2861

Isn’t that what happens with every piece of single-player DLC?

2862

I rarely buy any DLC? But don’t they just add activities to the fringes and never touch the actual plot?

2863

Hint: Tom has explicitly said as much.

And FWIW, I would never have -demanded- Bioware fix the ending and did not sign any petitions. They don’t need to change their creative work if they don’t want to or don’t see the need. That’s fine. But the work as a whole would tremendously benefit from the ending being improved and if they decided to go back and do that - which in this case they did, though only time will tell if I agree with their idea of what needed fixing - then I for one applaud that. I would also love for Obsidian to be able to go back and actually finish KOTOR 2, for Irrational to figure out a more fitting close for Bioshock, etc, if the opportunity arose. I’m just not expecting it.

2864

Shouldn’t Stephen King go back and re-do the end to most his books?

2865

I don’t see the issue with the petitions. I support the developers and the publishers rigorously in buying (and not pirating) games that i want. I recognize its the most powerful way i can let them know I like what they do.

Now if I buy something, and felt that missed their commitments to me and potentially their other fans, and I find a sizable section of fans that also agree with that assessment, why wouldn’t we organize and let the developer/publisher know that their misstep/new direction is not something we support and risks my faith in supporting future endeavors. They have visibility to the larger picture, and can see if a franchise shift, missed goal, perception issue, or shift in business strategy is worth losing a section of the vocal fan community that have a concern.

At the very least, if their future releases start to tank with a new direction, they (and other developers) have a potential indicator why consumer interest shifted.

I think there is nothing wrong with the petition. I was disappointed, less about the story, and more about the grandiose promises, and the expectation that it would at least rise to the level of ME2 customized story impact. Letting Bioware know a segment of their fan base was disabused by it, and in the future not going to automatically pre-order their offering based on the quality of their name brand.

I get why some people had no issue on the other hand. if the way you played the game, fit your ending, then there was no issue (and didn’t have hopes of replaying it multiple time to experience the multiple unique endings). For some us though that played to other roleplay goals, however the ending didn’t accommodate our expectations, AND didn’t allow us to replay the series multiple times to experience alternative roleplay goals. This rubbed some of us the wrong way. I dont begrudge Tom not having an issue with it, and largely assumed his roleplay goals matched those created by Bioware in their original ending (he was also clear his expectations were muted because of their ongoing pedestrian narrative).

2866

I don’t think a single person in this thread every ‘demanded’ that Bioware change the ending. But we were overall happy when Leviathan and Extended cut made some improvements.

2867

They did a good enough job patching my concerns (to create a decent generalized ending, despite disapoinment at the lack of multiple custom ones) up that I played the game again with the newest content (all the way from ME1).

I also plan to play once more ME3 with the citidal and Omega DLCs. I’m not sure how i feal about Mass Effect 4, and will probably wait and see, but they did improve things well enough I want to play one last time with All the DLC. What can I say, I’m a completionist. :)

2868

I’m curious about this because I felt the opposite. The only choices I felt like made a real difference in ME2 was whether to find everyone’s estranged family members so they wouldn’t die at the end. I mean, I didn’t know that at the time and I’m a completionist on this type of game but that’s what those choices basically boiled down to and I’d imagine most big ME fans would do the side missions. In fact, I was kind of jealous of reading Tom’s review of the dark story where tons of people died on him. I lost only Thane and with his back story I kind of assumed he would die somehow.

I know from the internet there is a possible ending where you could end up with Shepard dead, but you both basically had to do that on purpose and it was a dead end option never even intended to be imported to ME3 from the beginning so it’s basically just a reload screen as far as the narrative goes.

ME3 to me felt like it had way more ramifications to choices that were made. For instance all the the genophage stuff which got a lot of payoff for me after being such a long term side story.

What were some of the choices you made in ME2 that you really felt paid off? I am asking out of curiosity, not to prove a point.

2869

In fact, I was kind of jealous of reading Tom’s review of the dark story where tons of people died on him. I lost only Thane and with his back story I kind of assumed he would die somehow.

Counting Thane I had 5 characters die by the end. Two killed themselves, one do to a decision I made, the other because of something that happened earlier. One died a hero and one was killed by her father.

I must have made some rotten decisions. But oh well, I got the same ending as everyone else.

2870

The war effort score was a mechanic they put into the game and laced pretty strongly into the design (all of the planet scanning nonsense is almost purely about warscore, the multiplayer was pitched as being a way to “improve your war readiness” and max level MP characters can be turned into war assets for singleplayer, etc). I don’t need it to be there, but if it’s there it should do something. And it does not.

2871

Lantz, all the decisions you made in the ME2 game had a impact, abliet binary. So did you upgrade your shields? if not someone dies. Didnt complete a loyalty mission? They will likely die. Choose the wrong person for a task inthe final mission? they die! Heck even getting Mordin to survive at all was a dice roll. lol

I waited in line at gamestop at midnight to get my collectors edition. When I first started playing and seeing I was getting war assets, I excited and had incorrectly assumed, that the choices i made would result in war asset and that achieving a certain level for a race might have effects at the end game. Support the Salarian you might have shepard survive by getting enough of their war assets , support the krogan and get their assets, maybe you would save your team mates , etc.

