Yeah, I know the general criticisms leveled at it, and I get why that bothers some people. But to me, it was about the story it told along the way. I also felt that way about Telltale’s Walking Dead games which had kind of similar criticisms.
I think that’s the problem. The story along the way was fantastic in ME3. Mordin and the Krogen, Tali and Leigon - just fantastic story telling. Until the last 10-15 minutes. And it wasn’t so much that what you did during the story didn’t matter, it was actually ignored.
It doesn’t ruin the franchise for me, but I did find a mod that wiped out that last 15 minutes, and makes it all tolerable now. Because had Bioware just ended the ME series with the meeting of Shepard and Anderson, sitting and enjoying the view - that would have been epic. And it’s easy enough to do that even without PC mods by turning off the game/console/etc once you get to that point and ignoring all the shit afterwards.
Yeah, I never understood that criticism either. I sincerely have no idea what people were expecting, but I personally thought the ending was fine. It’s maybe the weakest plot ending of the bunch (because the genophage and Quarian stuff is so well done) and the whole “synthesis” thing is something out of a dystopian horror movie, but you just pick one of the other ones and all’s well.
Add to that the return to mechanical form in 3 (after the nearly-pure-action-game mechanics of 2) and really, it might be my favorite of the lot. The worst thing about it, really, is space ninja guy. He’s way worse than the ending.
The ending fits the game, as I mentioned up thread. The Genophase plot is amazing, the Geth/Quarrian plot is great with a little handwaving, the rest is about a supervillain reading the plot ahead of time, making ridiculous contradictory arguments that can never be questioned and having more resources than the galaxy combined out of nowhere. Hell, he could even spare a shit ton to fund the Initiative and not bat an eye. Because, why not, mankind went from easily crushed upstarts to the only thing that mattered in the galaxy because of the “bloody icon”, so why can’t he do that?
The now secondary villain, meanwhile, transformed from unknowable elder godhood to an entity with a simple goal but no plan that can be killed by a shot of said bloody icon.
So, yeah, I can’t say ending them with Sheppard pressing a buton isn’t appropriate, he just leveled up that much after killing countless goons.
I don’t know what ending you all got but I got the real ending. Shepard tells the Reapers to eat shit, we blow up everything, and a million years later Liara is telling alien children the story of Commander Shepard and show she saved the galaxy.
Perfect ending. It also makes the Andromeda intro really good because they’re all like “I wonder what happened back in the Milky Way?” Turns out everyone died and y’all were right to peace out. Shame about the rest of Andromeda. I still haven’t finished that, I quit out of boredom.
Synthesis, and the fact that they mechanically made it the hardest ending to get - and therefore making it the true/good ending in video game language - really is the core of the problem with that ending.
It’s the game doing a 180 and siding with the reapers after one bullshit speech from genocidal casper.
But to get back on topic, that original DA4 pitch seems so up my alley it’s not even funny.
I think the (mechanically) hardest ending might be destroy with the teaser follow-on. This is certainly my best ending.
*digs a discussion from 10 years ago*
Synthesis is the only good ending. The whole serie shows how in this universe machines and living beings are pit to conflict and war against each other. Mutual destruction. Synthesis create a new state of being that can rest that war rendering it moot point. Is the one that solve the problem of the serie. Everyone gets some awesome machine powers and some biological parts.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-06-19-heres-a-very-brief-next-gen-dragon-age-4-tease
Nothing much to show. The game is still a long ways out. At least 2022.
Still not much to show :)
It’s more of a ‘remember us, we’re still around’ kind of update. Totally on my radar but I’m content to wait for it to be made well.
Bio who？
Yeah, when EA bought BioWare it was the beginning of the end. Especially after both founders left. Old Story: Origins, Bullfrog, Westwood, etc…
Lets hope Obsidian doesn’t suffer the same fate under Microsoft.
So … that happened.
BioWare: Casey Hudson, Mark Darrah to Leave Studio, All Current Projects Planned to Continue - IGN
I have a hard time reading two top people leaving during ongoing projects like this as anything other than jumping ship. Makes me wonder how much longer BioWare has.
I’m expecting the next failure to result in EA closing the studio.
I would probably buy both of those unless they are dumpster fires.
Presumably the new Mass Effect that’s still in fairly early stages is also still coming, since Casey did mention it with the other games in his farewell blog. Fingers crossed, anyway.