Mass Effect 3: It's not the endings, its the final battle (And synthesis)

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ShinyCharizard

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Lily Venus said:
And here comes the ME3-whiners pretending that their opinion is objective reality, no matter how blatantly it clashes with reality.
Honestly what the fuck do you keep going on about? We merely discussing problems we had with of ending of a much loved series. Why do you keep bringing a ridiculous amount of hostility. You are worse than the so called ME3-whiners that you are complaining about.
 

JazzJack2

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Lily Venus said:
We merely discussing problems we had with of ending of a much loved series. Why do you keep bringing a ridiculous amount of hostility.
No, the discussion is about problems with the ending that people invented out of nowhere. Should I be respectful to people who complain about things that anyone who's played the game would know is false? Should I respect opinions that would fall apart if the person who's holding them did less than a minute's worth of research on Google?

All I want is to be able to discuss a game I like without people constantly making up complete lies about it and constantly making those blatant lies the focus of every discussion about the game. No matter where you go, discussion about ME3 is always plagued by people who try their hardest to sound like they've never played the game.

Is it that much of a problem to expect people to give rational, logical, and real arguments?

Apparently it is.
Opinions. You're entitled to claim the dialogue wasn't terrible and the gameplay wasn't boring but don't tell me I am wrong because I think it was, it's purely subjective.
 

UrinalDook

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Yes, compared with ME2's Suicide Mission, the Earth battle sucked. I... can't really go into more detail than that. Unlike other facets of ME, I can't really explain why I dislike it, other than it was a dialogue-bare slog through a horribly linear, featureless wasteland with the only challenge coming from sheer numbers. More to the point, I don't really know how they could have done it better; at least, not without it being a play for play repeat of the Suicide Mission.

I vaguely recall one of the devs saying how much he hated the fact that the 'farewell scene', the last chat with the squadmates, was broken up by a "pointless" turret sequence. I think that kinda sums up the Earth battle, it's just a bit... directionless. Also, if the Thanix cannon is a kinetic impactor firing a relativistic stream of superheated metal, what the hell is a 'Thanix missile'? Where did they come from? And why are they being fired from stationary trucks rather than swooping frigates? I mean, wasn't the whole point of the first phase of the mission to knock out the Reaper's anti-air? Why are we charging a 600m tall walking starship on foot?

With all that done though, and with the Extended Cut, I'm actually pretty satisfied with the Destroy ending. The Reapers are dead, as we set out to do ever since Virmire, galactic civilisation hasn't ended and Shepard is still alive - even if Bioware only had the chops to do it in a symbolic cocktease. It is most assuredly not perfect. It seems to entirely gloss over the horrible implications of what 'even you are part synthetic' actually means. What about people with, I don't know, pacemakers? What about artificial limbs? What about, oh I don't know, all of those people with biotic amps wired straight to their brains? If the destroy magic can potentially kill Shepard because he's 'part synthetic', just how many other people die with him? I can rationalise why the space magic blows the Normandy a little bit up, and why it kills EDI - both she, and by extension the Normandy are built with Reaper bits and are running a Reaper IFF. It makes sense the Catalyst would have a hard time distinguishing it. But that logic only applies to destroy. As the Normandy crashes in the other endings, I'm forced to wonder if the energy wave is dangerous to any ship going FTL. I mean, Hackett narates the ending, so presumably he survives. But I still struggle to come up with any logic for the scenario.

The up spin of all this, though, is that the Catalyst is a Reaper. It's entirely possible it lied about a whole bunch of stuff. After all, with high enough EMS, Shepard survives. And, though we don't see any geth, or EDI, in the summary slideshow, we also don't hear any confirmation they died. So it's pretty easy for me to watch the destroy ending, see Shepard and the crew all survive and imagine that the geth at the very least made it too. EDI is an acceptable sacrifice for that ending, much as I grew to like her in 3.

