PEOPLE who liked the ending really need to read this, so they can understand what shitty writting is, its ok if you like it we all have our guilty pleasures, but you cant call it good just because you like it.Blachman201 said:His whole thesis was based on an appeal to probability [http://www.toolkitforthinking.com/critical-thinking/anatomy-of-an-argument/deductive-logic-arguments/appeal-to-probability-1] and circular logic (and seeing how Sovereign was the reason why the Geth started to attack organics after many years of isolation, there is even an element of self-fulfilling prophecy added to the whole mess). And the only evidence we get is his word for it. If anything his logic sure as hell isn't sound.lord Claincy Ffnord said:
I could write long paragraphs on what else is wrong with his logic, but I think I can sum it up somewhat crudely with this:
EDIT:
This. Exactly this. When you are being criticized for your work, you should at least be able to explain what you were thinking and where you wanted to go with it in the first place, and then people can take it or leave it. Neither Hudson, Walters, or Bioware in general have done any of this.DioWallachia said:
Trying to wave off your critics with "It's art, I don't have to explain it" is what a hack does.
One Last look at Mass Effect 3.
- Thread starter Machine Man 1992
- Start date
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The day that a person with Schizoid personality disorder has "personal dissapointments" it would be when EA dies in the dust (never). Cant be emotional when i havent played the ME games now, do it? observing the lets plays and every argument in both sides makes unbiased towards such things as "emotion" or "entitlement". Maybe you think that the balance of RPG its correct but havent told us why its good in detail yet, maybe you enjoyed the endings but didnt tell us why either.Kipiru said:
Why would pointing out the bias of the game journalists in favor of developers would have NO place in the argument? these could happen, seems perfectly possible if gamers demographic mentioned before its too young to support their oppinions, specially if they can affect the world at large. Its just too much to bear for the poor kids.
Akarezik said:
I was completely baffled as to why they gave it game of year. I didn't realize how dumb I thought that game really was until I read that. Game Informer even said that its editors had mixed feelings about it and the game wasn't that great (not horrible, but certainly not the best game of the year). They balanced their karma though by putting the endings in on the list of biggest shit storms or whatever they called it and referencing the endings on the cover with the word "ending?" written in 3 different colors on shepard's arm.
Again, its the "If you liked this then how come you didnt liked this other thing that did it better?" argument i am trying to make here. Since ME3 was described as a "Gears of War with light RPG elements" its seems that the superior choice would be GoW compared to ME3, after all, you are after the gameplay and nothing else. But again, ME was made by Bioware, a company that in the past was very good at making stories as their selling point, and now they have failed such task.RTSnab said:
It would be a good game but not a good ME game. Sort off like how Metroid Other M "might" be a good game, but sure as hell it isnt a good Metroid game.
Keep in mind that, indeed, stories are optional in games and even in movies too. But the action scenes/gameplay have to be quite unique to compenzate for the lack of story, that is because stories are the reason we enjoy STORYTELLING mediums like movies and games. Without a story, things happen for no reason whatsoever.
Mass Effect 3 was.....bad! And I have to pull myself together not to use other words in that regard.
The game overall was boring, repetitive and if it wasn't for the story a lot more people would've complained about the game. Seriously the longer I played the game the more annoyed I became with all of its "features". Many Enemies were rather annoying than challenging. The bad feeling I had while playing the game turned to pure hate after I saw the ending. I demanded a new ending like many others. This Deus Ex Machina thing was a bad idea right from the start and when they finished it with that "flawed" logic I was just speechless.
Honestly that game and the story involved made me so depressed and angry I haven't been able to fully enjoy story driven games since I finished ME3 and that's really bad.
When I heard that they only wanted to extend the existing endings and not add new ones I put Bioware on my blacklist. I'll never touch another game from them ever again (not even the older ones). I would've never touched the damn series if I'd known it would turn out so bad....
If you look at Bioware right now I can guarantee you that they won't be around for very much longer (3-4 years max). Dragonage 3 and Mass Effect 4 are probably going to be their last games. Many of the people originally involved in Bioware are gone now (even the founders) and the company is controlled by suits from EA. They will share the same fate as other companies did under the EA banner (Westwood and Co.).
The game overall was boring, repetitive and if it wasn't for the story a lot more people would've complained about the game. Seriously the longer I played the game the more annoyed I became with all of its "features". Many Enemies were rather annoying than challenging. The bad feeling I had while playing the game turned to pure hate after I saw the ending. I demanded a new ending like many others. This Deus Ex Machina thing was a bad idea right from the start and when they finished it with that "flawed" logic I was just speechless.
