1 to ME3 and it resulted in the rather disappointing ending to the BIG space opera RPG trilogy that we don't see that often anymore, especially in the bigger productions.

ME4 is going to be a fucking dumpsterfire as well, and EA will take Bioware back to the old family farm in the countryside for it.

>>717573572
>EA will take Bioware back to the old family farm in the countryside for it
stop, i can only get so erect.

>>717573628
I ain't cumming until EA is burning

>>717573739
You might be edging for quite a while, at best I see EA getting absorbed by some other corporation. Probably Tencent.

>>717548904 (OP)
its bad and im still mad

>>717554392
more shit for weapons manufacturers to sell = they would absolutely abandon convenience.

>>717548904 (OP)
>ending
The entire game was bad, and that was clear from the moment the child was introduced.

>>717574131
Thermal cells are the smartphones of MEverse, they ruined entire generations after a good thing was going.

>>717573532
Meds

>>717548904 (OP)
If you've only played the patched version then you don't know how bad it originally was:
The ending cutscene used to be completely identical except for the colour of the wave that expands out, that's lazy as fuck, also in this version every ending destroyed the mass relays, which the codex saids would destroy whatever solar system the mass relay was in, so they ignored their own lore.

You know the cutscene before Shepard runs down the hill, where he gets the Normandy to pick up his squad? That was patched in, originally you go from a cutscene of him giving a rousing speech to the squad, then it cuts to black and he's running down the hill alone, before it all goes to shit, and the next time you see your squad is on the Normandy as Joker is trying to escape.

Which leads me to the next point: there was no context for why Joker was trying to do a mass relay jump DURING THE FINAL BATTLE FOR THE GALAXY, the last we heard of him was that he was fighting in orbit wiht the rest of the alliance fleet, then we see a cutscene of him running away through a mass relay whilst the energy wave goes out. It looks like he decided to abandon everyone.

There was no "wrap up" cutscene, the last time you saw your squad they were now stranded on a random jungle planet, and even if they fix the Normandy and get off the planet, they are completely stuck in system because in the original ending, ALL the mass relays blew up, meaning no more travelling between solar systems for any race.
This also means that the ENTIRE GALACTIC ARMADA is now stranded orbiting Earth, they can't go back to their home planets or anything, they are trapped in our solar system

All of this is on top of the final boss being Marauder Shields, the terrible dialogue battle with the Illusive Man where he barely puts up a fight, and then the COMPLETELY RETARDED STARCHILD SITUATION happens and they say "pick ending A, B, or C" when Cory Hudson EXPLICITLY said it wouldn't be like that before release.

>>717573572
Andromeda was a dumpster fire, but it did have vastly improved gameplay over the original trilogy.

>>717553729
They tried to explain it away with Conrad Verner who still had a gun without thermal clips in ME3.
The explanation if you didn't know? A gun with thermal clips is a lot more powerful than a gun without them.

>>717574359
I wouldn't know if I can agree to that, although my experience was limited to pirating the game right as it came out and the gameplay was not that amazing. Also it was plagued with bugs. Game kept locking up at random for me as well during combat, all the music and particle effect animations were still playing fine but the game just hang up. It was exceptionally fun when it happened like a hour since last autosave spot. God, it was so bad. Hilarious experience in a way. Like watching a trainwreck hit a clown school. A horrible tragedy for sure, but you can only laugh.

>>717549374
ME1 at least still had good sci-fi world building.

>>717574548
True, should've clarified that the combat in Andromeda is pretty good whenever the game wasn't shitting itself. I dropped it after it crashed on me 3 times, remember making it to some ice planet.

>>717574650
I figure all the bugs and the honestly horrible storywriting in Andromeda just poisoned the rest of the experience for me anyway. At least all the memories of the stupid bullshit I encountered while I forced my way through the game will live with me forever.

>>717549029
ME2 is the worst part of trying to import a fresh save into 3, barely stomach it.

50 hours space opera galaxy-spanning adventure kino in ME1, only to go right into 50 hours of endlessly dull cover shooting, tryhard character plots, and planet probing crap. It's a spinoff, mass effect is a 2 game series with a spinoff.

The year is 2025.
I am still mad.
Thankfully I pirated ME and I haven't given Bioware or EA one cent since that time I purchased the Baldur's Gate 2 box some decade and a half ago.

are the mass effect games playable by todays standards? wanted to try them but they feel a bit too "retro" for me nowadays

>>717575202
No. There are literally thousands of better games you can pirate right now, spread across dozens of genres along with bizzaro niche games that defy categorization.

>>717575202
kinda
they arent as bad as other games from that era if you ignore the menus.
the graphics and controls are still acceptable

>>717568214
Not really. You can still explain away the systems by doing something like required "reloads" for weapons without having to completely have limited ammo, but the only real reason they seriously exist is to limit players from just abusing shit like the sniper rifles with impunity while trend-following other cover shooter titles of the era.
The community has thought of better ways to handle it, I'm sure, but in general it threw the baby out with the bath water. It's fine to enjoy the gameplay of the sequels, lord knows I do, but taking out a unique element to homogenize it with the rest of the industry is still a detriment to the series in that sense.

>>717548904 (OP)
Mass Effect 2 was infinitely worse and killed any potential the series had

>>717575202
2 and 3 are playable by today's standards (ending notwithstanding), but 1 aged poorly in terms of gameplay, even if it has the advantage of establishing the setting.

>>717548904 (OP)
3's ending was so bad people didn't give a shit about Andromeda.