Both synthesis and control, however, are total abominations. I can tolerate control being in the game, because some people might want their Shepard to be a total asshole who would leap at the chance to gain complete control over the galaxy. Synthesis is a frankly appalling use of utterly inexplicable space magic that utterly suspends the concept of logic in favour of some tech fetishist's 'utopia' I absolutely cannot support. I'm not comfortable with the idea of Shepard basically becoming a machine god. One: Deus Ex already did it, and Two: it just seems so out of character, even for a humanocentric renegade Shep. The idea of Reapers still drifting around the galaxy unsettles me, because I just don't think the citizens of the galaxy would buy it. After how much death and destruction they caused, would they really be happy with the dead remains of a thousand civilisations being their new interstellar police? And what about all those husks, you know, the reanimated corpses of millions of dead? Where do they go off to?

This is only magnified in the EC Synthesis ending, where there's one scene that implies the stupid green space magic applies to the husks as well. So, what, they're now even more of a hybrid of organic and synthetic? Are you telling me they're going to reintegrate into galactic society, regain their memories? They're dead people! It's just... a bit sick.

Like I said, Destroy I can live with. The other two... No, just no.

ShinyCharizard said:
Yeah that is similar to how I would have liked it to go, but I'd add a few things. I would have liked the crucible to end up being a device for nullifying the reapers indoctrination, akin to a gigantic radar jammer, and from then it would be a massive battle between the combined fleets of the galaxy vs the reapers and how well you did depends on on the choices you made in regards to uniting the various races.
This is actually not a bad idea. I will always maintain that a win through conventional means would have been a massive disappointment, and that everyone who suggests such never understood the ridiculous threat the Reapers represented (for the record, I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing - just that the way the Reapers were presented ever since you first heard the phrase 'cycle of extinction', the whole story was only going to be solved by some space magic or other, or the power of love). But you at least have a decent spin on how to keep the Crucible sensible. I think a lot of people fail to realise how important the Crucible is as the catalyst (trolololol) for the alliance against the Reapers. It's all well and good saying 'yo, we gots to join up and fight the Reapers', but it was only ever going to be believable if they had a plan to actually co-operate on. Personally, I'd take it one step further. Make the Crucible energy something that fucks with the Reapers' thought process. Kinda like how Dragonrend works on Alduin in Skyrim. Make it so they get stuck in a brainfart, similar to how Sovereign spazzed out when you killed his Saren avatar. Then you have a believable scenario for the fleets to do their thing.

ShinyCharizard said:
I would have also liked them to go with the dark energy idea. Where the reapers were a force trying to prevent said dark energy from destroying the galaxy. And they had to keep creating more reapers to stop it, hence the extermination cycle. And so once you defeat the reapers you've got this massive new threat to deal with and it takes the combined efforts of the galaxy once again to find a solution to stop it. That would have been a better ending I think.
The dark energy rationale makes even less sense than the one we ended up with. If the Reapers, are rather whoever built them, really was so afraid of what the mass effect was making dark energy do, you know what they shouldn't have done? Engineer a system where every species evolves along the path of using the mass effect. For that matter, how about not building a galaxy wide network of colossal mass effect engines. Or titanic mass effect drive cores to power a massive fleet of ships. If the Reapers really wanted to lessen the impact of dark energy, maybe they shouldn't have spent millions of years contributing more to the problem than probably all the civilisations they harvested put together.

Not to mention that, thematically, it would really suck to have the central premise of the series, the thing the whole fuckin' universe is based on be the thing that's slowly killing the galaxy. It would be like making the Force kill a puppy every time Obi-Wan rocks his mind trick. You can't enjoy using the franchise's cool thing if it's also destroying the setting.

EDIT:

Saviordd1 said:
Finally my other second biggest issue is the synthesis ending, on the whole I try to ignore the ending but that's hard to do since Bioware set it up to be the "best" ending.

What? Synthesis defeats the entire purpose of the series, the entire third game (especially the Quarian-Geth part) is about how either machines and organics need to learn to deal with each other to kill each other. Yet synthesis is a slap in the face by saying all we need is a little space magic for peace to happen.
You said it, brother. I have absolutely nothing to argue with here.

If nothing else comes out of this thread and, let's face it, after all the rambling I did up there it probably won't, you can at least take comfort in knowing that someone else agrees with you that the Synthesis ending just ain't right.

I mean, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk are freakin' doctors, that's why the company's called Bioware. After the scientific herp derping that went on about how zapping one dude with prosthetics could possibly make every organic in the galaxy a little bit robot, and worse every robot a little bit organic, it's no wonder they left. I wonder if slapping circuits in everyone without their consent is against the Hippocratic oath...
 