Honestly that game and the story involved made me so depressed and angry I haven't been able to fully enjoy story driven games since I finished ME3 and that's really bad.
When I heard that they only wanted to extend the existing endings and not add new ones I put Bioware on my blacklist. I'll never touch another game from them ever again (not even the older ones). I would've never touched the damn series if I'd known it would turn out so bad....
If you look at Bioware right now I can guarantee you that they won't be around for very much longer (3-4 years max). Dragonage 3 and Mass Effect 4 are probably going to be their last games. Many of the people originally involved in Bioware are gone now (even the founders) and the company is controlled by suits from EA. They will share the same fate as other companies did under the EA banner (Westwood and Co.).
Just to make people not reading the entire thread aware of these links again. As the guy in those video series explains just how bad ME3 was in such a well thought out and constructive manner. They're long, especially the ones dealing with the ending, but still... If anyone ever wondered what was so wrong with ME3 as a whole, and with it's ending in specific, go watch those.Akratus said:
Game Informer is basically GameStop's in-house advertisement catalogue. It has just about the same level of credibility as any of the Official Console magazines.PoolCleaningRobot said:
THIS HURTS YOU?? YOU STRUGLE AGAINST INEVITABILITY. THE POWER OF EA ITS UNMATCH. WE ARE THE ARTISTIC DESTINY OF THE GAME INDUSTRY. YOU ARE ENTITLED CARAMEL FRAPPE.......YOU WILL LEARN. WE ARE THE HARBINGER OF MASS APPEAL. THE FORCES OF THE GAME JOURNALIST BEND OVER TO ME.Caramel Frappe said:
Feel better now?
I like the idea of it being that last bit. Losing the ability to choose. having it potentialy stripped from you by a greater being than yourself. It's not just about choice mattering, It's about earning your right to truely choose. If you don't carefully build you support through the games you lose more and more options, more and more choices.. You lose Wrex at the beginning, you lose eve to the bomb, you lose a choice. Failed to work the tenious strings of the quarian/geth confict. You lose the right to choose them both. Failed to save your friends, explain your seeming betrayal when you could.. you might lose party memebers, friends, options, more and more choices.. without that backing especially on this scale your choice is meaningless as you've nothing to back it with. The games themes is about earning your right to choose the options that truely matter, to earn you happy ending. I think it'd make sense in the end that what you did truely means you earn the right to make your own destiny (or die trying) or to take that crutch and side with the god child to "Compromise" only for it to turn and reveal you sold you soul to the reapers for faultering in the face of hopelessness, to not get to truly choose but to just pick what's layed out before you. That's true choice. The option to take that 3rd option that's not always there. I think the indoc theory would fit nicely with that idea. (I had a whole thing fully typed out on a different page on here and at least in my mind a fun way to run with it to a playable epilogue/final level type deal on each "choice")Eclectic Dreck said:
That's my two cents on what you said anyway.
If this question has already been asked, forgive me, but among those who were also less than in love with the ending: Would you have been able to choke it down if at the very least the game came out of the box with a proper epilogue? Would the confusing mess have been tolerable if there was some closure to all the various stories and accounted for how different combinations of choices would produce different outcomes?
I think I could have put up with the endings if BioWare took a page from their own game, Dragon Age: Origins, and gave the player a clue about how the choices made a difference. I can give a game a little latitude for how much choices really "matter." In the Walking Dead game, for example, set the player on the same basic path regardless of what actions were taken before, but on the other hand the game was about a normal man swept up in something world shaking and was powerless to really make a difference. Being a PS3 owner, I have been late to getting into Mass Effect 1, and I find it very odd how Sheppard gets portrayed and worshiped as Captain Awesome before he really does anything. If we're going to have a character who is just so damn special, does it not follow that his/her galaxy shaping decisions actually amount to something in the end.
Some fans have a point saying Indoctrination Theory is an act of desperation by fans to put a bad ending in the best possible light, but so what? The fans didn't screw up the ending. Considering out of many alternatives IT requires the least amount of revision on BioWare's part, it's a decent compromise. To be perfectly blunt, the Extended Cut only makes the ending even more absurd and sadly makes IT the best alternative to salvage the mess we have if we take the events of the finale as literal.
