Did ME3 ruin Mass Effect for you?

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Frankster

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Mar 13, 2009
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crazyrabbits said:
Sure, there were extremists (on both sides), but by and large, the people complaining about the ending were much better behaved than the people "complaining about the complaining". Anyone who says otherwise is either looking through rose-coloured glasses or just doesn't know what happened, period.
Looking back at this thread, this comment seem strangely prophetic.

Which "side" has consistenly been the snarkiest and mean spirited one in this thread? ;)
Gratz to those who managed to communicate their opinions without having to bash on others or being snide.
 

Padwolf

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Sep 2, 2010
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I have to admit, it killed it a little bit for me. I have ME1 and 2. I just can't bring myself to play them at the moment.
 

MHR

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Apr 3, 2010
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Yes

The whole ending was really insulting and I have no idea how they could possibly make any more ME games without that serious sour note lingering in the air the whole time. Anything else will definitely seem like a contrived cash-grab of a sequel. I don't think I'd even PIRATE any more ME games, it's that bad.

It's pretty much a widely know fact that the ending was complete rubbish.

The ride was great though, and ME2 was a freakin masterpiece, but after seeing the ending and how little choices mattered to ME3, the best part of the series has definitely reached a conclusion. Never has an ending to anything I've experienced been so bad.

I've played ME1 twice.
I've played ME2 about 5 times.
I only played ME3 once and had absolutely NO DESIRE to play it again.

Edit: The ending didn't ruin the gameplay of 1, 2, and 3, but the series is "ruined" as far as taking any sequels or Other ME games seriously.
 

The Great JT

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Oct 6, 2008
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It did not. Why, you ask? Because the story was good and the gameplay was fun. Now I will admit, the ending was sub-par and I'm one of the few people who think the Extended Cut fixed it, but how many other works of fiction were great and ended poorly compared to the rest of the ? Now, I have a few things to say to some people. I'll try to keep it as not-insulting as possible.

First, to all those who wanted a "Shepard rides off into the sunset with his love interest" finale, come on. You KNEW going in they weren't going to have one of those. You had to have seen that coming. Even if you took the "Renegade" ending and Shepard lives, you know full well he ain't going to be walking anywhere. If he woke up and his bones from the pelvis down weren't either powder or made of goddamn Vibranium, he ain't walking into any sunset ever. Look, Mass Effect 3, at its core, is a war trying to be grounded within the realms of Acceptable Breaks From Reality, meaning suspension of disbelief means you can believe omni-tools can do the things they do and that exposure to a certain element in utero can grant, for lack of a better word, superpowers to people. I don't know how many war stories you've read, but endings like that just don't tend to happen in war stories. At least not the ones I've read/watched.

Second, to those who are still saying "the ending needs to be changed to be more like this," you don't know what you want. At all. Fans never know what they want regarding the ending of a game. They THINK they do, but they don't. The ending is kind of lacking, certainly, but come the hell on. It isn't bad enough to declare it the Prequel Trilogy of this decade. I mean, even Return of the Jedi ended with the ewoks beating the Federation. What was I talking about? Oh right, people complaining about the ending. Look, bottom line is that 'yes, the ending is not that good, but it also is not bad enough to declare the whole series ruined forever.' I got the Collectors' Edition, I have one of the discs in my X-Box 360 right now and the other one's on my coffee table, I saw the same endings you did.
 

Fijiman

I am THE PANTS!
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Dec 1, 2011
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Yes it did. Why? All the butthurt rage about the ending that went around here completely turned me away from the series. I'll probably never play the series, or at least not for a very long time.
 

crazyrabbits

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Jul 10, 2012
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Frankster said:
crazyrabbits said:
Sure, there were extremists (on both sides), but by and large, the people complaining about the ending were much better behaved than the people "complaining about the complaining". Anyone who says otherwise is either looking through rose-coloured glasses or just doesn't know what happened, period.
Looking back at this thread, this comment seem strangely prophetic.

Which "side" has consistenly been the snarkiest and mean spirited one in this thread? ;)
Gratz to those who managed to communicate their opinions without having to bash on others or being snide.
Thank you.

The Great JT said:
First, to all those who wanted a "Shepard rides off into the sunset with his love interest" finale, come on. You KNEW going in they weren't going to have one of those. You had to have seen that coming.
And yet, the Synthesis ending (minus Shepard's death) is, bar none, the most saccharine and heart-tuggingly sappy thing in the entire trilogy. Everyone magically gets a happy ending. Humanity and the Reapers are suddenly buddy-buddy. Kasumi (if she's alive and has the greybox) magically finds out that Keiji is now some sort of self-aware being. Krogans are now having little green glowing babies. Robots now magically have emotions, and everyone's totally cool with being transformed into a hybrid against their will. The only thing missing from that was Garrus and Shepard toasting mojitos on the beach.