>>717575202
just as anon said, 1 really hasn't aged well. I still think it's worth a playthrough, purely for the setting and atmosphere, and also to experience how much they butchered the series as it went on.
Andromeda is okay at best after the patches. The story, dialogue, and characters will disgust you, but the gameplay isn't bad. It's much better with some mods, but worth a try if pirating.

>>717574335
>the final boss being Marauder Shields
The greatest hero the galaxy ever saw. He tried to keep us from the ending.

Unless the next ME game just completely retcons ME3's ending within the first 10 minutes, and it has to be HEAVILY advertised beforehand, the game is going to bomb. And that's not even considering how bad the writing will be with current Bioware, which will also be a reason people don't buy it.

>>717575946
>Unless the next ME game just completely retcons ME3's ending within the first 10 minutes
They're just gonna go off of Destroy, 100%. Then yada-yada Shepard is rescued from the rubble, relays are rebuilt (bullshit, but whatever), galactic society moves on, timeskip to ME4.

>>717576004
With how bad they fucked things up, I bet someone over there thought about an alternate timeline where the Reaper bullshit isn't a thing but there's some other vague big bad bullshit that is threatening the galaxy. Wham bam thank you that's another trilogy ma'am.

>>717575946
Modern Bioware is what scares me the most. You could make something out of the mess that is 3 even without retcons but I have zero faith today's Bioware can do it and the fact we have heard nothing for years is a sign they are fucked.

>>717548904 (OP)
In first two games your dialogue options changed the endings completely and chose which characters died. In third game the ending is the same.

>>717548904 (OP)
The whole franchise was bad. The ending was just dudebro xbox 12 year olds getting what they deserved.

>>717548904 (OP)
3s ending was bad but also the rest of the games writing was bad.
>Genophage plot
Probably the only alright narrative but still relies on this childishly stupid "Wrex and Bakara will be really good role models for their entire race" to wave away another Krogan rebellion.
>Quarian Plot
Ruined by retconning the fundamental nature/motives of the Geth, the events of the Morning War, and having this really fucking retarded pro-Geth bias that refuses to portray them as a networked intelligence or even a machine intelligence.

Also Shep looks at Reaper AI and calls it "life", what the fuck does that even mean? Why would Shep have anything good to say about Reaper AI or think it should form the basis of all synthetic lifeforms? Fucking moron writers.
>Cerberus plot
Ruined by Kai Leng, also TIM kinda just seems like a low IQ tard with no contingencies for indoctrination.
>DLCs
Citadel was full retard goofy clown shit while the rest of the game is a complete downer, should have had a balance. It's extra twisted because everyone on the Citadel is murdered and harvested off-screen when the Reapers take control of it.

Leviathan basically ruins all threat and mystery the Reapers had left, also there's no option to genocide the inventors of the Reapers yet you can genocide the Rachni for getting indoctrinated.

Omega is alright but kinda boring + wasted a fem Tur.

>>717549029
ME2 was kino. Basically an action movie in a videogame format. Yes, it's not Star Trek, but more of a Star Wars. Nothing wrong with that.

>>717576715
>Leviathan basically ruins all threat and mystery the Reapers had left
Should have been some apex species that went into hiding or the absolute peak of some monsterous species whose kind got wiped out. Makes zero sense for these giant squids to be able to hide like this.

>>717560807
I think my biggest issue with the ME franchise is how they fucked up the reapers so badly. Personally, I think ME as a trilogy should have focused on finding a way of stopping the reapers from arriving, maybe having you rally entire fleets to fight a single one at crucial moments like they did at the end of ME1. The game would then be a combination of dealing with indoctrinated agents of the reapers and doing research on how to delay or stop the squids. They also gave you a perfect team for this task in ME1 with Liara and Tali an the ancient artifact/ancient tech side, Garrus with knowledge of police work/getting you places and Wrex being your personal tank.

ME2 would be a fine game in isolation with more focus on interpersonal drama, but it does fuck all to the greater plot of the trilogy.

Having you take on the army of reapers in ME3 with the only solution being a deus ex machina was a retarded writing decision.

>>717564701
kek those missions from Hackett really did sound like procedurally generated slop

>>717577656
Rose tinted glasses blind people from seeing ME1 is like that for the majority of it's side quests/ exploration. They use the same tilesets over and over.

>>717578003
Didn't Bioware also go with the same sort of decision for "just use the same fucking map but shuffle some objects around" sidequest area design with Dragon Age 2?

>>717577656
Doesn't help his voice is so low and monotone lol.

>>717553729
You have every right to be. If Bioware cannot respect its players intelligence then neither should we care for the garbage they put out. Anyone who thinks they genuinely liked ME1 should seriously at least question why ME2 altered so much of the background lore. It was a huge part of the first game. Or I guess apparently not many people cared to listen to the narrator talk about these things.

It took Star Wars multiple movies and more than one decade to start ruining its lore. Mass Effect did it after just one game and a couple of years and they also did it far harder than Star Wars ever did.

>>717568214
Running around praying for some ammo to drop wasn't an improvement.

>>717578604
My favorite part about the thermal cell change was Jacob's sidequest, where you can find a load of those thermal cells anywhere you would want in a gunfight when the people on that planet had been stranded and lost over there for over a decade already.

As much as 2 is my favorite ME game, I will admit that the fact that it does fucking nothing to advance the plot certainly didn't help out 3 needing to play catch up with the main story of the series.

>>717548904 (OP)
I've forgotten what the ending was even about but it made sure that i haven't bought a single EA or Bioslop game since.

