Mass Effect 3

[Matthias]

Except they already know the Geth can and will expel the Quarians from their space, and Shepard makes no secret of their Reaper upgrades. The Quarian government, while often hawkish, has never been suicidal.

they don't have to be suicidal to fail. there was a reason (if i recall) that shepard had to intervene on behalf of the quarians, because they were losing the war. they expected to win but did not count on the reaper upgrade, which they now have. if they really want to war with the geth, then they will, thinking they have a strategy to do it. in all likelihood they will again lose.

The Geth are also aware that individual Quarians cannot always be controlled, and are generally not prone to warlike behavior. Pretty sure there's a few planet descriptions and codex entries that mention that the Geth are maintaining the Quarian cities/planets/etc. They were built to be laborers, not warriors. War is a learned behavior for them, and they are eager to return to their role of servitude. After a few generations, the integration would be almost seamless, and no sane Quarian would think of hurting their Geth buddies.

complete & utter speculation, especially considering that now geth are fully self-aware and have the capacity for individualism. they are a completely different species now from what they were before, like on a fundamental code level, so any predictions of future behavior based on previous history is invalid from the ground up.

but of course the reapers could care less about this. as far as they're concerned the cycle will continue, so again shepard mentioning this would have made no difference to them.

Could it explode into war? Sure. But, retarded ending aside, I'm a cyborg who has already defeated Death once and I intend to live forever (And if I don't, I'll still be around for at least another 60-100 years. Long enough to cement the foundation for a permanent peace). Either side fucks it up, they have to deal with The Shepard.

well a few thoughts, for one thing i doubt cerberus will be willing to spring another 4 billion (or was it 4 million? i think it was billion) credits into bringing you back, and i highly doubt any other agency will be willing to spring that money or have the technology.

but even if someone does spring the money, consider that the first time you died, you simply asphyxiated and crash landed somewhere. according to reports about shepard's accident, his body was burned, but the overall structure was still in tact, and the brain was largely intact protected by the helmet, and, according to the opening movie in ME2, the heart was still in one piece though non-functional, etc. they had something to work with.

in the two ME3 endings where he dies, he disintegrates, completely. yeah good luck finding all your ashes and finding someone to fund piecing it back together.

In any case, in a game in which the entire attraction is the gravity and effects of your choices, three endings is not enough.

according to who? by whose authority? as mentioned i was perfectly fine with the three endings, by what standards are you assuming that's wrong?

And the explanation is still stupid. Synthetics and organics can't get along, so let's wipe them all out,

this is your understanding because you're assuming the human reaction. from the perspective of the reapers, they are not wiping them out, they are harvesting them and helping them ascend to the state that they believe is of a higher state than what they are, and eventually would become anyways, if the synthetics do not wipe them out.

instead of, yknow, just taking the synthetics to Dark Space periodically or something.

ohhh i gotcha. so for you, it actually makes more sense for the reapers, synthetics themselves, to come along every 50,000 years or whatever, show themselves to the organics and say 'oh hey, you know those mindless robots you just made? yeah they're gonna one day overthrow you and wipe you out, so if you don't mind just step away from them and we'll take them off your hands if you please..."

oh yeah, way more feasible.

[mightyg]

There are many reasons why the ending sucked.

Lack of closure/outcomes from different choices.

Piss poor dialogue from the point you take the beam to the citadel (And why the fuck was there a beam there to start with/why would the reapers expose a weakness like that/why would they move the citadel/i know why because it's a shitty ass deus ex.)

war assets were almost completely meaningless (who was expecting something along the lines of the suicide mission from 2 only with entire fleets? I know I was.)

stupid explanation for the reapers/starchilds intentions (way to take the menace/intelligence out of the reapers in an instant.)

starchild is a shit ass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina wrap it up button. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg7vfvQ9Ctg

1/4 of a space battle. (Had me hyped till it abruptly ended.)

Hey why is everyone running away, and how the hell did the team I took with me on earth walk out of the Normandy. (Didn't they get vaporized by Harbinger?!? (also a wtf moment))

Red, Green, Blue. ((Seriously?) when it was time to make my choice, not only did I not pay enough attention to know which choice was actually which, but I was so mindfucked from all the stupidity in the dialogue that I didn't even care.)

My guess is that they were going for an indoctrination ending, ran out of time and threw the bits together best they could. and instead of you snapping out of the indoctrination and playing the real end, they just ended it with that to fuel debate/speculation, probably hoping that people would accept it and they could dlc the real end.

