Thread 717669524

Everyone shits on the ending, and rightfully so, but the truth is that the plot of ME3 was dogshit from the very beginning.

>The reapers can actually just fly to the milky way in the space of, if we assume they started right when Sovereign was destroyed, threeish years, and if it was when the collector base was destroyed, a few months

Well what were they doing when Sovereign was planning its takeover of the citadel then? Why bother with the Geth if Harbinger and the boys can back you up if you just wait a few years? And don't tell me they couldn't get in touch, because Harbinger's collector business didn't pick up until after the battle of the citadel so Harbinger obviously knew that Sovereign had failed.

>>717669524 (OP)

>These Prothean ruins on Mars that the Alliance has been poring over for decades trying to squeeze out any technological advantage it can possibly find actually held the plans for a super weapon that nobody noticed until the literal day of the reaper invasion.

>Also, we're going to pour every resource in the galaxy into building this superweapon even though we have no idea what it does or if it even works

I thought for sure at first that the crucible was going to turn out to be a Reaper plant, since we know they deliberately left the Prothean ruins for mankind to find, and that some hidden 'switch' was tripped when they showed up which unlocked the crucible plans for the purpose of tricking the harvested populations into wasting their resources into building it, only for it to turn out to be a giant indoctrination device or something. It would have fit the reaper methodology perfectly considering the Citadel trap.

>>717669693

>Lol Cerberus
Enough said on this topic already frankly

>>717669793

>ME2 spent quite some time setting up what Krogan adaptation to the genophage might be - Okeer's plan to ensure maximum quality over quantity hinted at a way for the krogan to take a third option between a genophage cure and extinction. ME3 throws that out the window and presents you with the poor heckin' Krogarinos begging for a genophage cure without even a mention of alternatives other than letting them die off

We already know that the genophage can be modified thanks to Mordin. Why not have a compromise solution? Why not raise the birthrate a bit without getting to the point of a thousand offspring per breeding pair? Why is there no possibility of nuance here? Why does it have to be all or nothing?

>>717669929

>ME2: Geth build their own future. They refuse to take the upgrades offered by the reapers because being handed a path to the future blinds them to other possibilities, as the reapers intend and outright say to Shepard.
>ME3: WOAH SHEPARD-COMMANDER WE CAN TOTALLY TAKE THE REAPER UPGRADES AND GO COWABUNGA ON OUR ENTIRE MODE OF EXISTENCE DUDE

The transformation from nodes of a network to individual AIs is enormous, changing the nature of the Geth entirely, and yet Legion not only doesn't hesitate to do it, it actually attacks you if you try to stop it.

I could go on. The problems with ME3 start early and just keep coming. The ending isn't really an out-of-nowhere ruination, it's just the cherry on top.

>>717669793
Why did they ruin him?

>>717670049
There was honestly no fucking way it was going to be a good story and an ending to Mass Effect when EA gave orders for Bioware to push out the game as fast as they did. The huge fucking culmination and climax to all the story beats and decisions the player has made through the series, and they were given 2 years to finish it.

>>717669524 (OP)
>The reapers can actually just fly to the milky way


This is the single biggest mistake they made, and it rarely gets any attention. ME1 implies that the Reapers will be stuck in dark space for a LONG time now the citadel plan failed. Arrival then says they're almost here, but you delayed them again. Then ME3 starts a few weeks later and they're just here anyways.

The first 2 games are all about delaying them, but they just magically show up in the 3rd anyways. Frankly, ME1 and ME2 should have been about delaying the Reapers for millennia and then unifying the galaxy to prepare, respectively. Then ME3 should have jumped ahead thousands of years to when the Reapers arrive and shown the outcome of all of your decisions and planning in how the races of the galaxy are prepared to handle the threat with a conventional war against the Reapers instead of a bullshit deus ex machina crucible solution.

>>717671535
Although I agree with the idea that the plot should have been about delaying the Reapers by forcing them to travel through dark space to get back to the galaxy, I don't think the right way about it would have been to make the third game all about it. Rather ME3 should have had some really high stakes for whatever bullshit there has to be done to finally seal the deal in order to delay the Reapers, and then the end credits part would be a slideshow or whatever the fuck that then shows you bits and pieces about what happens in the future. Nothing definite, but just enough to give the players that LOTS OF SPECULATION that Casey and friends seem to fucking love.

>>717670894
yeah imagine if they were given 7 years instead. Could've been an amazing game.

>>717671869
I don't know, Bioware was already showing signs that they were on the way out when it came to making games. But if they had like at least a year and a half more I guess they might have made the game at the very least to be an okay finale.

>>717671535
Its likely they didn't go this way because Shepard was the protagonist for ME and replacing him would be a death sentence for sales. They could use cryo-sleep, but ME2 already told us that the council would deny the existence of reapers. And since it was Shepard who has the trust of different races, without him the galaxy wohks go back to the status quo.
I agree with your points though

>>717669524 (OP)
They should have hadthe Reapers burning through the energy reserves to escape Dark Space and get to the galaxy which in turn weakened them enough for a conventional war to be possible.

>>717669929
>>717670049
It's also really annoying that the game doesn't let you bring up that the krogan brought it upon themselves and they committed pretty awful war crimes. The geth being hecking wholesome chungus dindu nuffin goodboys is more believeable since the quarians attacked first.