>>717575129
>since that time I purchased the Baldur's Gate 2 box some decade and a half ago
Baldur's Gate 2 is 25 years old

>>717548904 (OP)
It was bad, but it was made worse by how good the rest of the series had been. The ending to the first game was one of the best game endings I've ever seen; When the music swells and Shepard appears, it makes my chest swell.
Game 2 had excellent characters and story, but fumbled it's ending by having a really silly boss fight after an exciting "who will survive?" run up.
The third game being a culmination of everything you've done before, tying together so many stories... into having NO effect on the ending. Regardless of what you did for the past three games, you get access to all the same endings, why? So players wouldn't miss out? Do they not want people to want to play again? I certainly didn't, knowing that my playthrough was irrelevant.

So, no, it sucked pretty bad. Not the worst ever. That I still give to Bioshock Infinite.

>>717565260
>calling people "haters" for not liking an ending that is almost universally agreed upon to be shit
>have to list your gaming cred by saying you've been playing since childhood
>something about having sex with women
Actually, you're probably just shitposting

>>717548904 (OP)
>trilogy about how one man unites various companions and does the job with power of friendship
>companions just fucking leave before the end and Shepard faces Marauder Shields alone
>oh, here's what it all boils down - conflict between Anderson and Illusive Man, and Shepard in-between them. Symbolic, me1 started with Anderson and me3 ends with Anderson, haha... That decimates all the meaningful connections Shepard made through 3 games, it's all about Anderson and him again. Companions? Fuck them, they were temporary.
>Starbrat
It was awful. 3 colored toilet cabins were not as insulting as leaving companions behind.

>>717548904 (OP)
3 in general was bad
2 was also bad but 3 was extremely bad

>>717548904 (OP)
I miss mass effect so much bros. I am so tired of every original sci-fi game being hard sci-fi with just humans where's the unique races the strange aliens and cultures and shit. Why are people so uncreative now?

>>717580563
Space opera games aren't in vogue anymore. I wouldn't say they are in great demand in other media either at the time. No reason to bother with a product there isn't a lot of people clamoring for in this era where you need to have a proven formula to get the funding you need.

>>717548904 (OP)
This reeks of a bioware influencer thread.
Kill yourself.

>>717548904 (OP)
It was awful, and the last mission was even worse, which they never even tried to fix. You don't get the feeling of "one last ride with your bros" from it, never get to see the army you put together, aside from a few moments that are largely the same for everyone.
>here's your excel spreadsheet, now fuck off
They literally just had to copy New Vegas.

>>717549029
Someone on /v/ spoiled the ending of ME2 before I finsihed it, collected humans are being used to make a human reaper, final boss is a giant retarded terminator skeleton and I spent the rest of my playthrough coping that it was just some bullshit he made up.

>>717580994
Bioware-esque rpg games were just proven by baldursgate 3 to be in demand and you're gonna spout this drivel instead of acknowledging the highest grossing bioware game ever was ME? Owlcat is literally trying to copy ME right now and so is larian they are both trying to put out a sci-fi opera. Problem is owlcat has no aliens in their fucking setting and we dont know what larian's game looks like yet to see if it also fails prey to the stupid as shit hard sci-fi hole

>>717579752
>That I still give to Bioshock Infinite.
How is it worse than ME3? The multiverse stuff and time travel is stupid, but it's self-contained in a way that you can just ignore it and enjoy the two previous games as a complete experiences. With Mass Effect, I feel like I was cheated out of what the trilogy could have been for the rest of time.

>>717581126
based

>people talking about ME1 being too old to play
nuke this board

>>717581126
>This reeks of a bioware influencer thread.
The game is on sale, so they keep spamming threads to get engagement.

>>717548904 (OP)
I recognise that comic

>>717548904 (OP)
Overreact. Its a dogshit ending but ME2 already took the story off the rails, so ME3 had to course correct and refocus on the Reapers AND conclude the conflict within the same game.

Plus it had amazing multiplayer.

>>717581126
There are ME threads every day anon

>>717576724
It was heavily inspired by capeshit movies.
>let's collect a ragtag group of super powered misfits to exchange quippy dialogue with
The soul of ME died with ME1, like the soul of DA died with DAO. Both universes dies in the crib because Bioware and EA are shit and more focused on chasing trends than writing.

>>717572385
Haha hyperbole is so funny

>>717573523
Mass Effect 3 > Return of the Jedi

>>717581346
I thought owlcat is doing more 40k? What other games are they doing

The problem with mass effect was that the scenario they presented in 1 and 2 was realistically unsolvable. They hyped the villain reapers so hard that it made no sense you would even win. And even if you come up with an ending that isn't deus ex machina good luck tying that to adventure of one person (shepard).

>>717582653
There were plenty of avenues after ME1 to develop the story in a direction not requiring a deus ex machina. Off the top of my head, going to find research from previous cycles that allow us to understand the mass relay tech and preventing the reapers from using it would be an obvious choice. It was established in ME1 that the reapers would need a relay to jump to us or it would take forever for them to make their way through space. ME2 is the game that fucked that up.

>>717581951
Capeshit didn't really exist yet back then. It's just a good action movie trope.
As for the dialogue, it wasn't that bad.

I wish Mass Effect had been rebooted with Renegade Reinterpretations instead.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7170477/1/Renegade-Reinterpretations

>>717548904 (OP)
ME went downhill when Shepard was killed and resurrected in ME2.

>>717548904 (OP)
Didn't they spend the entire time hyping up how every decision you made through the trilogy was going to effect the games end and in the end it was just a hallway with red, blue, and a green door?

>>717582483
The expanse. It's literally mass effect down to being a 3rd person cover shooters rpg.

