Mass Effect 3: The Wall

[Roboto]

doesn't it imply that the next cycle killed the reapers though?

it's not too big a stretch to imagine that if you had a high enough EMS you could still take the reapers with heavy losses.


OT: It's definitely better, but the problem is that I still have a crippling dislike of deus ex machinas, But I guess that fails down to personal bias. EA probably shouldn't have rushed the game.

Liara had that capsule thing very well thought out with all the information they got from other beacons in stuff, that it is not too much of a stretch to think some form of life found one near the beginning of the next cycle, took it seriously, and started preparing much earlier. Does that mean the Reapers didn't come back way, way, WAY after that by rebuilding? Impossible to tell, that's speculation. All you can tell from it is that they fought those freaky human reapers. The greatest story never told, or Mass Effect 4: Refusal Ending

 

[Timmibal]

To know that my dear Shepard advanced all creation to the supreme point of consciousness? Excellent! Behold Secher Nbiw! Behold the Golden Path!

I think Control embodies Secher Nbiw more than Synthesis. Remember the Golden Path was SUPPOSED to fail eventually. Likewise I give it a few millenia before Shep 'loses' his memories of humanity (They become subsumed in the yottabytes of new data his gestalt intelligence has processed) and starts actively fucking with sapient life for 'the good of the many'.

Synthesis is now my favourite but control is also quite heartwarming.

Heartwarming that your shep is now a God? And a potentially 'Righteous anger and furious vengeance' God of the Old Testament? I mean, He remembers His life prior to 'ascension', but expresses no desire to interact with his old crew or even sapients in general. His sole purpose seems to be being 'The One who can Save the Many'.

Yeah, I see religious crusades in the next few centuries. "Convert now! Receive the blessing of the Glorious and Eternal! Pray for the Beneficence of the Omnissiah! Kneel and give praise to The Shepard, who is God!"

Heartwarming? You worry me...

 

[Darkmantle]

doesn't it imply that the next cycle killed the reapers though?

it's not too big a stretch to imagine that if you had a high enough EMS you could still take the reapers with heavy losses.


OT: It's definitely better, but the problem is that I still have a crippling dislike of deus ex machinas, But I guess that fails down to personal bias. EA probably shouldn't have rushed the game.

Liara had that capsule thing very well thought out with all the information they got from other beacons in stuff, that it is not too much of a stretch to think some form of life found one near the beginning of the next cycle, took it seriously, and started preparing much earlier. Does that mean the Reapers didn't come back way, way, WAY after that by rebuilding? Impossible to tell, that's speculation. All you can tell from it is that they fought those freaky human reapers. The greatest story never told, or Mass Effect 4: Refusal Ending

Don't forget a fleet of the magnitude you brought in would probably kill more reapers than they could replace,

Honestly, if handled right, the refusal ending could be considered the most heroic ending, sacrificing your whole cycle's life, to damage the reapers just enough so that the next cycle can finish them. If portrayed from the angle of "it's too late for our cycle, but we will make room for the next". I honestly would have preferred the catalyst not working and shepard giving that kind of speech to the last of the alliance forces, would be better than the deus ex machina.

It just feels cheap you know, relying on what turned out to be essentially space magic to finish the game. It would have felt better if it was something done under your own power, and not under a god like figure.

 

[I.Muir]

If there was no catalyst the end would be great
Since he is still there the end is still shit
Bio ware obviously thought people were going nuts because the ending was too sad or something and are therefore deluded. They must actually think that ending makes sense or at least somebody more important than the rest does.

 

[lord Claincy Ffnord]

doesn't it imply that the next cycle killed the reapers though?

it's not too big a stretch to imagine that if you had a high enough EMS you could still take the reapers with heavy losses.


OT: It's definitely better, but the problem is that I still have a crippling dislike of deus ex machinas, But I guess that fails down to personal bias. EA probably shouldn't have rushed the game.