I would like to make one small point in game which could support IT, or at least try to pass it off as part of the plan. Why does EMS, the culmination of guns, ships, scientists, and soldiers have an effect on how the Deus ex Machina works? Laziness, probably. Alternately, it doesn't, and the bland samey endings are clues to the fate of the galaxy. Good ends- the combined forces of the galaxy smite the Reapers and rebuild. Normal ends- Reapers beaten, but the various civilizations are too devastated to ever be anything like their former glory, but future peoples are free of the Reapers. Bad ending- Sheppard's incompetence dooms the galaxy and the cycles continue, Shep is such a bumbler when the stakes were highest the Reapers aren't even that interested in enslaving the fool.
Unfortunately, at this point I fear any discussion of what best to do with the ending is purely academic. The sequel/prequel/sidestory is a sure thing now, and in all likelihood we will get a massive retcon rather than revisit Mass Effect 3 to do any proper revisions. From a narrative standpoint we were given a first draft, and in the hurry to just churn out a game nobody who knew better was able or willing to apply the brakes to the crazy train.
I think I could have put up with the endings if BioWare took a page from their own game, Dragon Age: Origins, and gave the player a clue about how the choices made a difference. I can give a game a little latitude for how much choices really "matter." In the Walking Dead game, for example, set the player on the same basic path regardless of what actions were taken before, but on the other hand the game was about a normal man swept up in something world shaking and was powerless to really make a difference. Being a PS3 owner, I have been late to getting into Mass Effect 1, and I find it very odd how Sheppard gets portrayed and worshiped as Captain Awesome before he really does anything. If we're going to have a character who is just so damn special, does it not follow that his/her galaxy shaping decisions actually amount to something in the end.
Some fans have a point saying Indoctrination Theory is an act of desperation by fans to put a bad ending in the best possible light, but so what? The fans didn't screw up the ending. Considering out of many alternatives IT requires the least amount of revision on BioWare's part, it's a decent compromise. To be perfectly blunt, the Extended Cut only makes the ending even more absurd and sadly makes IT the best alternative to salvage the mess we have if we take the events of the finale as literal.
I would like to make one small point in game which could support IT, or at least try to pass it off as part of the plan. Why does EMS, the culmination of guns, ships, scientists, and soldiers have an effect on how the Deus ex Machina works? Laziness, probably. Alternately, it doesn't, and the bland samey endings are clues to the fate of the galaxy. Good ends- the combined forces of the galaxy smite the Reapers and rebuild. Normal ends- Reapers beaten, but the various civilizations are too devastated to ever be anything like their former glory, but future peoples are free of the Reapers. Bad ending- Sheppard's incompetence dooms the galaxy and the cycles continue, Shep is such a bumbler when the stakes were highest the Reapers aren't even that interested in enslaving the fool.
Unfortunately, at this point I fear any discussion of what best to do with the ending is purely academic. The sequel/prequel/sidestory is a sure thing now, and in all likelihood we will get a massive retcon rather than revisit Mass Effect 3 to do any proper revisions. From a narrative standpoint we were given a first draft, and in the hurry to just churn out a game nobody who knew better was able or willing to apply the brakes to the crazy train.
Sigh.......ME3. It's been a while.
It grew out to be slightly longer then intended.
TL;DR
I really wanted to like ME3. But after playing trough it I was left in empty disappointment.
It grew out to be slightly longer then intended.
Despite largely filling space between 1 and 3, ME2 is probably one of my favorite games of all time. It had its flaws but there were so many good moments in it that I am perfectly willing to overlook those. The characters are enjoyable, sometimes downright hilarious, and even Jacob, fucking Jacob, had more personality then some modern day fps protagonists. I loved the loyalty and recruitment missions; they fleshed out not only the characters but the ME universe as a whole. Lair of the Shadowbroker in particular was amazing with great humor and even some drama. It did what DA2 tried to do, making the story smaller but more personal, but actually pulling it off. At least, in my opinion.
Im can't say this with 100% confidence but I may have been among the first group of people to have beaten it, the third day from the launch. I didn't want to install Origin to play it.....but I did.
The game had its flaws.....But I didn't notice too many of them playing trough it in my first go. The opening was very disorientating and I did briefly questioned why they only discovered the Crucible plans now, but I could overlook that because I was just so glad to see Liara and Garrus join my party again.
Everything from the last mission on Rannoch to the ending I played in 1 sitting cause I couldnt wait to see what happened next. Despite what a lot of people thought, I actually kind of enjoyed the London mission. I was a infiltrator so I was not entirely suited to take down that many Banshees in close combat. It brought a sense of desperation appropriate for the situation.
Then the beam happenend.....I remember meeting Anderson on the Citadel, the first red light mentally flashing but quickly muted to just enjoy the ending. Then The Illusive Man appeared out of nowhere but it's fine....He's the illusive man, he was probably on the Citadel all along and planned this or something......