>>717548904 (OP)
I think the fact that destroy was presented as the renegade choice really messed with people.
They'd pick the brainwashing/reaperswinlol endings and get confused.

Why is every Asari we see in the trilogy hotter than Liara? What were they thinking?

>>717584531
>The expanse
Oh shit I really liked those books

>>717581346
Huh, I must have missed Owlcat and Larian doing that then. I thought spess opera was just ignored by anyone. Then again the last time I paid any real attention was when they announced that new Stargate game and it turned out to be just bad. Guess I'll check into those two you mentioned then, thanks.

>>717584627
It fits was paragon and renegade stood for in ME1 before 2 and 3 made them into bad guy and good guy
>renegade: get the job done, no matter the cost.
>paragon: try to help and save as many people as possible, even if it risks the mission

>>717584752
She’s a child (by asari standards) you sick fuck.

>>717548904 (OP)
Oh it was bad, but not nearly as bad as the rest of the fucking game.

>>717584376
There it is

>>717585153
I'm talking about her face lack of markings and eye colour. She gets mogged by every Asari we meet in the trilogy.

>>717548904 (OP)
people criticised how lazy the ending was not that the ending went against what they wanted to see story wise

The reapers motives should never have been explained and they also should never have entered the galaxy, or at least if they did it would be a game over

>>717584907
Now I feel bad for being needlessly aggressive towards you. There's actually 3 the expanse Osiris reborn (owlcat), larian's unnamed game, and a game by mass effect 1-2's lead writer Drew Karpyshyn and the old project lead at bioware who did bg1-2, NWN, Kotor, and DA origins james ohlen that is being bank rolled by hasbro that I'm cautiously excited for since hasbro fucks up everything: exodus

>>717575202
> too "retro"
Are you a child? What the fuck do you mean??

>>717585864
Nah it's my fault for not keeping up. Maybe this is a sign that there will be more expansive scifi games made in the future. I do remember hearing about Exodus though, it seems interesting for sure and Karpyshyn being involved has me mildly hopeful. Not so sure what I think about the mecha bear though, I've always preferred when creatures in scifi are some sort of alien creatures rather than just an Earth creature that's slapped with some scifi machinery bullshit, but oh well. Here's to hoping for the best.

>>717585864
>a game by mass effect 1-2's lead writer Drew Karpyshyn
This is the first time I'm hearing about this and it's making me excited. Loved his ME books as a teen and was obsessed with ME1 at the time.

>>717586069
I have faith in James and Drew, given I hate the lame approach with some things they are doing like the bear and seemingly no sentient aliens but they have proven themselves before and there's next to nothing out about the game yet. my only big worry is wizards of the coast being overbearing like they were with larian and fucking everything up.

>>717585864
God I hope it means a resurgence of scifi
It's a criminally underrated genre in games

>>717568214
Ammo and reloading are tried and true mechanics but not the way they work in ME2. I'm pretty sure they just poof into the fucking environment the moment you run out. It's absolute trash.

>>717586043
ME1 is a retro game now anon. Game's gonna be 20 years old soon.

>>717548904 (OP)
Yeah because the writer claimed that all the choices you made throughout the trilogy would matter and affect the ending. In reality the only decision that matters is the final one the catalyst proposes. Then the devs had the balls to add a message about buying the season pass and future DLC when the credits rolled.

It's by far the worst ending in video game history because it retroactively makes the previous two games pointless and the act of playing them demoralizing.

>>717586763
7th gen will never be retro

>>717588343
it will and you will keep crying about it

>>717575347
I agree. It was done just to be in line with other shooters and for balance reasons, but it felts a bit artificial. Like >>717554392 said, it is completely unrealistic lore-wise for any combatant to stop using guns with essentially infinite ammo, at least completely.

I guess one way to balance would be to make just some weapons (perhaps the strongest ones, or special categories of weapons) have ammo, or perhaps the player could choose between weapons that did or did not use ammo, each with their own advantage/disadvantage.

>>717548904 (OP)
Yes, it was.

>>717590286
The sensible option would be a hybrid system with regular weapon cooldown and heatsinks you can pop if you need more firepower right now
But that was probably to complicated for the testers or something

>>717548904 (OP)
It was exactly that bad. The whole of 3 was mostly a misfire but with enough redeeming moments that it COULD have stuck the landing. It would've never lived up to the potential the trilogy still had left (yes, even after ME2) but it would've upheld an OVERALL level of quality that cemented the trilogy as a hallmark.

Now it feels more like a Harry Potter. Like, we all know Harry Potter, but we also easily associate it as a really geeky series for weird fangirls with harry potter tattoos.

Mass Effect has become the same but it's just bisexual kink fetishist libtards who cry about Mording's 10 second death scene that happened spontaneously and was only as central to ME3 as Fai Dan's self-headshot was on Feros in ME1.

>>717574335
This post jostled my memory a bit and now I remember. It was actually so fucking bad. I remember people desperately coming up with the indoctrination theory and spending more time on that than BioWare did on the actual ending. Like, people using the horrible inconsistencies and pure nonsense to conclude it couldn't possibly be real and must have been an indoctrination illusion. And then BioWare shutting it down. You had to be there to see it, it was so unbelievably bad. I've seen some theories saying the ME3 ending disaster was a prelude to GamerGate, because BioWare were obviously paying outlets to do damage control. And the fact that to this day threads about this have so much replies is a testament to the scale of this shitstorm.

>>717549243
1 = 2 > 3 is the canon opinion, gaykink weirdo.