Liara had that capsule thing very well thought out with all the information they got from other beacons in stuff, that it is not too much of a stretch to think some form of life found one near the beginning of the next cycle, took it seriously, and started preparing much earlier. Does that mean the Reapers didn't come back way, way, WAY after that by rebuilding? Impossible to tell, that's speculation. All you can tell from it is that they fought those freaky human reapers. The greatest story never told, or Mass Effect 4: Refusal Ending

Don't forget a fleet of the magnitude you brought in would probably kill more reapers than they could replace,

Honestly, if handled right, the refusal ending could be considered the most heroic ending, sacrificing your whole cycle's life, to damage the reapers just enough so that the next cycle can finish them. If portrayed from the angle of "it's too late for our cycle, but we will make room for the next". I honestly would have preferred the catalyst not working and shepard giving that kind of speech to the last of the alliance forces, would be better than the deus ex machina.

It just feels cheap you know, relying on what turned out to be essentially space magic to finish the game. It would have felt better if it was something done under your own power, and not under a god like figure.

Therein lies the problem of building an enemy up too much, it becomes hard, perhaps not impossible, but hard to deal with them any other way.

 

[Darkmantle]

doesn't it imply that the next cycle killed the reapers though?

it's not too big a stretch to imagine that if you had a high enough EMS you could still take the reapers with heavy losses.


OT: It's definitely better, but the problem is that I still have a crippling dislike of deus ex machinas, But I guess that fails down to personal bias. EA probably shouldn't have rushed the game.

Liara had that capsule thing very well thought out with all the information they got from other beacons in stuff, that it is not too much of a stretch to think some form of life found one near the beginning of the next cycle, took it seriously, and started preparing much earlier. Does that mean the Reapers didn't come back way, way, WAY after that by rebuilding? Impossible to tell, that's speculation. All you can tell from it is that they fought those freaky human reapers. The greatest story never told, or Mass Effect 4: Refusal Ending

Don't forget a fleet of the magnitude you brought in would probably kill more reapers than they could replace,

Honestly, if handled right, the refusal ending could be considered the most heroic ending, sacrificing your whole cycle's life, to damage the reapers just enough so that the next cycle can finish them. If portrayed from the angle of "it's too late for our cycle, but we will make room for the next". I honestly would have preferred the catalyst not working and shepard giving that kind of speech to the last of the alliance forces, would be better than the deus ex machina.

It just feels cheap you know, relying on what turned out to be essentially space magic to finish the game. It would have felt better if it was something done under your own power, and not under a god like figure.

Therein lies the problem of building an enemy up too much, it becomes hard, perhaps not impossible, but hard to deal with them any other way.

That's the thing though, the reapers weren't even built up to be unstoppable until late into ME3. You killed one in ME1 when you got surprise attacked, with only a handful of human ships. but all of a sudden it takes the entire quarian flotilla 3 volleys in a weak point to kill it? What the HELL man? The reapers just didn't feel right all through ME3, they got about 20x more powerful because space magic basically.

It's one of the reasons why I don't get the amount of people praising the story, I found lots of problems all throughout ME3. It just REEKS of pointless escalation basically. Not only the reapers, but Cerberus for crying out loud!!! Did the writers forget that only 150 people were in Cerberus at the end of me2 (you can ask EDI about it after the joker section), if that, considering you stole their crew and two of their top operatives (miranda and jacob), but now they have enough dudes to take over multiple military installations, assault the citadel itself and raid colonies unopposed? With no real explanation or build up? That's too much for me man.

Honestly, I find the story just overall kind of bad in ME3, and I loved ME1 and ME2

 

[Innegativeion]

Still is a total author avatar though.

Humorously, people have pointed out how appropriate it is that this author avatar essentially throws a temper tantrum when you say that you don't like his endings ^_^

 

[Gmans uncle]

When I saw that title I thought it was for some kind of Mass Effect/ Pink Floyd crossover... how disappointed I was...

 

[Innegativeion]

If there was no catalyst the end would be great
Since he is still there the end is still shit
Bio ware obviously thought people were going nuts because the ending was too sad or something and are therefore deluded. They must actually think that ending makes sense or at least somebody more important than the rest does.

Alas his very existence pretty much ruins the ending's narrative coherence, though he isn't the only problem by far, he is by far the biggest one.

-His very existence renders the keepers pointless and therefor unravels Mass Effect 1's main conflict in its entirety, as well as destroying the significance of ilos and its prothean scientists.

-His arguments still make no sense, even given the additional background we get in EC. In fact, his new background makes him the perpetrator of his own motivation, "created always rebels etc."