>>717669524 (OP)
naw
all the mass effect games
1, 2, and 3
were great
only the last 15 minutes sucked balls
and that's easily fixed with the happy ending mod
but please seethe for me
I enjoy making the queers on /v/ angry

>>717669524 (OP)
I could be forgetting some plot point that prevents this as written before ME2, but what if instead of the Collectors creating a human reaper they were building a second mass relay for the Reapers to use? That would have given more weight to ME2's plot rather than being largely a filler arc. Maybe have it end on more of a downer with Shepard and crew unable to fully stop it's creation. Maybe it works in a lesser capacity and would only be active long enough for a few Reapers to get through?

>>717673752
>were building a second mass relay for the Reapers to use?
That wouldn't work cause Sovereign attacked the Citadel out of desperation. If he could just wait however long to build a new one the first game wouldn't make sense.

>>717673915
The plan was always to activate the Citadel mass relay to link to dark space for a reaper invasion wasn't it? It was initially foiled because the Protheans fucked with the keepers so they wouldn't activate it, hence why Sovereign needed to attack the Citadel. We also don't know what it takes to build a mass relay like that so again, it would have simply been that just building a second would have been less efficient or something.

>>717669524 (OP)
I think it was a mistake to continue the Reaper plot line after the first game.

Should have been like oh its gonna take the Reapers 50k years to manually travel to the galaxy so we dont have to worry about that. In the mean time heres some stories about space gangsters.

Like instead of Reapers boogieman the next two games should have been about why the Reapers reset the galaxy and dealing with the consequences of that.

Also deal with the consequences of the Citadel factions recovering pieces of Sovereign and finding Reaper tech across the Galaxy and kind of un constrained development across lines of discovery that werent supposed to be crossed by mortal minds.

Essentially the Reapers should be like a consequence of inter galactic civilization bottle neck when certian technologies and abilities are combined like AI, cybernetics, biotics, faster than light travel etc all become combined into one system that the sentient races end up destroying themselves or the galaxy at large.

Ie I think ME3 conceptually had a good ending and they could have used part of it without the Reaper invasion and made out the Crucible like a last ditch effort of the Alliance factions trying to save the galaxy from themselves. Ie the Big War in ME3 could be Free civilizations vs those that fucked around with advanced technology and drove themselves mad, kinda like the Reaper indoctrinated but without a guiding force they strive towards relentless revolution and experimentation without limits because they are addicted to the power.

Like the last game could be Shepard being guided by an anicent left over Reaper AI telling him how to solve the conflict and maybe thats the twist is he doesnt know who or what is helping him until the end where he has to make a dire choice.

>>717669524 (OP)
For me the best part of the game was the ancient Krogan city on Tuchanka. Too bad it's so short.

>>717675126
An interesting idea.

>Human dynamism drives the Alliance towards caution-to-the-wind experimentation that the other, more conservative species find alarming, providing a darker aspect to the 'humans are special' thing

>Quarian desperation to reclaim their homeworld leads them to do the same

>Fractures between the transhumanists (transquarianists?) and purists lead to internal conflict

There's a skeleton of a better plot here

>>717673664
>>717669524 (OP)
some of the individual arcs or missions are very good in ME3 and the gameplay is good but yeah the overall story is fucking ass. 2s premise is pretty good, but the actual story falls flat, especially if you don't have the shock of it being the first time you are playing the game. it's like the BG3 mystery box shit where the first 2 acts of the game are great if you don't already know what's going to happen or where everything else
the main story and the cerberus shit of ME3 is shit even if sections like the krogan and geth arcs are good

>>717670894
>>717671869
>>717671959
there was a shift in bioware after ME1 came out. hell, just look at the fact the writer wrote ME1, cowrote 2 and didn't write 3. a lot of the shit probably came down from EA

>>717669524 (OP)
Reminder that the entire premise of reapers revealed in ME3 seems to be ripped off from this sci fi novel series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space
Except it's way less retarded and more reasonable in original, so bioware couldn't even copy others' homework properly.

>>717674423
>Citadel mass relay to link to dark space for a reaper invasion
Yeah to wipe out the entirety of the galaxy's leadership in one fell swoop.
>building a second would have been less efficient
Maybe but Sovereign knew he couldn't safely take the Citadel solo so why bother risking destruction when he could just keep indoctrinating people to build a new relay?

>>717675126
>introduce a major villain
>lol actually we don't need to worry about those guys
thank god you're not writing video games

>>717673752
>>717673915
>>717674423
>>717677767
yeah, having them build a relay instead of the retarded human reaper shit would have been way better than what we got and an ending where they succeeded in making the relay also would have been better. Because in 1 it was
>yeah they come from dark space via the citadel relay
>we stopped them now they can't get here
>actually lol jk they are using the alpha relay
>lol jk
so stopping Sovern only slowed them down by like 3 years and stopping the alpha relay only stalled them by like 6 months, which makes it dumb sovergn cared that much about the citdel in the first place

>>717678067
>retarded human reaper shit
All they had to do was say the reapers were trapped in dark space so their new strategy was to build a new reaper to reatttempt a Citadel siege or use the new human reaper to indoctrinate and build another relay that could link to dark space.