He got taken down with hardly any interactivity but I could take that. After all, we got the Reaper hivemind to destroy........And then.....Oh boy.
I remember sitting there watching the credits go by, just waiting for something, anything to validate the ending. I normally never sit trough the credits but I was in shock; I wanted a reason to like the ending, to feel like I had just completed a epic trilogy but......nothing.
I felt like I missed something, like I must have taken a wrong turn. I wasn't all paragorn or renegade, was that a deciding factor? But then I watched the fires start and grow on the internet, reinforcing my dissatisfaction and even a growing feeling of betrayal towards Bioware. I wasn't the only one who felt this ending was bad in fact....there was a frightning number of people that felt the same way.
It even got so bad that I watched Bioware and EA shut down communications with its consumerbase almost completly (I study management so this was amusing to me; it is the worst course of action in a crisis situation) and watched the fans draw their own conclusions on what happened. Heck, I joined them.
I wanted to know how they could screw up so badly that they completly broke the character of Shepard who pretty much started ME1 as a blank slate. I wanted to know why they had to end a series I loved with a character that never was or will be mentioned ever again. I wanted to know why they thought a series that was all about everyone making their own choises could end with 3 standard endings. I wanted to know why NONE of the characters I knew and loved got a proper send off, with the possible exception of Thane. I wanted and still want to know why they thought this was an acceptable ending.
While we may have decent assumptions we may never hear what truly went on between mister Hudson and the rest of the Bioware crew, and this frustrates me.
Looking back I can only say I feel disappointed and more distrustful of EA then ever before. If nothing else, the ME3 backlash brought about even more EA hatred and it showed in their stocks but I doubt they learned from it.
I honestly wánt to like Bioware for making DAO and ME2, but I fear I shall be disappointed again.
After ME3 I never bought another game day 1 nor did I anticipate a game as highly.
Im can't say this with 100% confidence but I may have been among the first group of people to have beaten it, the third day from the launch. I didn't want to install Origin to play it.....but I did.
The game had its flaws.....But I didn't notice too many of them playing trough it in my first go. The opening was very disorientating and I did briefly questioned why they only discovered the Crucible plans now, but I could overlook that because I was just so glad to see Liara and Garrus join my party again.
Everything from the last mission on Rannoch to the ending I played in 1 sitting cause I couldnt wait to see what happened next. Despite what a lot of people thought, I actually kind of enjoyed the London mission. I was a infiltrator so I was not entirely suited to take down that many Banshees in close combat. It brought a sense of desperation appropriate for the situation.
Then the beam happenend.....I remember meeting Anderson on the Citadel, the first red light mentally flashing but quickly muted to just enjoy the ending. Then The Illusive Man appeared out of nowhere but it's fine....He's the illusive man, he was probably on the Citadel all along and planned this or something......
He got taken down with hardly any interactivity but I could take that. After all, we got the Reaper hivemind to destroy........And then.....Oh boy.
I remember sitting there watching the credits go by, just waiting for something, anything to validate the ending. I normally never sit trough the credits but I was in shock; I wanted a reason to like the ending, to feel like I had just completed a epic trilogy but......nothing.
I felt like I missed something, like I must have taken a wrong turn. I wasn't all paragorn or renegade, was that a deciding factor? But then I watched the fires start and grow on the internet, reinforcing my dissatisfaction and even a growing feeling of betrayal towards Bioware. I wasn't the only one who felt this ending was bad in fact....there was a frightning number of people that felt the same way.
It even got so bad that I watched Bioware and EA shut down communications with its consumerbase almost completly (I study management so this was amusing to me; it is the worst course of action in a crisis situation) and watched the fans draw their own conclusions on what happened. Heck, I joined them.
I wanted to know how they could screw up so badly that they completly broke the character of Shepard who pretty much started ME1 as a blank slate. I wanted to know why they had to end a series I loved with a character that never was or will be mentioned ever again. I wanted to know why they thought a series that was all about everyone making their own choises could end with 3 standard endings. I wanted to know why NONE of the characters I knew and loved got a proper send off, with the possible exception of Thane. I wanted and still want to know why they thought this was an acceptable ending.
While we may have decent assumptions we may never hear what truly went on between mister Hudson and the rest of the Bioware crew, and this frustrates me.
Looking back I can only say I feel disappointed and more distrustful of EA then ever before. If nothing else, the ME3 backlash brought about even more EA hatred and it showed in their stocks but I doubt they learned from it.