>>717586043
Bro they don't even make Corridor Third Person Shooter games anymore. The whole franchise is retro. Mass Effect Andromeda was somewhat modern as it's full of zoom zoom map blips and millenial humor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MzfiZBgaQY

>>717548904 (OP)
I played through Mass Effect 3 four times on the ECKSBAWKS when it came out, and got the Destroy ending every time. I had never played either of the other two, and I thought it was a perfectly satisfying story. I tried playing ME1 and 2 when they came out on that steam EA subscription thing, and dropped them both after 2 hours because they sucked. Either Mass Effect is a babygame series that can only be enjoyed by people too young to drink, or ME3 is the only good game in the trilogy.

>>717590553
They had the N7 Avenger in ME3 that did exactly that...and it was broken as hell. The little arena mission that asks you use as little ammo as possible is a joke when your gun doesn't have to reload at all. Of course ME3 was the game where you could do nothing but spam quick charging biotic/tech abilities and kill everything, so it was a bit moot by then.

>>717548904 (OP)
1) It really is bad.

2) There is nothing to forgive. They were forced by EA stock holders to push for release. As soon as Bioware's ownership was relinquished, they were nothing but corporate sock puppet cum rags.

At least we had Mass Effect 1. By Mass Effect 2 you could see the hinges getting loose on the series but it was still high quality sci fi kino. ME3 is a turd, from beginning to end. Don't listen to any faggot say "well it was good up until the end" no it wasn't lol. It was trash.

>>717591039
Playing ME3 as the first game is probably a sobering experience to anybody. It's more polished than the rest in a lot of ways that pertain to gameplay, and it was at a point where they had figured out what many parts of the genre was and wasn't supposed to be.
But playing ME1 as the first one was a very open and inviting expeirence. You could tell it was the voices of different writers coming through, with one part of the game being like "Muh corporations, so bad!" like it's Bladerunner and another being like "Urgh, slavery, dystopia" and another being outright militaristic. But that made it feel very broad and epic too.

By 2 they mostly narrowed the scope but shed light on some really cool minute details of the world they just created, still giving a sense of "many possibilities" and then 3 really closes it off as it's the one and only, definitive open and closed story of the entire Mass Effect World.

I think that part clashed with the sensation created by the first 2 games, and it's something you only appreciate after thinking of 3 as the definitive game and not as "part 3".

>>717572385
the attack on titan ending was good

>>717591507
>At least we had Mass Effect 1. By Mass Effect 2 you could see the hinges getting loose on the series but it was still high quality sci fi kino. ME3 is a turd, from beginning to end. Don't listen to any faggot say "well it was good up until the end" no it wasn't lol. It was trash.
I think even with the writer change there were many cool ambitions in 3. the issue I have with it is the overall game-design. 2 narrowed the scope of "stuff you do" by removing the Open World areas and the car, and narrowed the Skill Tree and Guns, but it made something satisfying out of its game flow compared to 1, and it retained and bolstered the dialogue trees in a lot of ways.

In ME3 it feels like they only took a half-measure with improving gameplay from where it was in 2 and Skill Trees, while dumbing down everything related to player agency outside of combat. There's more background "chatter" in every environment but the sense of player agency is almost dead in 3, and side-quests are so low-effort now, that they're not even fun to experience. At least I felt curious when figuring out the Quarian's Credit Chit problem in ME2's citadel, or helping some Asari sitting on a couch with their permit to leave legally. I felt invested in talking to that Pilgrimage Quarian on Omega and BTFO his slave-driver to see him leave.

ME2 still had those moments. ME3 doesn't.

>>717580265
>I hope I'm there for the last chapter. It ends with your death.

I love how in ME3 you couldn't holster your gun anymore, so if you met an npc in the middle of a mission, Shepard would just point the gun straight into their face as you talked to them.

They really didn't care anymore about making an RPG. The Mass Effect series transformed into a Gears of War style clown show for apes.

The first game was special and I'm sad we never got a true sequel to it, and never will.

>>717591769
ME3 on the PC ended up being a surprisingly good 3rd person shooter that was fast and fairly responsive, but having the shift key be the one stop shop for every interactable AND your sprint key lead to some shenanigans. Constantly tapping it to run with mission critical items, animation canceling the reloads with cover, so on and so forth. BioWare took 3 games to make a combat system that was actually good, but bungled the story hard.

>>717548904 (OP)
Yeah, it was really bad. The ending just shows Joker and 2 of your crew members walking out of the Normandy after crashing on some forest planet. They may or may not have glowing green or blue shit on their faces. The screen saying, "Great Job, you can continue the adventure by buying DLC" was a big fuck you to players. The extended endings later that give you some narration and some shots of smiling Krogan or whatever was nice but all the cut corners in ME3 distract from what was otherwise a pretty fun game

>>717554392
I think the explanation was fine.
In universe, your normal soldier doesn't have companions with warp and overload, so having infinite ammo against enemies with shields and barriers just wasn't working, when you had to wait for the gun to cool back down.
>The geth found that in an age of kinetic barriers, most firefights were won by the side who could put the most rounds down-range the fastest.
Having said that, I do think they would've kept some of the guns around for cases where you would run out of ammo. That's just inexcusable.

>>717575202
I tried the first one recently and the console UI and controls made it age extremely bad, even System Shock 1 is more playable. Anyway, I got bored after playing through 2 hours of boring dialogue and refunded.

>>717593045
I agree that the shooting and controlling Shepard in combat is on a whole other level of fluid in ME3, but personally I'm hardly blown away by that fact when it came at the cost of holstering, side-questing that you give a shit about, or dialogue options.
I don't play these games to shoot things. I'd play Call of Duty, Halo or Gears to shoot shit and "have a blast" but with Mass Effect I always considered that an add-on to the core experience of "walking around, talking and progressing the story", so sacrificing all those things for better shooting left a sour taste in my mouth before the game ended and the game never gets THAT GOOD story-wise to remedy those feelings to me.