Saviordd1

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romxxii said:
Why are people still complaining? I mean, I was all for changing the ending, but we already got that. It's been months since EC was released, so I don't understand why the hell this topic is getting necro'd again and again.

If you were still unsatisfied after EC, then you have two options: play the earlier games and erase ME3 from your head-canon, or simply stop playing and stop spreading the grief to the rest of us who've moved on.
Your the one who opened the thread.

It's a free internet, you could have seen the words "Mass Effect" and "Ending" and skipped over it, yet you came into this thread.

Not my fault for your lack of judgement on this.
ShinyCharizard said:
You speak the truth. I really don't understand how the same team that crafted the perfect genophage and geth/quarian arcs in the game managed to fuck up the ending as badly as they did. I can only assume that they were rushed for time.
That's what I PRAY is the truth, and not that Bioware just dropped its sanity at some point.

I guess we'll see with their next game.

The Madman said:
Agreed.

Personally I'd have done away with the entire 'catalyst' idea to begin with, it just reeks of being a last-second ass pull excuse for how to kill the Reapers. An excuse I don't think was really needed either: You kill Sovereign, you know they're not immortal. Tough as hell but the Reapers can be destroyed, and what's more thanks to the events of Mass Effect 1 and 2 for possibly the first time in potentially billions of years, the Reapers don't have the advantage of surprise on their side. They're going to have to fight an organized foe, something that they've not had to do against any of the recorded previous invasions.

So do away with the catalyst junk and just have the game building up towards a battle against them, with your decisions throughout the previous games determining how well the battle goes and what happens. That's how I'd have hoped Bioware would do it.

Ah well!
This, to an extent.

Sadly they sort of wrote themselves into a corner, sure they're killable but at the same time it takes a fleet to take ONE out and there's thousands of them.

My friend bought up the good point that there should have been a few reapers in ME1, a team of sovereigns basically. This way they could still establish them as galactic threats but also show that they can be killed. Leave their power to surprise and indoctrination.

Jimmy T. Malice said:
They could have probably fixed the whole ending by not cutting Javik out and selling him as day-one DLC. The original plan was that Javik was the Catalyst, which sounds a whole lot better than space kid.
That's an interesting idea.

Sadly either Bioware's idiocy or EA's greed fucked over Javik's potential.

CommanderL said:
STOP STOP STOP STOP IT WE HAVE HAD THIS TALK A THOUSAND TIMES AND i am sick of seeing this I used to hate the ending but I just stoped caring about it and the series can we please stop talking about it the horse is already died everything has already been said
Then leave the thread and forget about it, we're not forcing you to be here.

JazzJack2 said:
Biodrones out at full force I see. The problem with Mass Effect 3 is not the ending, it's the entire game, all of it is badly written and extremely boring from a gameplay stand point. Even the visuals are worse than the previous games, the lighting is shockingly bad and all the colour seems to have vanished.
We like the Mass Effect series, therefor we are mindless drones.

Seriously?

Whatever, you have your opinion, we have ours.

Lily Venus said:
And here comes the ME3-whiners pretending that their opinion is objective reality, no matter how blatantly it clashes with reality.
And here comes the condescending one who believes they're above everyone else because they somehow hold all the facts in THEIR hands.

Your as bad as the people you claim to be against in this case.

Akratus said:
That's not the problem. Yes, the ending wasn't as involving as the suicide mission but that is just because Bioware had a really tight deadline, and they didn't care about making the ending mission huge.

The problem lies with the trilogy's writing. They wrote themselves into a corner, so the ending is logical. They had little other places to go. They could have done it better, but it's the way Bioware writes now. They just jam something unrelated into whatever important plot points.

Why else is Mass Effect 2 about a geth replacing army of bugmen, with a very weak villain, with no progression in the reaper threat plot except for a dlc. That's another symptom of their ineptitude, they forget important things, oops, so better jam it into a dlc!

The overal story is bad when it comes to ME2 and 3. And in ME3 the writing deriorates completely. Where's my court hearing? Where's my epic reaper invasion reveal?! And the rallying of the galaxy against the threat was fucking half assed too.
Yeah this is a good point.