I honestly wánt to like Bioware for making DAO and ME2, but I fear I shall be disappointed again.
After ME3 I never bought another game day 1 nor did I anticipate a game as highly.
TL;DR
I really wanted to like ME3. But after playing trough it I was left in empty disappointment.
Objective observation can be made by looking at the footage of all the posible outcomes and choices thanks to Youtube. Smudboy made his analizis of Mass Effect 3 even if he didnt bought it as he said at the end of the video:Kipiru said:
Does that make his points moot? why would they? the problem is still there regardless if he played or not.
Also you said that an experience CANT be told. Well, there is this guy who cant talk for 3 hours about all the subtleties of Final Fantasy VI and things he liked about it in details. (Also for ME3 of course)
There are like 5 more videos about Mass Effect 3 ALONE.
But somehow you cant........why? If you not going to try to defend your point then dont even try to disprove my points here because the rest of the forum is going to call you out on it.
I even defended ICO from its sexist argument by looking at the lets play and notice how it merges the story AND the gameplay to tell the character development of Yorda AND how, by growing as a person, she trust more the kid enough to help more to solve the puzzles by herself (there is a reason why this game is so well know for being one of those that make the "Escort Mission" gameplay to be actually quite good rather than a pain in the ass)
This may be a shocker to you but people even BEFORE videogames existed, can notice subtle things as the story being told during the gameplay (like Journey or Metroid Prime does with the visor feature to know more about the lore like it was a collectable)
I would be a troll if i didnt play it AND didnt see it. But once again, since Mass Effect is quite binary on its choices with the PR System (at least in ME3 plus the auto dialog) i believe i didnt miss much. If this game were Planescape Torment.....well, that would take forever or just a look at Tv Tropes.
And all that with just not playing it. What is your excuse?
OT: The Escapist is being a ***** right now and doesnt load the full page in order for me to post ANYTHING.
EDIT2: 6 times. 6 FUCKING TIMES i got the Error 404 and the pages STILL dont load properly.
EDIT3: And another while editing this one.....great.
Like i have said a thousand times before, i havent played it but i did the research because this kind of thing is worth to take a look. This is gaming history after all, the moment when the audience who up to this point had an "abused wife" relationship with the industry ("Maybe if i dont complain he will treat me better with games that are actually good. All i have to do is shut up and they will love me more one of these days...........one of these days") and then had ENOUGH of this shit.Caramel Frappe said:Actually yeah lol, that was creative and fun to read.DioWallachia said:THIS HURTS YOU?? YOU STRUGLE AGAINST INEVITABILITY. THE POWER OF EA ITS UNMATCH. WE ARE THE ARTISTIC DESTINY OF THE GAME INDUSTRY. YOU ARE ENTITLED CARAMEL FRAPPE.......YOU WILL LEARN. WE ARE THE HARBINGER OF MASS APPEAL. THE FORCES OF THE GAME JOURNALIST BEND OVER TO ME.Caramel Frappe said:
Feel better now?
Thanks for cheering me up- also whow your Avatar is very interesting to look at indeed.
If I may ask, how did you feel about Mass Effect 3? Unless you've already posted beforehand, I can check that out.
This sort of reminds me of the The Great Videogame Crash, when the audience didnt want to play games anymore because they were, LITERALY, all the same in ALL the platforms available.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983
Mass Effect 3 however, i see it more like the Pacman port of Atari 2600 rather than the ET for the Atari 2600. Its more of a catalyst (pun) of the things to come, and that is the advent of the abuse of "Artistic Integrity?" and "Gamer Entitlement?" to get away with lazy design. You may think that this is quite paranoic but.....lets face it, the industry got away with the Day 1 DLC, Anti-Piracy measures that affect more the customer rather than the pirates, Always Online Single Player, and of course, the fact that more games have the ENDING of the game in a DLC rather than in the game proper and that you expected to have already inside the DVD (see Azura's Wrath and Final Fantasy XIII-2)
So with all this that they got away with, what is stopping them from doing so? even worse is the "Gamer Entitlement" propaganda, this tries to make gamers opinions to be just opinions (even when opinions can be made out of facts presented) and makes gamers have self doubt about their ability to look objectively at reality, and thus, fearful of making the industry worse with their voice. The game industry will be then be controlled by the game "journalist" and the companies that dont care about art but for maximum profit. I thought this should be obvious already, the fact that whatever ART is there in the game will be tampered by the executives FIRST before even reaching the so called "entitled" gamers, but it seems that people still think that we are somehow responsible for this disaster.