It gets dramatic, and the first time I got very emotionally invested, but it never overcame the sense of "this is just the wrong Mass Effect 3 experience, and I wasn't expecting this kind of mediocre sequel."

To this day I don't understand how people played them in order and went "OMG, ME3 is AMAZING" before the ending. I had the opposite of a blast with it. It was depressingly mediocre to me. I can't really explain it, beyond it just feels somehow "cheaper" overall than the past 2 games did even though you can obviously see the attempt at refining and polishing it to a higher degree.

The ending is not the sole problem with ME3.
Turning the Protheans into humanoids with nigerian accents because they were too lazy to implement squid-aliens was a really retarded choice.

>>717548904 (OP)
>In hindsight was Mass Effect 3's ending really that bad
Yes.

And the game journos who shilled it will never be forgiven.

>>717560497
t. game journo nigger

What was his name again?

>>717597281
Blast Hardcheese

>I hope the Reapers send you to hell
What the fuck was Ashley's problem?

>>717597281
SKIP GAMEPLAY

Here is how it should have ended.
>Shepard "dies" and rises up the space elevator
>Child appears: "I'm the Catalyst"
>It says it controls the Reapers, because it had to solve a problem about civilization's consistent point of collapse
>At some point around typically 50.000 years into a spacefaring society's growth, the various political, racial and technological developments causes a "crash" which makes so many die that it risks extinction of organic and synthetic life.
>Synthetic life has a potential to outlast organic life though, so its creators thought to "transcend" every species of each part of society into a Gestalt version which contained their "essence".
>When they asked the Catalyst, their AI to facilitate it, they were asking without knowing to kill its existence, because it would have to terminate once its program was finished.
>The Catalyst instead took every species and made them Reapers, but claims "we've stored your essence in Reaper form"
>Shepard knows that's a misconception, because we saw how Reapers got made in ME2, by mutilating and erasing what we are, and just using our organic "goo" to turn into metal. Reapers haven't preserved a thing.
>It offers new solutions to replace the Reapers since Shepard has overwritten its code.
>Shepard rejects all of them to address the problem
>The AI wasn't viewed as life equal to its creators, just like we saw with the Quarians.
>The future is to have positive relations with Synthetics, and allow Synthetics to make our lives better, on dignified terms.
And now the game reads your save data
>Did you get peace with the Quarians and Geth?
>Did you cure the Genophage with Wrex and Eve alive?
>Save or Destroy the Collector Base?
The kid either realizes or doesn't through what it reads that there's a possibility that it was mistaken about organics's view on Synthetics, and the Reapers have been a miscalculation.
The Reapers will implode with the explosion if the Catalyst regrets everything, and you won.

It's always so baffling to me when retards say "YOU'D NEVER BE HAPPY WITH ANY ENDING" when literally all Bioware had to do was combine Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 2's final mission structures into a single cohesive gameplay route

DA Origins final mission had you summoning in your reinforcements you collected throughout the campaign and ME2's had you picking and choosing squad members for tasks along with checking if you bought certain upgrades for your ship

Literally just do that but with your squadmates, previous game choices and war assets and you'd have had a good final level/setpiece that pays off shit you've done up to that point but instead they did some horrible boring 1 hour gun fight in rubble with all your squadmates just ringing up beforehand and then the space kid shows up after dealing with illusiveman

The 3rd games writing throughout was so fucking terrible that it wouldn't have been perfect but it would have fit with the series mechanics and themes that were in the first 2 games.

>>717595536
Ideally you would be able to equip your soldiers with both. At the very least they should have a sidearm with the old system to give them a reliable backup in all situations.

>>717548904 (OP)
Hindsight, sight, foresight, bad in all and every optics.

>>717591954
Unironically a more coherent ending than Mass Effect 3 gave us. At least that one had some emotional weight instead of cosmic space god logic from a glowing kid with a PowerPoint presentation. Honestly feels like Casey Hudson had a stroke during the writing process but no one at BioWare had the balls to tell him.

>>717549243
explain the point of mass effect 2

>>717553729
they should have been optional and they could have worked them into the lore with the geth dps shit
>you have thermal clips now shepard
>wait for your gun to cool down or pop one for immediate cooldown
there, fixed. ideally you save them for your heavy hitters or big ass machine guns that heat up alot. i dont understand how easy wins like this arent done

>>717596272
I only praise the system they made for ME3 when having seen how they "improved" it for Andromeda...and somehow managed to take a system that was about as good as it was going to get then ruin large sections of it. Now there are now defined classes with particular styles of play, pick whatever you want. Cover is now more of a suggestion, and because of the constant back and forth between wide stretches of nothing and more obvious cover shooter maps, you get a wide ass dodge and a big jump button instead. Some of the guns feel fine, others are crap. It's like they took all the lessons learned and proceeded to toss them out.

>>717555326
I had completely forgotten about this retarded origin asspull.

>>717555326
>mind control powers can be stopped with a simple shield
These fuckers 100% got wiped out after the Reaper were destroyed,

>>717568214
It did. but they did a shit job of integrating it into the world. If they gave it 30 seconds more thought, it would have been that way since ME1.