To copy-paste from earlier in my post

"My friend bought up the good point that there should have been a few reapers in ME1, a team of sovereigns basically. This way they could still establish them as galactic threats but also show that they can be killed. Leave their power to surprise and indoctrination."

UrinalDook said:
-ohgodsnip-
I hate to burst your bubble but if you look closely at the name wall in the destroy ending you can see EDI's name. :(

That said I think the control ending isn't so bad, it has it's flaws but it's much less retarded than the synthesis one.

Control vs destroy is very much an actual discussion to be had, but will never happen due to the instant hatred and rage that the words "Mass Effect ending" invoke.
 

Saviordd1

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Hannya said:
God... just leave it already... Seriously, who the fuck cares anymore?

I don't have any interest in Mass Effect, however everywhere I looked after its release was just person after person spewing the same pointless shit about the ending.

Sorry, but you had a good few hours of gameplay before the ending, and unless you generally didn't like the game (in which case it has NOTHING to do with the ending), you enjoyed the game. Having 5 minutes of suck doesn't automatically remove the several hours of fun you had prior.

Just... Go play some other game... All this crap about the ending has just gotten to a point where it's more tiresome than trolls who spam "U MAD BRO?!"
Again, you didn't have to come in here.

But to put it in perspective for a non-ME fan...

Imagine at the end of the Lord of the Rings instead of Frodo throwing the ring into mount doom and what have you another unknown till now wizard randomly appeared and explained how Sauron was actually there to save the people of middle earth from themselves by killing and enslaving them. He then gave Frodo the choice between destroying the ring, using the ring for himself, or turning everyone into a half-orc, half-human abomination.

Something like that would utterly cockslap the fans and confuse everyone, it would also leave a bad taste in your mouth.

Admittedly, yes, we do complain about it to much, and I have no excuse for that.

That said though I still do love ME3, and I do still play it. We just wish the ending met up with the rest of the games quality.

Hope that helps you see where we're coming from.

Lily Venus said:
The up spin of all this, though, is that the Catalyst is a Reaper. It's entirely possible it lied about a whole bunch of stuff. After all, with high enough EMS, Shepard survives. And, though we don't see any geth, or EDI, in the summary slideshow, we also don't hear any confirmation they died. So it's pretty easy for me to watch the destroy ending, see Shepard and the crew all survive and imagine that the geth at the very least made it too. EDI is an acceptable sacrifice for that ending, much as I grew to like her in 3.
Claiming the Catalyst is a Reaper despite it being blatantly obvious that the Catalyst is not "a Reaper" simply so one can pretend it is unreliable and that there really isn't any price to pay in the Destroy ending.

*facepalm*

This is the message that game developers might get from ending-bashers: if you make a game where victory through sacrifice is a major theme from the beginning to the end, then people will like that theme up until the very last moment when they will hate it just because it spoiled their sunshine-and-flowers happy ending.
But...he is. Basically.

He is a super advanced AI who controls the reapers thinking and actions; that basically makes him one if not in body.

Who's distorting the facts here again?
 

Tilted_Logic

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Saviordd1 said:
I recently went through Mass Effect 3 again, and yada yada problems with the plot and crap aside it's still a good game in my eyes. Except for one thing, the final hour, but not for the reasons you think. Allow me to explain.

To me the biggest disappointment as it stands right now is the battle for Earth. Sure, starchild is an annoying turd but I can deal with him, he's not the worst thing to happen to the series he's bearable.

But what really gets me is that there is no pay off on Earth. Jacks students aren't keeping my barriers up, I don't see grunt and wrex charge over a hill into a group of reapers, the rachni don't kill their indoctrinated cousins, Zaeed doesn't shoot a few enemies while muttering something about "guddaam bastads"

In short, there is no big moment with your friends. And that hurts because when you come down to it the entire series was about forging friendships and alliances to defeat a huge threat. Yet at the end all we got was the Alliance with a few other token members of the races added in fighting.

To me that's the biggest disappointment, not the starchild, not buzz aldrin (Though I'll get to him) its the lack of god damn pay off.