-There is no legitimate reason ever given as to why he, as the citadel, is incapable of using the crucible

-He completely devalues the existence of the otherwise well-done harbinger character, rendering him redundant, pointless, and nullifying a full game's worth of great characterization of him in Mass Effect 2

-He is revealed as "the big bad" essentially, the main antagonist, leader of our enemy, in the last 5 minutes of the last game of a trilogy

-If he controls the reapers and is the citadel, then there should be no reason why he kept the transport beam on during the battle for london

-If he's so damn certain of his fucking motives, why even give the destruction choice, which he claims won't solve anything? Why not just offer to fly the reapers into a black hole if we ask him to, so we can save the geth and joker's girlfriend?

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

My problem is that the new endings would never be as exciting or as cool as the indoctrination theory. As I tweeted to Grey, nothing can beat a mountain dew fueled conspiracy theory.

I was right for the most part the new endings with the plot holes dry walled and patched just doesn't leave me disappointed but it doesn't excite me either.

Now that the ending is out I would like to see Casey Hudson give a play by play on why this video is completely wrong.


Like why are the piles of bodies next to the pillar of light, why are the dead bodies wearing the same default armors as Ashley and Kaiden.

Why you see the oily shadows during the confrontation with TIM and Anderson. Why when you shoot Anderson you are then wounded and why when you reach the top of the light you arn't wounded anymore?

There are tons of tiny details that are still left unexplained and I would really like some answers.

Rushing it out the door and cutting corners in the process? Sometimes the simplest explanation is best - call me crazy but I don't think these are the subtlest writers of our generation..

 

[Gizen]

That's the thing though, the reapers weren't even built up to be unstoppable until late into ME3. You killed one in ME1 when you got surprise attacked, with only a handful of human ships.

If by 'a handful of human ships', you mean the entirety of the Alliance's fleets, as well as the Turian/Asari fleets assigned to defend the Citadel, then yes. And even then, they still only won the battle because Sovereign made the mistake of possessing Saren's corpse to try and kill you, which backfired and overloaded his shields when you destroyed Saren for good. And even after all that, the Alliance's fleets still took heavy losses. And that was for one Reaper. One that wasn't even the biggest or the strongest. No, the reapers were quite thoroughly built up as an insurmountable threat right from the beginning, and ME3 is what happens when you have thousands upon thousands of them all coming at once.

It's one of the reasons why I don't get the amount of people praising the story, I found lots of problems all throughout ME3. It just REEKS of pointless escalation basically. Not only the reapers, but Cerberus for crying out loud!!! Did the writers forget that only 150 people were in Cerberus at the end of me2 (you can ask EDI about it after the joker section), if that, considering you stole their crew and two of their top operatives (miranda and jacob), but now they have enough dudes to take over multiple military installations, assault the citadel itself and raid colonies unopposed? With no real explanation or build up? That's too much for me man.

They did give explanation during the course of the assault on Cerberus HQ. EDI describes during the mission how Civilians lured to Sanctuary by promises of safety are rounded up, indoctrinated to be loyal to Cerberus and given reaper tech surgical implants that make them individually tougher than any Alliance soldier, and are then turned into new shocktroops for Cerberus's forces. Also, for many (though certainly not all) of the places where you fight Cerberus, they literally WERE unopposed. Everyone was so focused on the Reapers that there weren't enough forces left to defend areas from Cerberus. The only major exception to this is when they attacked the Citadel, but even then they had a member of the Citadel council help them sneak on-board to launch a surprise attack.

 

[Innegativeion]

Yo, we heard you didn't like being killed by machines, so we are sending machines to kill you so you won't be killed by machines.

Nope, still the same problem, but the end is now rainbows and unicorns compared to what it was. Everything seemed to be rebuilt overnight; I'd thought it would be decades before London was rebuilt (much less the rest of the galaxy) and the Normandy would never fly again.

The control ending gives me the creeps. Not the low voice, but the weird third/first person way it (he?) talks about Shepard. I would not trust.

We got a turd of an ending originally, and this is a polished turd. It looks odd, and you might even show it to your friends, but it still smells funny.

I still hate the constraint on each of the color coded endings with a passion.

Blue: No you can't save the world without playing god. You always have to stoop to the monster's level to beat it. Everyone can't live as they were with shepard as a martyr, or shepard living her life in peace (and with blue babies), she has to become fucking(creepy) robot god.