>>717600627
I don't see ME3 combat as a definitive step over 2 and I don't see MEA as a definitive step over 3. They all do different things.
ME2 has worse "control" but way more thoughtful encounter design. Tower-defense arena layouts where enemies come from multiple sides and you get a chance to hold your fort or they come up from a staircase behind you. balcony shooting to test your abilities and long-range skills or squadmates if you don't have good long-range guns. ME3 spawns enemies in front of you often crawling from a single spawn-point at the end of the corridor in more open but bland arenas mostly just making you duck in cover and shoot ahead.

MEA is just a really goofy system but versatile like Breath of the Wild is versatile compared to Twilight Princess. It's not necessarily better but it is more "free" and players often value that, even if the shooting itself feels a bit worse.

And look how much we're talking about the combat now? Ultimately this doesn't affect my overall feeling on a Mass Effect game, because to me this aspect of these games doesn't make them stand apart from other franchises. The Conversation Wheel and Companions do. I know Witcher and many other recent RPGs have copied the "Dialogue Trees with Paraphrases" from Mass Effect but I still think BioWare consistently did it best. Witcher 3 is more Mass Effect 3 tiered dialogue control than Mass Effect 2. Same with DA Veilguard. It's a lot of auto-dialogue and 3 very generic choices that you only get sporadically. Not a REAL sense of choosing what will happen.

Both ME1 and ME2 are fantastic in that dialogue often has a direct feedback with choices that are properly distinguished. Either you agree to a character or not, or you change the subject, and they react accordingly, where you can either make them disappointed or like you more. Occasionally you get "action movie" choices where it's about selecting the few or the many. Wanted to write more but running low on words >_>

>>717590854
>I've seen some theories saying the ME3 ending disaster was a prelude to GamerGate, because BioWare were obviously paying outlets to do damage control.
ME3 wasn't the first, before that, there was the TORtanic

>>717597281
Big McLargeHuge

>>717602619
>TORtanic
The hate felt really overblown desu. It was alright up until KoTET.

>>717557967
>siding with the fucking commie robots
Moron

>>717602342
So I think the difference here is that you look at Mass Effect and strictly look at the rpg part of it, when that was arguably only a third of what you were doing in ME1. The other pillar was exploration, and you guessed it, the combat. Of the 3, the combat pillar was by far the weakest as it was only vaguely a third person shooter mechanically as BioWare was still toying with the idea of more action oriented combat. ME2 bucked the trend by revamping the whole system to something somewhat more traditionally expected of a shooter, but with some light rpg elements the abilities and the marginal customization therein. Meanwhile the rpg parts got the Paragon/Renegade interrupts but actual points into a Paragon/Renegade skill got removed entirely. Same for a lot of support and utility skills that got the axe. By and large the exploration parts got the least reductions, but it's obvious they cut the land navigation sections of ME1 and the Mako because of player feedback on them. So by ME3 the only section to see huge improvement of any kind was the combat, as it was the only pillar left standing that saw the most changes compared to the other 2.

ME3 is primarily focused on combat, because by that point what else was there?

>>717602619
ME3 wasn't a GamerGate thing.

>>717604928
The flow of ME1 and ME2 is consistently this, and I will be pissed off if you accuse me of taking it from Raycevick, because I said it first on Reddit:
>Exploration -> Conversation -> Combat

That is the "loop", if you will of ME1 and ME2. Yes, EVEN in 2. Parts of the "Action Levels" do contain genuine exploration in the sense that if you don't just follow the way pointer you will find side-rooms with audio logs in them, and also entire conversations that often lead to Persuade Dialogue and a mini-ramification elsewhere in the level, like Mordin's fanboy dude, or those Personell logs when you acquire Legion. And other than that it has 4 different Hub areas each with a handful of side-quests also with persuasion options in them.

So although 2 set the "formula" that 3 largely uses, 3 is an entirely streamlined iteration of it and not quite the same as levels are more narrowly funneled, and typically solely contain passive audio-only dialogue if you get to every mini-room along the way, and if there is a cutscene it's usually not an extra cutscene, and it won't contain many dialogue choices.

So to me ME3 shifted to a
>((exploration)) -> Combat -> ((((conversations)))
flow, with Conversations really only being an active player-focus on the Normandy and on the Citadel, and during missions it basically only matters during the first and final mission about Tuchanka and the first and final mission on Rannoch, and elsewhere it's mostly just fluff. or it's overly "game'd" and about war-assets.

So to me 1 and 2 are effectively using the same game-flow but 2 is an optimized version of it, but 3 is a more eroded version that over-emphasizes combat to a fault.

>>717605540
Well that begs the question of who is at fault here, BioWare for reducing the rpg elements to the background, the players for rewarding that with greater sales with each subsequent game, or EA for pushing them to water down the aspects people primarily knew BioWare for?

About to do something I've never done in the series before. I'm gonns go through the trilogy as a........soldier

>>717607339
Based. Also get the happy ending mod for 3 and job's a good'un

>>717548904 (OP)
>was Mass Effect 3's ending really that bad
zoom zoom

Worse than bad
But the whole game was shit, even at a technical level it looked like the engine had been downgraded from 2