If there is anything that i barely feel is anger and impotence. I know the shitstorm is coming and i have a limited ammount of people to exchange this ideas about the future. The "There is no objective way to say something is good or bad. Therefore, everything is subjective" will eventually take over and everything will be equally good. Twilight will be as good as Gone With The Wind, Birth of a Nation will be as good a Cloud Atlas, Metroid Other M will be as good as IJI, Birdemic will be as good as Citizen Kane.
Thankfully (or not) i am in the process of writing something for myself that will eventually be free for the internet to see. Since games no longer have the quality from the golden age, its a safe bet that i have to entertain myself with crap inspired by games i like.
Mass Effect 3 may not even be the worst game ever (Metroid Other M takes that price) but there are so many variables behind the scenes, just like with ET 2600, that it will be infamous for years to come.
I once made a whole post out of what could possibly happen afterwards if you are indoctrinated or not.edgecult said:
It went something like this:
Going to write this before the light shuts down as fast as i can:
Soooooo..... hurray for victory?
But here is the thing you keep assuming here, you think that if Shep is indoctrinated then the story is over IF (and only IF) the IT is true, thus the series would end on a Pyrrhic Victory, its not.
Lets recap, the reason that the IT exist is because the fans thought that this is a fake ending that its a placeholder for the REAL ONE, meaning that IT only cover what we see in the game but not what is AFTER that because that was Bioware job.
They though that maaaaaaaaybe the REAL ending will have ALL your choices reflected and pay off at last, INCLUDING if Shep is or ISNT indoctrinated. In fact, here is how I would have done it (in the most crude way possible):
*/Oh wait, before doing that, lets just solve the plot hole of the EMS being somehow connected to the Crusible "options" by making those be available regardless of the EMS (who will be used for something more coherent) Besides, why would be a dream/allucionation be influenced by how many ships,weapons and whatever else the EMS represents? Or even be affected by the Multiplayer? /*
-If you escaped indoctrination by choosing Destroy: Shep wakes up, still bleeding, tries to use the Crusible but ends up being a dud. All the fleet gets paralized in fear that everything is lost now but Shep manages to send a message to all the fleet to fight with everything they got, all or nothing. Then Shepard dies at last and this is the perfect oportunity for the player to put aside the controller to see the repercusions of your actions, depending of your EMS score and your choices from past games:
Low= The fleet sucumbs to the fear and their low numbers and before they could snap out of it, the Reapers kill them all and you get too see it in full detail with cutscenes from every single race you helped, even the Rachni. That WAS promised to be on the ending after all, remember?
Medium= They get inspired and fight but their numbers is still too low to do anything permanent. Your surviving squadmates either froze themselves like Javik did to help the next cycle along Liara's Sigil with instructions on how to find them.
High= The fleet wins but Shepard is still quite dead. I believe that we could add ANOTHER converzation with the Illusive man where instead of commiting suicide, you could convince him to resist long enough to find a cure for Indoctrination now that ALL the species can work together. He is the one who, once again, preserved Shep body and is using his talents to make another resurrection machine and as a "thank" to Shep who snap him out of it and because he is the only person alive who knows the details needed to make one (that doesnt excuse the killings he has do though).
Here is where sparing the Rachni Queen becomes useful, she and TIM decide to become test subjects for experimentations and test to get rid of indoctrination and to atone for past crimes (you MUST have both of them in order to find the cure.) If you spared the Geth over the Quarians, there SHOULD be a way to exploit the Geth Virtual Machine that was used before to delete Reaper code that still remains on TIM (he is technically a cybord so plugging him to a machine should be feasible)
In the meantime, TIM gathered ALL Shep squadmembers and people close to him to reach a concensus to see if bringing back to life is what he/she would have wanted (kinda ironic if you think about it, after all in the original endings you get to choose ALONE for ALL the galaxy if they get merged in synthesis and shit, and now people get to do the same without your input ) Not sure what would be the variables that dictate if the squadmates want you alive or dead. Leaving it to the PR system seems kinda "meh".
-If you end up fully indoctrinated for choosing anything else: Shep wakes up and is "helped" by the Reaper tropes who want him to be alive for future use, we even see Harbinger order some "specific" upgrades to him. Shep reach the crusible to give the impresion that he is still fighting for the good side and still shows everyone that the Crusible does jack shit so they get desmoralized (he also shut downs the Relays so NOBODY can escape the massacre).