Also the illusive man. What a waste of a villain. (Personally didn't like Martin Sheen's performance either.)

I'm sure there are other things as well, but those are a few that come to mind.

I think anyone that seriously enjoyed the ending just liked the spectacle itself and weren't vested in serious storytelling, overarching plots/characters, too stupid to know any better.

[BaneTheBrawler]

I said or something. I'm not an author, it's not my job to write good endings. Apparently, its not Bioware's job either.

[Brill Weave]

Not going to take the time to dissect your entire response as we've all been over this many many pages ago. But I will respond to two comments you made.

major coats was heard ordering everyone to a full retreat, there's no way they could have known whether shepard would make it or not. and once they retreated and found out that shepard was on the citadel (disregarding the indoctrination theory for a moment), there was little they could do about it. and then as the citadel was exploding... yeah what would you expect them to do other than run? fly into the citadel, as it's exploding in an energy they didn't recognize and hope to find one human in that gigantic thing somewhere?

Use your head. He ordered a full retreat for ground forces. Which naturally means the Normandy, involved in the largest most crucial space battle in the history of the universe, is going to break off from the fight to go down to Earth and taxi everyone around? The entire games focuses on how the battle is bigger than one man. So why would even one ship break away where it could make a difference in order to go pick people up rather than continue the fight of the universe's life? You're thinking too hard. This was a MASSIVE unexplained head scratching event.

conversely it could be argued that the other fanboys, had expected the the game should play out in a very specific manner according to what they, the self-proclaimed experts, have decided it should. and because the game didn't turn out that way, suddenly they're decrying the whole series for assumptions they shouldn't have been making to begin with. i went into this game with zero expectations other than the loose ones i mentioned earlier (the story would end messy, no happy ending, etc.), and i loved the game all the more for it.

It's your opinion and you're certainly entitled to it. Here's my issue. As you stated you watched the youtube clips of people complaining, read the articles, etc. So you no doubt stumbled across interviews from the developers who made it a point to say what the game would NOT end up as(first one off the top of my head is the main writer stated the endings would NEVER be an A, B, or C scenario.) It's not fanboyish to expect a developer to follow through on what THEY promised. Someone here definitely has some fanboy glasses on though lol.

[Brill Weave]

The main issue I have is that all the choices end with the destruction of the galaxy as you know it. Which cheapens everything you did in the first two games to "save" it. The series touted that your decisions would shape how the game ended. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here's a great example of what I'm talking about.

As Mass Effect 3 is the end of the planned trilogy, the developers are not constrained by the necessity of allowing the story to diverge, yet also continue into the next chapter. This will result in a story that diverges into wildly different conclusions based on the player's actions in the first two chapters. Casey Hudson

Again, nothing further from the truth. Is it unreasonable that consumers expect companies to live up to their word?

[Matthias]

Use your head. He ordered a full retreat for ground forces. Which naturally means the Normandy, involved in the largest most crucial space battle in the history of the universe, is going to break off from the fight to go down to Earth and taxi everyone around? The entire games focuses on how the battle is bigger than one man. So why would even one ship break away where it could make a difference in order to go pick people up rather than continue the fight of the universe's life?

yeah use your head. the largest most crucial space battle in the history of the universe was lost to begin with. admiral hackett, among others, already stated that they cannot win this war conventionally, even with the unified forces. their only hope, which they repeatedly stated, was that the crucible would fire, which means they need that ground team to succeed. those people that the normandy goes to pick up, which may or may not include shepard, are the only hope they have for winning this war. so yes, i would expect someone to come in and pick them up. and the normandy had already broken off, to get into shuttle range of earth so shepard can shuttle down to earth.

You're thinking too hard. This was a MASSIVE unexplained head scratching event.

err. you just flatout stated that the reason this makes sense to me is that i thought about it hard, and the reason it doesn't to you is that you didn't really think too hard about it... interesting it's rare for one side of a debate to flat out admit that they hadn't thought the issue through as thoroughly as their opponent but i suppose it takes a big man to admit that. cheers. but perhaps before you continue your judgments, so put some actual thought into it like you just admitted you really didn't do, and let it sink in and it'll make sense. trust me.