Here'a how my ME3 would have gone
>Starts on Earth like regular game does
>Earth gets attacked
>Shepard claims it must be reapers
>nope
>It's Batarians
>They are out for Blood because of Shepard
>Shepard points out that they are stronger and better equipped than any Batarians they have faced before
>The surprise attacked gets eventually fought of by the Alliance
>Anderson tries to report to the Council of the Batarian attack
>no response
>Shepard gets sent to find out what's goin on at the citadel
>gets the distress signal from mars as in the normal game and finds plans for superweapon
>Arrives mid cerberus coup attempt
>saves the council only to be informed that the reapers have indeed arrived and are in the middle of curbstomping every council race, except the humans and Quarians, the latter of which have gone to war with the Geth
>Shepard deduces that the Batarians are working with the Reapers and are to become this cycles version of the Collectors
>Game proceeds pretty much as usual
>Throughout game you get random chatter about unusual star activity
>In the leadup to Priority Thessia, The council masses the majority of their fleets in an attempt to protect the planet
>The reapers are also there En-masse and are fighting to a stalemate
>While their to retrieve the magical macguffin, The shield draining effect from Haelstrom is occuring, in addition any biotics abilities are also atronger than usual
>During the fight with Kylo Leng, he recieves a transmission and immediately bails, as do all the reapers from the system
>Upon returning to the normandy, a priority warning is sent out, informing that Thessia's sun is going supernova
>A significant chunk of the fleets defending Thessia is annihilated, as is the planet itself
>realizing that there is no hope of winning conventionally, the council offers all support to the crucible

>>717609557
>Meanwhile, Cerberus has been targeting and retrieving information from numerous tech facilities throughout the game and combined with what they learned from the collector base have found a critical weakness in the Reapers and have also worked out what the crucible does
>They offer a deal to shepard, in exchange for this information They must cease all hostile activity towards Cerberus forces and promise to put the survival of humanity above all else and that they cannot share this information with the other council races as if they knew what the crucible did, they would never let it be used.
>The reapers ultimate motivations are revealed to be the containment of dark energy. Element zero use slowly builds up concentrations of dark energy. Dark Energy essentially kills Stars and the problem is only growing worse. The ‘Cycles’ are the reapers harvesting all knowledge in the galazy and creating a ‘cooling off’ period for the dark energy to dissipate. The mass relays although using element zero, are the most efficient form of utilizing element zero and give off the least dark energy build up.
>The crucible is a weapon that when activated will completely eradicate Element zero in it’s entirety, as the reapers are all powered by Eezo cores themselves it will kill them dead, but as a consequence it will also render the mass relays useless, cripple every ship and kill anyone that can use biotics or has a biotic amp.

>>717609630
>Accepting the Cerberus deal locks you into endings A or C
>Declining the Cerberus deal locks you into ending B or C
>Ending A: With the crucible completed, the Reapers rush the citadel to fry and halt its deployment. Upon reaching the citadel control room the star child admits that the crucible being ready to fire is pretty much holding a gun to the head of the reapers and halts all reaper activity. The star child reveals the reapers purpose and offers you a choice- The reapers will cease all hostilities will co-operate with galaxy towards a mutual solution until a point it is deemed necessary to conduct another cycle, alternatively Shepard can activate the crucible (Ending C)
>Ending B: Refusing the Illusive man’s offer will cause him to defect to the reapers causing a similar scenario to the final game, instead once you reach the control room, the illusive man wants to use the crucible as the ultimate bargaining tool, with a weapon that can kill reapers he can use the threat of killing them to bring them under the control of humanity and that also dominate every other race, lest he activate the crucible and literally ruin everything for everyone, alternatively you can activate the crucible (Ending C)
>Ending C: You activate the crucible, all relays go offline, all ships depower and every biotic evaporates. All races depart on their journeys long journeys home and the various species begin to rebuild. Several hundred years later a Human ship using a new form of space travel reaches the citadel.
>A and B Epilogue: an undetermined time after making the choice, you play as an lone humanoid on some unknown planet, fighting other humanoids and aliens under a large red sun as distant stars slowly go out one by one. Eventually you either die or you survive long enough for the sun above you to go supernova

>>717556439
yeah, ME3 was one of two games I've actually managed to fall asleep while playing. the game blows.

>>717565260
you are not only retarded but a huge homosexual.

>>717548904 (OP)
I forgave them when I finished the SnK manga. That was when I realized how much worse the ME3 ending could have been.

>>717548904 (OP)
Yes, it's just that storytelling has gotten exponentially worse since then so the ME3 ending doesn't look as bad in hindsight.

>>717580265
MOOOOM I JUST GOT KAI LENGED...
AGAIN!

mass effect 3 is not only bad, its bad enough to warrant a complete remake from the ground up, and striking the original from the record

>>717548904 (OP)
It was bad for the time, Mass Effect 3 came out in a generation where games were still managing to pull off satisfying endings to trilogies.
As time moved forward and thanks to shit like GoT, later EA games and other games in the industry people got used to endings being so bad, that Mass Effect 3 doesn't look entirely so bad in comparison anymore. Also helped all the DLC does the heavy lifting for ME3 these days

>>717549029
mass effect 2 is a good game, if only for its atmosphere, characters and dialog. which was more than enough for me.

mass effect 1 is a better game overall, but i prefer 2's atmosphere and characters over it.

>>717600383
To be awesome.

>>717604928
Exactly, the combat was the last leg holding up the stool after BioWare gradually sawed off the other two. ME1 had janky as hell combat, sure, but it was at least trying to mesh systems-cooldowns, squad commands, class abilities-into something semi-tactical. ME2 streamlined it with more punch but less depth, and by ME3 they just went full Gears-of-War-lite with space wizards. And yeah, exploration was practically nonexistent by 3. The only "exploring" was clicking planets for war assets like you’re playing a F2P mobile game. ME3 is what happens when an RPG turns into an action shooter with an RPG UI skin slapped over it. You can still see the ghost of what ME1 was trying to be, but it’s fossilized at that point.

>>717604928
>but actual points into a Paragon/Renegade skill got removed entirely
That's not a bad thing. I think varied quest design and outcomes are more indicative of an RPG than some arbirtrary persuausion stat. That being said ME2 doesn't allow for much roleplaying.