Low EMS= They get destroyed and Shepard shares his knowledge with the Reapers about the Sigil of Liara to warn the next cycle and the Prothean beacons. Those get destroyed but not before developing a counter measure to the Anti-indoctrination measures so the agents wont be detected and also the Crusible gets taken appart to trick the next cycle into completing it again. They send Shep to be frozen and pretend to help the next cycle. In short, its a spectacular failure.
Medium EMS= The fleet notices that Shep is indoctrinated (probably because they managed to copy the same algorith that Vendetta and the other Prothean VI use to know if someone is indoctrinated) and become enraged over the loss of their icon of hope and go full force on The Reapers. They also order your squadmates to reach the Crusible instead of fapping around in the Normandy where they cant contribute on a space battle, to see if the thing is efectively broken or was a ruse by Shep (Maybe you could even play as one of your squadmates or even you love interest, hmmm?) You find him and you can try to talk him down but its meaningless, he wants to fight. When you defeat him, he gets to be himself and laments to his squadmates that it had come to this and tells them that even if the Crusible doesnt work, there is still some ancient weaponary that belongs to the Citadel itself and that he now has knowledge off thanks to being wired to the Reaper consensus. He avids farewell to his old allies and prepares to rest in peace........
DIRECT INTERVENCION MAY BE NESSESARY. ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL!!
Harbinger gave Shep, who is technically a Prothean as well, the same upgrades that he did for the Collectors and now he can control him/her. We fight him again, and tries to avoid the same fate as Sovereing by leaving the body before it dies. However, it cant leave Shep's body because Shep him/herself doesnt let him by sheer force of will!! Shep is giving you enough time to finish the job by killing him and by extension, Harbinger, the most powerful Reaper.
Fail and Harby escapes the body without repercusion and The Reapers wins while your squadmates watch in horror the annihilation. Harby even goes himself to the Crusible and blows everyone personaly as a gesture of afection
Win and Harby and Shep die. The squadmates uses the algorithms given by Shep about the Citadel defenses powered by The Crusible to fire on the Reapers and win.
High EMS: Same as Medium except that instead of shooting Shep when the moment arrives, we sent the signal to finish off Harby directly with the ENTIRE FLEET SHOOTING AT HIM. Since this time the fleet is bigger, Harby bites the dust and Shep can be saved from death.
EA:"You the bad ending? well of course you did, if you didnt buy or Collector edicion of the previous titles then OF COURSE you going to fail! What are you waiting for? you dont want to be the only person of your group of friends that DIDNT play the whole trilogy, is it? you will make a fool of yourself and thank GOD that we exist to facilitate your life in this moment of your life. Buy the collector edicion or your friends will think that you are a meany!"
With this in the background:
That is all for the moment. BRB innundation coming.
A victory that makes things worse for even the person who won, to the point that the word "victory" is empty of all meaning. Its like getting revenge on a good king who is the best king ever (who makes decitions "for the greater good" or "the needs of the many" intead of being selfish) except in the eyes of the protagonist who felt insulted when the king told him to shower (because the smell is getting people sick) and now has to KILL the king for his insolence. The Protagonist does so but now the kingdom is in ruins because The Totally Trustworthy Evil Advicer took over, and fucked everything up. Starvation and tyranism ensues where not even the hero's dog is safe.OlasDAlmighty said:
Soooooo..... hurray for victory?
But here is the thing you keep assuming here, you think that if Shep is indoctrinated then the story is over IF (and only IF) the IT is true, thus the series would end on a Pyrrhic Victory, its not.
Lets recap, the reason that the IT exist is because the fans thought that this is a fake ending that its a placeholder for the REAL ONE, meaning that IT only cover what we see in the game but not what is AFTER that because that was Bioware job.
They though that maaaaaaaaybe the REAL ending will have ALL your choices reflected and pay off at last, INCLUDING if Shep is or ISNT indoctrinated. In fact, here is how I would have done it (in the most crude way possible):
*/Oh wait, before doing that, lets just solve the plot hole of the EMS being somehow connected to the Crusible "options" by making those be available regardless of the EMS (who will be used for something more coherent) Besides, why would be a dream/allucionation be influenced by how many ships,weapons and whatever else the EMS represents? Or even be affected by the Multiplayer? /*
-If you escaped indoctrination by choosing Destroy: Shep wakes up, still bleeding, tries to use the Crusible but ends up being a dud. All the fleet gets paralized in fear that everything is lost now but Shep manages to send a message to all the fleet to fight with everything they got, all or nothing. Then Shepard dies at last and this is the perfect oportunity for the player to put aside the controller to see the repercusions of your actions, depending of your EMS score and your choices from past games:
Low= The fleet sucumbs to the fear and their low numbers and before they could snap out of it, the Reapers kill them all and you get too see it in full detail with cutscenes from every single race you helped, even the Rachni. That WAS promised to be on the ending after all, remember?
