Mass Effect 3: Lost opportunities

[Roofless]

Good day to everyone,

*Yeah, Nimcha got it right, gotta be one here*\
***!!! Spoiler warning !!!***
**Use of preventive bucket-over-head is advised**

Just finished my first play-through of Mass Effect 3 and reflected on how the trilogy turned out.
A very interesting thought pierced my mind: after ME2 lots of people speculated about how events will progress and how PC's choices will change the story in the endgame.

I would like to post my own (and my friends') thoughts on the lost opportunities and would happily see what other people can say on the matter.
(P.S. I understand that some of them are ridiculous in the context of tragedy that the game tries to portrait, but still... would be awesome to have the choice :] )

1. Rachni & geth
The first thing that me and my friends came up with was combining saved rachni from ME1 and reprogrammed geth from ME2. Imagine if you will, a clash between charging husks backed up by scions and charging geth soldiers, riding rachni warriors and led by geth primes on rachni brood warriors.
What can defeat an army of giant doombots? An army of rachni-riding doombots!

2. Biotic kung-fu
Actually, I think it's kind of lost opportunity for ME2, but nonetheless.
Remember Jack kick-ass moves when she busted out from prison? I think that close-quarters biotic brawling could've been a nice touch for biotic characters (especially vanguard). It would be like God of War, but with guns and telekinesis =). Just think about it - biotic-charge into the thick of Reaper troops and then hammer them down with kilo-newton face-punches.

3. Boss fights
Really, why the heck did they take those out? Colossus in ME2 was one of my favorite parts. On "Impossible" it was teeth-grindigly awesome. A real "against all odds" battle, if you ask me.

4. Visit ALL the capitals
While we had Earth, Tuchanka and Thesia, I would much appreciate visiting all the main planets. We didn't go even near the salarian homeworld and only watched Palaven burn from its moon.
Also, Omega (capital of organized crime!) would be a nice place for a firefight with reapers =)

5. The Ultimate Evil ending
Yeah, yeah, there's no "evil" choices in ME, BUT.
Reapers harvest races to melt them into a new Reaper, an oversoul of some kind, fused into a machine, right? And Shepard "is the best humanity can offer" (c), right?
What if, Reapers offered Shepard to become a Reaper? A one-man Reaper. He already represents the total awesomeness of an entire species, right? All they have to do - explain why cycles are needed and convince him that extinction of advanced sentient life is the right course of action. And then transfer his consciousness into reaper-form.
"And then they happily harvested organic life forever after. The end" (c)

So, any additions to the list?

 

[Bebus]

/insert predictable ending comment:

As interesting as those are, there is no point in them when they make no difference to the endings.

Ok, I'm done.

Did you play a Vanguard? You had the options you list for #2. Heavy melee was like a Biotic fisting rather than the omni-sword other classes get. The Vanguard-exclusive power Nova was an awesome, melee range Biotic ground pound. It was amazing, Charge basically ruined all other classes for me in ME2, and the upgrades this time around confirmed it.

There is a lot of speculation about an Omega DLC following a supposed 'leak', but I don't imagine many people will buy it if it comes out before any official statement about the endings, as a form of protest. What is the point, when it makes no difference to the ending? (sorry, definitely done this time). Also the 'rescue the Krogan female' mission was on the Salarian homeworld, but you are right there was no real interaction with it: it was just a bunker with a nice backdrop.

Personally, I think the biggest missed opportunity was to really, really get into characters. Bioware did an amazing job with humanising Shepard, but most of his/her support characters were still fairly distant. Liara was the most developed: her gift to Shepard, the support she offers if you admit how scared or angry you are, were beautifully made scenes. I would have loved to see Ashley to reflect on her feelings about aliens, or Joker to be less of a sarcastic ass for a minute.

I would also have liked to see a bit of serious variation given your choices in ME1/ME2. For example, if you romanced Jack in ME2 you could get her to come onto the Normandy as a permanent squad member, rather than stay with her pupils. Or maybe you get a Rachni combat 'pet', similar to the Mabari in Dragon Age 2, if you spare the queen in ME1. Or the ability to fly into a jealous rage at Jacob for cheating on you, leaving his colony to rot. That would give the game some serious replay value and really hammer home that your actions have consequences.

There are dozens of ideas for 'big' opportunities, which can be built on by DLC (if they fix the enSORRY!). But I feel the biggest missed opportunities were in the character interaction.

 

[Nimcha]

You do actually go to the Salarian homeworld, Sur'Kesh. It's where you pick up the female krogan and Mordin.

Also, you may want to add a spoiler warning.

 

[Roofless]

Looked up that mission on ME wiki. Damn, I didn't even get that it was an actual salarian homeworld.
I thought it was some backwater STG base, kind of like Virmire for Saren.
Anyway, comparing to what we saw on Thesia, it doesn't count.

RE: vanguard heavy melee - haven't played him yet (my first pick was always infiltrator). He's on my list under playthrough number 3 =)

 

[Zen Toombs]

You do actually go to the Salarian homeworld, Sur'Kesh. It's where you pick up the female krogan and Mordin.