Point is, this is a series that not only actively encouraged you to overcome insurmountable odds and come out better than before, but proved it multiple times in the narrative. Even with Hackett bleating that "we can't win this war conventionally", you've got a main character that not only saved humanity from the vanguard of its destruction (using a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants plan that wasn't guaranteed to work) and then, as a follow-up, took a crew of the baddest dudes in the galaxy through a relay that everyone said was impossible, blew up an entire enemy faction and came home - possibly with everyone still alive.

The notion that you couldn't win this without dying is a fallacy created by the game's defenders to throw off the fact that the writing just wasn't up to snuff. It's the byproduct of last-minute retcons, McGuffins and backhanded logic that disrespects everything that came before it.

Even if you took the "Renegade" ending and Shepard lives, you know full well he ain't going to be walking anywhere. If he woke up and his bones from the pelvis down weren't either powder or made of goddamn Vibranium, he ain't walking into any sunset ever.
Talking about a character that, at the beginning of ME2, was reduced to nothing more than "meat and tubes", and yet, was somehow resurrected to better-than-new condition. Again, that's a weak excuse for inconsistent writing.

Look, Mass Effect 3, at its core, is a war trying to be grounded within the realms of Acceptable Breaks From Reality, meaning suspension of disbelief means you can believe omni-tools can do the things they do and that exposure to a certain element in utero can grant, for lack of a better word, superpowers to people.
A series that has giant Cthulhu-like cuttlefish trying to invade the galaxy and people magically getting resurrected from the dead is one thing if they explain it. Using your final installment to throw in concepts and gameplay elements that had never been hinted at before, and the audience barely knows how they even work, is lazy and uninspired.

Any notion of "acceptable breaks" was long gone by the time we discovered that there was a magic superweapon that nobody knew about before, no one ever explained to us (via vision or in person) and nobody knows what it does until zero hour.

I don't know how many war stories you've read, but endings like that just don't tend to happen in war stories. At least not the ones I've read/watched.
I could sit here all day quoting series that have balanced the fantastical and grounded, and not only allowed their main character(s) to survive, but leave them better off than before while keeping in the spirit of the story. Fortunately, I have to go to work.
 

soren7550

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Dec 18, 2008
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I love the Mass Effect series. You could say that I'm mildly obsessed. I've put in probably over 400 hours of play in the series with just one Shepard.

But that ending... it hurt, I'll be honest. That last ten minutes pretty much ruined the whole series for me.

Deception didn't help.

But then, a bit ago, I watched this:

I've been healed.

Is the ending of Mass Effect 3 still stupid? Yes, but I can live with it now. This performance is just so full of energy, and love, and awesome, it just cleansed me of this bitterness and disappointment.

Would I journey back into the Mass Effect universe should they put out a new game? We'll see. It depends on how they do it and if the concept appeals to me.
 

Lodgicalwill

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Nov 12, 2009
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Even though the last 5-10 minutes were more than disappointing for me, that didn't affect my perspective of the entirity of the rest of the series. 95% of the rest of the series was a really great experience, especially to play a sigle Shepard from 1 through to 3. I'll admit, since I beat 3 I haven't play the series again as of yet, but with university studies and a very large number of games I have yet to complete, I just haven't had the time.

Favourite part of the series was definitely the final mission of ME2. If they can pull off another good ME game, I see no reason as to why I wouldn't buy it. It's a formula that worked for most of the series, and it would be interesting to see what they do next.
 

BrotherRool

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Oct 31, 2008
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It improved it for me. Mark that I'm very aberrant in my ME3 experience, I disliked the beginning more than the end, loved the end in a strange way (and actually uninstalled the EC because man that was an invasive bit of stuff. There were a couple of scenes with the Normandy I'd have wanted to keep, but I hated the charge being interrupted and the narration at the end completed utterly destroyed my image of how I wanted the end to be and broke up all narrative flow for a boring uninspired speech that wasn't at all what I'd have done in Shepards place).

The thing about all the ME's is that actual full roleplaying doesn't work. Each time I've spent ages on character creation, making the perfect character with a backstory that fits her and an appropriate face... and then Shepard speaks and it's not the voice in my head and I realise that you can't go outside the 4ish pre-created characters in a game with full dialogue. (Making Planescape still the best route to go down dialogue wise). So you can be a good or evil space soldier badass. But you have to be a space soldier badass. You can't for example, become a quiet rather withdrawn person, whose colony was destroyed by thresher maws and joined the military because she needed to give everything she had to help and wanted to put her body between danger and any other family with a young daughter trapped out on a colony. She's quiet, not really one of the troops, but her kindness and the smartness of what she says when she says it, makes people respect her and full in with her way of thinking, although she never imposes it.

... you just can't do it. It's an RPG and you can pick a backstory and design a face which makes you think that that's possible, but it's not.