Green: Everyone knows this bullshit doesn't make any sense. How the fuck does an energy burst change dna to interact with computers anyway? Synthesis is the epitome of what the reapers want anyway. Mordin describes why it's wrong to seek perfection in ME2 when he talks about the collectors. LIMITATIONS! Besides, its a decision way too big for any one person to make, it's unfair to the masses.

Red: It is so PAINFULLY obvious that the only reason the geth and EDI die in this one is to prevent everyone and their grandmother from choosing it. It makes the most sense to choose, imo, after all the reapers' destruction has always been your goal. So, to create false tension, bioware decided 'oh btw legion sacrifice and Joker's romance will also mean nothing in this endingkthxbye'.

It's also incredibly stupid. Why wouldn't the crucible be designed to target something less general then "all sufficiently advanced technology", like, say, maybe, large mass effect drives! Like, the kind that ALL reapers have. The alliance ships crash anyway, this way it limits the damage, however.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

If by 'a handful of human ships', you mean the entirety of the Alliance's fleets, as well as the Turian/Asari fleets assigned to defend the Citadel, then yes. And even then, they still only won the battle because Sovereign made the mistake of possessing Saren's corpse to try and kill you, which backfired and overloaded his shields when you destroyed Saren for good. And even after all that, the Alliance's fleets still took heavy losses. And that was for one Reaper. One that wasn't even the biggest or the strongest. No, the reapers were quite thoroughly built up as an insurmountable threat right from the beginning, and ME3 is what happens when you have thousands upon thousands of them all coming at once.

I'll have to disagree here.

In the first game, either due to limitations of the engine or simply poor choice of camera direction, the "fleet" looked like a comparably small number of ships.

The citadel defense fleet was virtually non-existent due to the Geth assault (Hell, the Destiny Ascension was destroyed/not destroyed depending on the intervention of Hackett) and, if I remember correctly, only one fleet, those stationed around Arcturus, were sent in to fight Sovereign. Specifically, it was the 5th fleet, also known as the Arcturus Fleet. After the citadel fight, reaper tech was used to create better weaponry...ie. thanix cannons...which were supposedly fit on most turian/alliance vessels, giving them a pretty damned huge power boost if they were remaining consistent with their own lore.

ME2/3 added or outright changed details surrounding that which altered the context of the engagement.

Lastly, it was said several times prior to 3 that the primary reason, if the only reason, that the Reapers were able to take out galactic civilizations was due to their ability to cut off all forms of travel and communication simultaneously. They'd never had a galactic armada to contend with, and specifically didn't want that to happen, because they always cut off the snake's head by annihilating the seat of galactic government/travel by warping in on the citadel.

We even see the fleet killing reapers in the cinematics.

With that in mind, I don't really see why a skin-of-the-teeth victory is so impossible, given the context/previous information we've been subjected to in the same series. D:

 

[Joccaren]

My problem is that the new endings would never be as exciting or as cool as the indoctrination theory. As I tweeted to Grey, nothing can beat a mountain dew fueled conspiracy theory.

I was right for the most part the new endings with the plot holes dry walled and patched just doesn't leave me disappointed but it doesn't excite me either.

Now that the ending is out I would like to see Casey Hudson give a play by play on why this video is completely wrong.

They won't as they treat IT as a valid interpretation of the endings. It is not canon - no interpretation is - but it is something you can believe if you wish. It is simply not the only thing you can believe.

Like why are the piles of bodies next to the pillar of light,

Not going to watch a 1 and 1/2 hour video on an interpretation of various things in the game, so which pillar of light? The ME3 Conduit, or the One leading up to the Crucible? Before you go up, or once you are up?
Either way, likely because the Reapers are harvesting humans on Earth, sending them up the Conduit into the Citadel and are likely to create a new Human Reaper inside.

why are the dead bodies wearing the same default armors as Ashley and Kaiden.

Texture re-use. Its quite common. Re-use old textures to save space on disk. Nothing new here.

Why you see the oily shadows during the confrontation with TIM and Anderson.

Because TIM is taking control of you?
Yeah, they're in the dream sequences too. Big whoop. They are a visual indicator of stress being put on Shepard's mind. You could argue that this could be indoctrination, but it could also be PTSD [In dreams] and TIM controlling [On Citadel].