Wat

Huh, I guess you're right. Well that visit wasn't particularly satisfying....

 

[Saltarius]

All I wanted was a way for Legion to live. And some way for Mordin and Wrex to both survive the genophage mess.

 

[PaganAxe]

2. Biotic kung-fu
Actually, I think it's kind of lost opportunity for ME2, but nonetheless.
Remember Jack kick-ass moves when she busted out from prison? I think that close-quarters biotic brawling could've been a nice touch for biotic characters (especially vanguard). It would be like God of War, but with guns and telekinesis =). Just think about it - biotic-charge into the thick of Reaper troops and then hammer them down with kilo-newton face-punches.

3. Boss fights
Really, why the heck did they take those out? Colossus in ME2 was one of my favorite parts. On "Impossible" it was teeth-grindigly awesome. A real "against all odds" battle, if you ask me.

The phantoms are basically biotic ninjas with Kai Leng leading the charge. Why just use your fists when you can use swords?

As for the other part, seriously? Just take the right flank at the colossus, fight your way up to that nook, and snipe the shit out of the thing. Not challenging at all. Fighting the Reaper on Ranoch, now THAT was frustrating, especially since its laser kills you if it so much brushes your shoulder.

 

[endtherapture]

No new vrsion of "The End" for Mass Effect 3.

Mass Effect had The End.

Mass Effect 2 had The End run.

Mass Effect 3 had the official soundtrack to "THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?!"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZhdXhOr8AA&feature=related[/youtube]

 

[Richardplex]

/insert predictable ending comment:

As interesting as those are, there is no point in them when they make no difference to the endings.

Ok, I'm done.

Did you play a Vanguard? You had the options you list for #2. Heavy melee was like a Biotic fisting rather than the omni-sword other classes get. The Vanguard-exclusive power Nova was an awesome, melee range Biotic ground pound. It was amazing, Charge basically ruined all other classes for me in ME2, and the upgrades this time around confirmed it.

There is a lot of speculation about an Omega DLC following a supposed 'leak', but I don't imagine many people will buy it if it comes out before any official statement about the endings, as a form of protest. What is the point, when it makes no difference to the ending? (sorry, definitely done this time). Also the 'rescue the Krogan female' mission was on the Salarian homeworld, but you are right there was no real interaction with it: it was just a bunker with a nice backdrop.

Personally, I think the biggest missed opportunity was to really, really get into characters. Bioware did an amazing job with humanising Shepard, but most of his/her support characters were still fairly distant. Liara was the most developed: her gift to Shepard, the support she offers if you admit how scared or angry you are, were beautifully made scenes. I would have loved to see Ashley to reflect on her feelings about aliens, or Joker to be less of a sarcastic ass for a minute.

I would also have liked to see a bit of serious variation given your choices in ME1/ME2. For example, if you romanced Jack in ME2 you could get her to come onto the Normandy as a permanent squad member, rather than stay with her pupils. Or maybe you get a Rachni combat 'pet', similar to the Mabari in Dragon Age 2, if you spare the queen in ME1. Or the ability to fly into a jealous rage at Jacob for cheating on you, leaving his colony to rot. That would give the game some serious replay value and really hammer home that your actions have consequences.

There are dozens of ideas for 'big' opportunities, which can be built on by DLC (if they fix the enSORRY!). But I feel the biggest missed opportunities were in the character interaction.

I don't know, I was REALLY impressed with character interaction this game. Liara like you said was well done, but so was Garrus in my opinion - that bit with the sniping match is probably my favourite moment in the game, just laying back, chillin' with Garrus, pretty much securing him being like a brother to my Shepard. And you do see joker break for a minute, when you find out that it's almost certain his entire family had died while he still had to try and 'unstress' Shepard. And Kaiden was developed fairly well, for us classy people who kept him alive. Just the prothean, James and EDI who weren't as developed, though still more than in other games. And as you said, amazing job done with humanising Shepard- that by itself makes the game my favourite of all time.


Omega and the Yahg world I think will be DLC, because Aria foreshadows it and Aria is a great character whom Bioware did a lot of story with outside the games, and there's a lot of foreshadowing with the Yahg as well. Still clinging onto the hope that the 4th book will be declared non-canon and we'll get Gillian DLC.

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

So what about the side quests? It seems odd there are hardly any aside from putting a story to the multiplayer-focused maps and grocery shopping for all the lazy asses on the Citadel. It's not because of the reworked scanning mini-game either as it could work very similar.

I miss the mission in ME2 where you have to outdo a rouge AI in a failing space station which tries to lock you in rooms and such. That kind of thing.

 

[Roofless]

Oooh, I remembered one more thing - jetpacks!
Actually no, that would be a horrible idea, but Yahtzee, in his ME2 review, got it right - navigating empty balls of rock to kick some smuggler's ass added some kind of epicness and scale to the galaxy.

Although, to adapt this mechanic to ME3's story would mean navigating reaper-infested megacities' streets. Double-kill, if you ask me.