Sorry, "Guddaam payoff".
My sentiments exactly.
I hated London. All of it. How they make it so very obvious you're going to take one for the team by saying your good-byes to flipping holographic projections of your friends. The way all the action seemed to be put on hold while you meandered around saying farewell to everyone (a bit of urgency might have been nice). And then most definitely the fact you never see anything you did during the game pay off. It irked me to no utter end that I never got to see the Rachni fighting alongside, or even some ships in orbit; that I never see these biotics Kaidan talks about, or the Turians and Krogans that I've finally allied with me... It was just... disappointing. It felt so hollow and empty... after all that work, all the alliances, all I've really got to show for it is some numbers dictating what sort of minute changes appear in the R/G/B endings.

But heck, I didn't even like the bit with the Illusive Man. Saren was a brilliant villain in my mind, one of my absolute favorites... then it's nearly complete dejavu..
I still haven't brought myself to do a second playthrough; I want too, so very much... But if I do I feel like I'd need to simply stop playing after finishing the Cerberus station.
 
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Oh I agree completely. I was very disappointed in everything you mentioned. Except for Synthesis. As someone who gets rock hard at the idea of Transhumanism and evolving past our standard forms, I quite liked it.

The problems still didn't stop me from loving the game as a whole and making it one of my absolute favorites of last year.

NOW can we stop with this? PLEASE???

JazzJack2 said:
Biodrones out at full force I see. The problem with Mass Effect 3 is not the ending, it's the entire game, all of it is badly written and extremely boring from a gameplay stand point. Even the visuals are worse than the previous games, the lighting is shockingly bad and all the colour seems to have vanished.
Really bro? Biodrones?

Just go back to /v/

It's where you belong.

And besides, if being a "Biodrone" means I enjoy a great game and don't ***** and whine about it whenever the topic comes up, then sign me up.
 

UrinalDook

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Saviordd1 said:
I hate to burst your bubble but if you look closely at the name wall in the destroy ending you can see EDI's name. :(
Right, yeah. I worded it a little retardly. I knew and fully accept that EDI dies as a result of destroy. Like I said, it actually makes sense given that she's got Reaper bits in her. The geth are far more vague, though. If Bioware do come out and categorically state they all died, with no hope of coming back I won't lose any sleep over it. After all, they did upgrade themselves with Reaper code, so it maybe makes sense. I just think it would be a huge waste of the overarching theme of Mass Effect. So for now, and for the many (many) reasons I gave earlier, I'm content to believe at least some geth made it through.

Saviordd1 said:
That said I think the control ending isn't so bad, it has it's flaws but it's much less retarded than the synthesis one.

Control vs destroy is very much an actual discussion to be had, but will never happen due to the instant hatred and rage that the words "Mass Effect ending" invoke.
Agreed. Like I said earlier, I can tolerate Control being in the game. I can understand why some would pick it. But to me, it will always be a horrific choice that tramples all over the theme of co-operation just as badly as synthesis does. Its one advantage is that it's very easy to accept that using the Crucible as a massive reactor for power, and the Citadel and relays as a massive transmitter network could 'reprogram' the Reapers. Control, bizarrely, is probably the least 'space magic-y' of all the endings. Erm, if you ignore that Shepard uploads his consciousness by... grabbing a power cable and disintegrating, that is.
 

spartandude

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There really isnt much more to say about the ending or the earth mission than what has already been said. It was simply terrible and very lasily done, especially when compared to ME2's suicide mission (which was fantastic). It was no different depending on what choices had been made and was such a boring place to be (as if we didnt have enough brown/grey bombed out cities in our games) while the reaper base was exotic and rather cool looking and had some interesting machinics in it (biotic sheild dome) and more importantly had choices in it and was effected by choices (or lack of choices) made in the game.

however one thing that really annoyed me about the whole game in general was the war. at several times im told how i "united the entire galaxy" and we went to fight against a galactic invasion fleet.... only i didnt unite the entire galaxy, at best ive united 1% of it

"Citadel space is an unofficial term referring to any region of space controlled by a species that acknowledge the authority of the Citadel Council. At first glance, it appears this territory encompasses most of the galaxy. In reality, however, less than 1% of the stars have been explored." - Mass Effect Codex Citadel Space entry.

what about all the other empires out there? arnt they facing the reapers?i find it odd that with a war on such a scale the Citadel fleets are able to over power the reapers defending the Citadel (which they have found out will lead to their destruction) or why there seems to be no mention of these possible nations, or how they may have reacted to the out come. but no, its still "united the entire galaxy"

Lily Venus said:
ah bioware defence force, how i have missed being part of thee
 

Mikeyfell

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mad825 said:
The game sucked, full stop.