Then the reviews started coming in, and realized I had overestimated my expectations on what they would deliver, and tried to moderate what i would get in the end, but kept wondering how the war assets would play a role in the endgame.

Turns out the option I would never choose was the one that was considered the best option according to war assets overall score, and the rest of the colored coded options just didnt reasonate with the roleplay goals i had chosen so far (and how I had been playing Shepard up to that point in the previous MEs).

I was expecting something akin to ME2 or Alpha Protocol, and i got something more akin to context driven Walking Dead ending, with some rough elements to the final narration.

Now Tom does have a point that writing was uneven at times in ME series, but you figure that in the trilogy finale they would go out with a big bang and really step it up for the ending. Instead, to me it seemed to get a pseduo identity crisis and fizzled out in the end, and missed entirely creating that epic sci-fi blockbuster moment that they occasionally managed to capture in their dramatic scenes.

I realized later that the ending they were talking about, was the moments with Garius and Mordin, where the relationships resolved based on your actions, which was good, but couldn’t help be dissapointed that the ending itself could not have been influenced by player choices.

I know, all pipe dreams, and fairy tales at this point, Good news was the Leviathain and the new ending DLC really did a lot to deliver a ending more fitting to regardless of your roleplay goals. I was happy enough to buy the remaining DLC as a result :)

2872

Well of course it does something. You just don’t like what it does. More to the point, you don’t like that it doesn’t do what you wanted.

2873

As someone who doesn’t really like the narrative of the original deus ex machina ending, the extended cut made it worse. Yes I said it. WORSE.

I thought the point of the original ending is to suddenly give you extra but still limited information that basically asks you to do a 180 from your original position (the paragon I thought was meant to be suckered to control or synthesis like TIM would do, the renegade just do what s/he wants!). The extended cut gave too much information, and too much of the aftermath. It is like the Fallout/Dragon Age ending. It makes ME3 ending mundane rather than unexpected. And I LIKE unexpected. That’s why the original ending grows on me.

2874

you might enjoy the good ending mod out there now (can’t find the link right now). It completely wipes out the deus ex machina portion of the game, and adds the option to have shepard survive.

Not really sure if I want to download that one for my last paythrough of the game this year. Avoiding watching it in case i do, but it does have a lot of fans.

2875

I think the extended Mass Effect 3 ending’s great flaw is not that it’s better or worse than the original. It’s that it’s just yappy, trying to explain everything.

I’ve likened it to the speeches of Elihu and God at the end of the Book of Job. They were clearly written after the fact to try and explain what is inexplicable, and end up being an extended reiteration to no great end.

2876

I was tempted to try that mod out, but in the end I think I will see the extended cut in my second and final game. In the end I wanted a good quality ending and not really a good feeling ending.

Enjoying the omega DLC so far even though it is supposedly not worth it. I also loved the kasumi DLC though.

Even if omega is too short to be worth it, flare is completely overpowered so do be sure to get if going biotic. Whip is also cool but I couldn’t see taking it over flare.

2877

Yes, I can. The trend of you being unable to make your case.

So I’ll say for the umpteenth time that I don’t think Mass Effect 3 is “garbage”. On the contrary, I really like it. It was among my favorite games of the year and it is easily my favorite Mass Effect. So when you imply I’ve called it “garbage”, I will maintain that you’re wrong.

-Tom
2878

You do seem to think that the writing is pretty bad and/or unimportant though, it seems.

2879

I’d call the writing in Mass Effect 3 uneven. I wouldn’t roll out the term “garbage” for any writing that doesn’t sink to the level of, say, Far Cry 3 (another game I really like).

I do think most of Bioware’s dialogue is flat-out terrible. Some of it is good. I really like the overall story in Mass Effect 3, probably more than any non-Knights of the Old Republic story Bioware has done. And the story is clearly an aspect of the writing. Also, I do think the writing is, in some ways, important.

I guess a lot of folks get insecure when something they enjoy is compared to “young adult fiction”. Tim James brought the term “young adult” into the conversation for me, and I think he nails Bioware’s writing perfectly, without necessarily applying a negative slant. It’s mostly simple, mostly accessible, mostly traditional, sometimes facile, very Mary Sue, very self-aggrandizing, very teenage in its conception of relationships. I don’t read a lot of sci-fi, which I think you do, Isis. But wouldn’t you say ME3 is on par with most middling sci-fi?

Furthermore, a lot of folks confuse “being critical” with “disliking”. Some people have a fundamental insecurity with saying – or even hearing – bad things about things they like. In other words, any criticism is equated with calling it “garbage”.

-Tom
2880

It avoids one thing that seems to show up in every sci-fi book I read: at least one hard science lecture to or from the main character. NERDS

Renegade interrupt!