And the wheel... it's just too imprecise. In none of the games can you ever really be sure what Shepard is going to say for any given option, just as when the interrupts happen, you don't actually know whats happening, so just have to rely on it being appropriate for the precreated paragon/renegade version of Shepard.


So I had a pretty miserable time with ME2. I kept trying to pick dialogue and options I wanted, but it never worked out and then when you throw in silly plot twists etc...

But in many ways ME3 stopped pretending. It reduced the wheel to nonsense and it broke me out of my habit, it forced me to stop trying to assert my character and enjoy theirs and so I did and I did. And when I went back to ME2 I did that and realised I could enjoy that now.

And so free of all that stuff I loved the characters who are so complicated in 2 and 3, I loved the narrative flow and the music and the setting. Miracle of Sound guy said that he's weird and plot isn't important to him so he could enjoy the EC edition. I say he's not weird enough, because if so he'd hate the EC edition for destroying narrative flow. I enjoyed 3 for what it represented and didn't care about the details. I loved the 'we've one but at the cost of almost everything, but the day has dawned and now we have to make the best with what we've got' feel of stranded planet scene.


My largest complaint with 3 is the awful boring, ugly grey art direction, which only make me enjoy the good, vibrant colourful art in the other even more, so there's nothing in 3 to damage my impressions of 1 and 2
 

Al-Bundy-da-G

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Apr 11, 2011
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I loved ME3 except for the obvious. I invested so much time into the games and into the story of Shepard and his/her crew & friends and got so hyped about how it all would end that when the ending finally rolled around I died a little inside. I didn't obsess over it or anything it's just that Bioware gave me this story and let me control how it unfolded page by page but the last page was already typed in and had no hint of the choices I had made throughout the three titles.

It's not just that. Judging from EA's treatment of Bioware's series (tighter and tighter deadlines and budgets, mandatory multi-player, etc.) it seems that by the time they get ME4 out after DA3, EA will have pushed them too far and ME will start a downwards spiral.

So no probably not.
 

Shirokurou

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Mar 8, 2010
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It was underwhelming...in lack of content and the like.

But if DmC grew on me, after I hated it since day one. I'm willing to forgive the franchise its ME3 shenanigans!

P.S.: I actually liked the multiplayer.
 

trouble_gum

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May 8, 2011
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Soopy said:
Nah, ME2 killed it for me.
Oh yeah. After ME, ME2 just felt like I was playing a Gears of War clone with more dialogue. Go here, hide behind these walls, pop up and shoot some things, move to next room full of chest-high obstacles, repeat. Did have the Gilbert and Sullivan moment, though.

I wasn't looking forward to ME3 with great anticipation, and when I heard it was going to be exclusive to Origin, I shrugged and never bothered.
 

bandman232

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Jun 27, 2010
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I would get and play another ME game, but not now. I played the living crap out of them and want to play other stuff. :)
 

Contradiction

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May 20, 2009
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Wouldn't buy from the mass effect IP again however I loved ME3 perfect ending for the trilogy...
I liked it sue me.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Aug 3, 2011
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Yes i would - maybe a game based around Archangel hunting criminals? But seriously, people need to get over ME3 ending, its getting retarded now that people still moan about. ME is an amazing universe, lots of history to delve into.
 

alik44

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Sep 11, 2010
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Eh yes and no. yes the ending was...... disappointing being the nicest thing i can say about but hell to be honest mass effect was ruined when me2 came out. but in my personal opinion the mass effect series was not bad it was just very very disappointing.
 

DioWallachia

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Sep 9, 2011
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I love just how people are in denial that ME3 DIDNT ruin anything. The mere precence of Catalist boy ruined the actions of Sovereing, by being part of the Citadel, and therefore it made ME1 pointless.

I didnt ruin ME2, however, because it was already pointless before even ME3 was released (and so were your choices that didnt affect ME3)

Aaaaaaaaaand the rest of the ME3 experience consist in corridots and people to shoot, REGARDLESS if it doesnt make any sence in context.
 

Harker067

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Sep 21, 2010
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Nope didn't ruin it for me. If the BSG ending didn't ruin that show for me the ME3 ending doesn't really stand a chance. As to buying another one depends on the game. ME3s multiplayer is of no interest to me so depending on how much it skews that way we'll see.
 

conmag9

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Aug 4, 2008
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Given that it's my favorite of the trilogy? Yeah, not so much. I never really got the level of indignation that most of the fanbase did over the endings (I'm actually pretty good at keeping immersed), though I'm still glad they created the extended cut. The only thing that really bugged me when I first played through it was the "suddenly, superweapon!" revelation of the Crucible, but even that went away when I stopped a moment and considered, well, YEAH, the Protheans would want to spread that little number far and wide to give the next cycle a chance, and their technology (later to be revealed far more than just their technology) was suited for that sort of craziness.