-less overall content
-crappy cameos
-No real point of "choice" existing
-Contrived story/plot
-Half-arsed (ripped-off) ending with no conclusion


Sure, there were some good things but those good things don't really stand against the crap.

Ding ding ding!
We have a winner folks.


OT: I used to be in the "Synthesis is space magic" camp too, but then I had it explained to me thusly.


Synthesis (Like the other two endings) is just a radiation plus, but in this case green radiation gives all organics "Electronic cancer" and corrupts all synthetic system files decision making processes to be just as random and unpredictable as an organic brain.

So it's like a disguise, so when the reapers scan for organics all they see is the electronic fields the green radiation gave them, and the side effects are that synthetic's now have corrupted system files that just simulate emotions.


Ever sense I got that explanation I've been far more willing to except the stupid green ending, but that doesn't fix anything it just means I can't complain about space magic any more.
 

Zoidfreak

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This ones only real problem with the ending is that it just didn't make sense. This one didn't even become angry.
 

Legion

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Akratus said:
That's not the problem. Yes, the ending wasn't as involving as the suicide mission but that is just because Bioware had a really tight deadline, and they didn't care about making the ending mission huge.

The problem lies with the trilogy's writing. They wrote themselves into a corner, so the ending is logical. They had little other places to go. They could have done it better, but it's the way Bioware writes now. They just jam something unrelated into whatever important plot points.

Why else is Mass Effect 2 about a geth replacing army of bugmen, with a very weak villain, with no progression in the reaper threat plot except for a dlc. That's another symptom of their ineptitude, they forget important things, oops, so better jam it into a dlc!

The overal story is bad when it comes to ME2 and 3. And in ME3 the writing deriorates completely. Where's my court hearing? Where's my epic reaper invasion reveal?! And the rallying of the galaxy against the threat was fucking half assed too.
I agree. Mass Effect 2 had some excellent parts, especially the visual style and the characters, but the overall plot was incredibly weak. Imagine if you took out Mass Effect 2 except for the Arrival DLC. What would you have actually lost as far as the story about the war against the Reapers goes?

Nothing really, the second games plot is about as relevant to the main story as the battle of Helm's Deep in LOTR is to the story of the One Ring. The difference is that the story runs alongside the rest of it, whereas the story of the Collectors is entirely it's own story without any real relevance to the story of the Reapers.

To be honest I could forgive that because so many other things were done right.

Mass Effect 3 on the other hand I felt the writing was appalling from the start. Literally the only parts I thought were decent was the moment with Tali at the end of the Rannoch section and the ending of Tuchanka with Mordin. The rest was like poor fan fiction. I mean seriously, Tali and Garrus, as well as Joker and EDI hooking up? The constant jokes about Shepard being a bad dancer (even if they never danced)? The "We don't need plans we just need to fight, derp a derp"?

Let's not forget the terrible cameo's because they wrote themselves into a corner by having almost everybody killable in the second game either.

The sad thing is I was one of those who strongly objected to multiplayer being in the game as the last two were single player games, and I felt it would be tacked on. It was actually my favourite part of the third game.
 

TheDoctor455

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crono738 said:
Agree 100%. Everything started to go downhill right after the awesomesauce that was the fleet(s) arriving.
Even that was a bit disappointing.

Because there were some species that you didn't get to see, like the Rachni... I really wanted to see what their ships looked like. Would've been awesome. Oh well.

Also... remember how Admiral Hackett kept going on and on about how Shepard's the one person that can make... pretty much everyone believe that they have a chance at winning? Yeah... then why the hell is Hackett the one giving that last speech to the fleet? Okay, fine... his speech was okay, but really... there should've been an opportunity for Shepard to address the fleet as well.

Also.. why the fuck didn't Harbinger play a bigger role in this game?

In ME2, they were setting him up to be the new spokesperson for the Reapers...
yet we only see him for about 2 seconds in ME3. What the hell?