Why when you shoot Anderson you are then wounded

Does everyone forget that Shepard was shot by A GIANT FREAKING LASER BEAM. You were hurt long before you shot Anderson. You are hurt long after you shot Anderson, which leads me to...

and why when you reach the top of the light you arn't wounded anymore?

You are still wounded. Note how your limping, and moving at the world's slowest pace, and bent over half the time? Why are you not crawling along the ground or unconscious? 'cause then the game couldn't progress. Its like asking why you don't fall over and have to crawl everywhere after you get down to one bar of health in a fight. 'cause the game wouldn't move on if that were the case.

There are tons of tiny details that are still left unexplained and I would really like some answers.

I could have said the same about Indoc Theory, however any questions I would have asked would have been met by an answer from the IT perspective that followed their interpretation of events. Likewise, IT's "Evidence" can be seen from a different perspective as entirely normal events.


Nothing against IT, but it is not an infallible-must-be-true-only-real-ending sort of thing. Its an interpretation of ME3, but nothing more.

 

[pilouuuu]

I think they made one of the worst and most non sensical endings ever into a decent ending on the same level of for example Dragon Age Origins.

The Catalyst was no longer an awful character thanks to some extra dialogue options and it's amazing what just some simple details helped the plot make sense.

The shots showing what happened to all the galaxy help a lot to make all your actions in the trilogy have some consequences.

The scene with your friends putting Shepard's name on the memorial was very emotional, something that was lacking in the original endings.

I liked the refusal ending because it was like a bad ending for me, very sci-fi. I wished more endings were added though, like the typical heroic ending with Shepard surviving and getting many medals and a celebration and after that meeting the guys at the bar in Rio. But overall they're good enough endings and I hope all developers take note and focus much more on making decent endings, especially in RPGs.

 

[Innegativeion]

*snip*

True, true, but I still like the IT explanation much better than the colored endings,

and really wish Bioware had just rolled with it instead.

It would only seem like SLIGHTLY more of an ass-pull than harbinger deciding to stop shooting JUST long enough for Shepard to very *slowly* and *dramatically* hoist her squadmates on to the Normandy before resuming on her epic desperate last-bid charge towards the citadel.

Apparently "retreat via starship" is a free action.

The Catalyst was no longer an awful character thanks to some extra dialogue options and it's amazing what just some simple details helped the plot make sense.

The catalyst will always be awful by virtue of existing.

Other than being a blatant deus ex machina, I listed some of my personal reasons why about 7 or 8 posts up. Past the post about the colored endings.

 

[Joccaren]

*snip*

True, true, but I still like the IT explanation much better than the colored endings,

and really wish Bioware had just rolled with it instead.

It would only seem like SLIGHTLY more of an ass-pull than harbinger deciding to stop shooting JUST long enough for Shepard to very *slowly* and *dramatically* hoist her squadmates on to the Normandy before resuming on her epic desperate last-bid charge towards the citadel.

Apparently "retreat via starship" is a free action.

Is it bad that I laughed during that scene?
It was just so utterly rediculous.
"Joker, I need an extraction"
"The fightings hard up here commander" [Or W/E]
[Insert Shepard repeating that he needs a pickup here]
"I'm on my way"
literally 0.5 seconds later the Normandy has all but landed. Then Shepard slowly and dramatically lifts his squad onto the Normandy, tells them to stay onboard, then watches it dramatically lift up right in front of Harbinger - who, like all the Alliance grunts, must have been standing there in awe of how hilarious the scene was, as none of them took the opportunity to get to the beam, and Harbinger did a whole lot of f*** all whilst this was happening.
It was so surreal I couldn't help but laugh. I could not take that scene seriously if I tried.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I am pleasantly surprised with how satisfying I found these ending to be. The control ending is by far my favorite though. It just seems fitting that Shepard would get the final speech. It's not perfect, but it's a decent end to my favorite sci-fi series of all time.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Mass Effect 3: The Wall

A last farewell to Commander Shepard.

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Great article, quite poignant.

That's exactly how I took everything while playing. It was the little things and the personal reactions I got through my choices that I got a kick out of. The endings before bothered me only slightly. I will get to do a replay when I'm at a place with a proper connection that can actually download large things quickly and conveniently.

But yeah, the little things. One of the best and most hilarious things I experienced was seeing Tali drunk at the Normandy bar after the Horizon mission.

"That's a straw Tali."