It's your opinion and you're certainly entitled to it. Here's my issue. As you stated you watched the youtube clips of people complaining, read the articles, etc. So you no doubt stumbled across interviews from the developers who made it a point to say what the game would NOT end up as(first one off the top of my head is the main writer stated the endings would NEVER be an A, B, or C scenario.) It's not fanboyish to expect a developer to follow through on what THEY promised.

technically it's not an a b or c scenario, as there are some variations, however minor, between them, and the mere availability of some of those options depend on choices you make in the past. so because it didn't play out the way everyone assumed it would doesn't mean it didn't at all.

Someone here definitely has some fanboy glasses on though lol.

oh no doubt. which is why, as you noted, i actually thought hard about it and took the time to make sense of it, rather than just assuming that whatever it looked like at first glance was what we should work with. that's just me though, i like to actually think things through before judging it, i think it tends to help my judgments a bit. just my opinion which i'm entitled to.

[Lonely]

I try to avoid ending discussion because its retarded and so are the people who defend it but that shit was an a, b, c scenario where previous choices did not mean shit. They play out exactly the same except for a 5 second bonus clip and whether or not earth blows up or is "saved" as determined by if you did multiplayer or not.

[Elcura]

It's still A, B and C type of deal. A has 3 minor variations, B has 2, C has none.

[Kuya]

Does the last evolution of carnage increase carnage's damage to armored targets or does it globally increase damage to armored targets by 65%?

[Brill Weave]

Honestly Matthias, not going to go back and forth with you. If you want to say that a lazy horribly written shit ending is fantastic that's all you buddy. Keep lapping up what Bioware puts out. You're the type of guy Bioware loves.

Back to multiplayer. Two days straight it's done nothing but dump me into games that were already in progress. Just to try it, I attempted to join Bronze only games 5 times. 5 times I was dumped into Gold matches. I started a Bronze match twice. Both times it didn't get anyone joining in until wave 8. I think the last DLC broke something.

[Rhyis.]

starchild is a shit ass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina wrap it up button. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg7vfvQ9Ctg

Just came in to say that the starchild isn't a deus ex machina plot device, if you actually know what the term means. If you defeated the reapers then a new enemy came out of nowhere, and turned out to be the "true" enemy, that would be a deux ex machina ending. Whoever quick changed the wiki is wrong, the correct term for the starchild is called a MacGuffin.

[Brill Weave]

The Holy MacGuffin?!!

[Rhyis.]

Mighty MacGuffin sounds better.

[mightyg]

Think you could say it's both really, or that the "Catalyst" is the MacGuffin, and the Star Child is the Deus Ex Machina. I mean come on man, the star child is literally a "God Machine". The worst part is that this fact couldn't have been lost on them, and they did it anyways.

[Rhyis.]

Shepard suffers from the God did it ending (his soul is the literal binding for the new synth/organic species in the synth choice), not the Star child itself. He's just a hologram telling you what's up.

[mightyg]

Well the star child is a representation of the advanced synthetic/maybe biotechnological being that created the reapers. While it isn't technically the star child that resolves the story, it's basically allows/gives Shepherd the means to do it. Wouldn't be any different than Zeus dropping down on strings and telling the protagonist he has three (shitty) choices. Really you could say the starchild IS the true enemy behind the reapers.

[BaneTheBrawler]

I think the fact that people can accurately refer to the ultimate reaper mastermind as "the starchild" is pretty indicative of how goddamn shitty that whole ending is.

[Rhyis.]

Story was in vast need of the Umgah, that's for sure.

[Rulke]

Back to multiplayer. Two days straight it's done nothing but dump me into games that were already in progress. Just to try it, I attempted to join Bronze only games 5 times. 5 times I was dumped into Gold matches. I started a Bronze match twice. Both times it didn't get anyone joining in until wave 8. I think the last DLC broke something.

I don't mind being dumped into a game already in progress if its early on, but I've had a few where I get put in during wave 10. This basically means spawning in, dying to a mass of enemies and either using a medigel or hoping I get raised. Lame.

Also, I agree that the last DLC or update screwed with matchmaking. My friend and I did a run with 2 random people, 1 was horrid. Afterwards, the 3 of us booted him. For the next 5 min or so we waited for a replacement and the same guy was always queued back in. We finally had to just restart from scratch to get new people. This has also happened a few times overall. Annoying.

[mightyg]

They mentioned they made some changes to the matchmaking, particularly pairing people of similar N7 level together. It seems to be causing longer waits of matching 4 people, and probably stuffing higher level players into more ongoing gold and silver matches. They also said they're considering rolling back those changes based on people's reactions. I think it just needs to be adjusted to respect your search conditions and a little more lenient with the N7 rankings.