Medium= They get inspired and fight but their numbers is still too low to do anything permanent. Your surviving squadmates either froze themselves like Javik did to help the next cycle along Liara's Sigil with instructions on how to find them.
High= The fleet wins but Shepard is still quite dead. I believe that we could add ANOTHER converzation with the Illusive man where instead of commiting suicide, you could convince him to resist long enough to find a cure for Indoctrination now that ALL the species can work together. He is the one who, once again, preserved Shep body and is using his talents to make another resurrection machine and as a "thank" to Shep who snap him out of it and because he is the only person alive who knows the details needed to make one (that doesnt excuse the killings he has do though).
Here is where sparing the Rachni Queen becomes useful, she and TIM decide to become test subjects for experimentations and test to get rid of indoctrination and to atone for past crimes (you MUST have both of them in order to find the cure.) If you spared the Geth over the Quarians, there SHOULD be a way to exploit the Geth Virtual Machine that was used before to delete Reaper code that still remains on TIM (he is technically a cybord so plugging him to a machine should be feasible)
In the meantime, TIM gathered ALL Shep squadmembers and people close to him to reach a concensus to see if bringing back to life is what he/she would have wanted (kinda ironic if you think about it, after all in the original endings you get to choose ALONE for ALL the galaxy if they get merged in synthesis and shit, and now people get to do the same without your input
) Not sure what would be the variables that dictate if the squadmates want you alive or dead. Leaving it to the PR system seems kinda "meh".-If you end up fully indoctrinated for choosing anything else: Shep wakes up and is "helped" by the Reaper tropes who want him to be alive for future use, we even see Harbinger order some "specific" upgrades to him. Shep reach the crusible to give the impresion that he is still fighting for the good side and still shows everyone that the Crusible does jack shit so they get desmoralized (he also shut downs the Relays so NOBODY can escape the massacre).
Low EMS= They get destroyed and Shepard shares his knowledge with the Reapers about the Sigil of Liara to warn the next cycle and the Prothean beacons. Those get destroyed but not before developing a counter measure to the Anti-indoctrination measures so the agents wont be detected and also the Crusible gets taken appart to trick the next cycle into completing it again. They send Shep to be frozen and pretend to help the next cycle. In short, its a spectacular failure.
Medium EMS= The fleet notices that Shep is indoctrinated (probably because they managed to copy the same algorith that Vendetta and the other Prothean VI use to know if someone is indoctrinated) and become enraged over the loss of their icon of hope and go full force on The Reapers. They also order your squadmates to reach the Crusible instead of fapping around in the Normandy where they cant contribute on a space battle, to see if the thing is efectively broken or was a ruse by Shep (Maybe you could even play as one of your squadmates or even you love interest, hmmm?) You find him and you can try to talk him down but its meaningless, he wants to fight. When you defeat him, he gets to be himself and laments to his squadmates that it had come to this and tells them that even if the Crusible doesnt work, there is still some ancient weaponary that belongs to the Citadel itself and that he now has knowledge off thanks to being wired to the Reaper consensus. He avids farewell to his old allies and prepares to rest in peace........
DIRECT INTERVENCION MAY BE NESSESARY. ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL!!
Harbinger gave Shep, who is technically a Prothean as well, the same upgrades that he did for the Collectors and now he can control him/her. We fight him again, and tries to avoid the same fate as Sovereing by leaving the body before it dies. However, it cant leave Shep's body because Shep him/herself doesnt let him by sheer force of will!! Shep is giving you enough time to finish the job by killing him and by extension, Harbinger, the most powerful Reaper.
Fail and Harby escapes the body without repercusion and The Reapers wins while your squadmates watch in horror the annihilation. Harby even goes himself to the Crusible and blows everyone personaly as a gesture of afection
Win and Harby and Shep die. The squadmates uses the algorithms given by Shep about the Citadel defenses powered by The Crusible to fire on the Reapers and win.
High EMS: Same as Medium except that instead of shooting Shep when the moment arrives, we sent the signal to finish off Harby directly with the ENTIRE FLEET SHOOTING AT HIM. Since this time the fleet is bigger, Harby bites the dust and Shep can be saved from death.
Yes it will suck if Shep died acomplishing nothing but again, this is a series about choices, so at least THAT ending has to be the default one that everyone gets if they dont get the EMS AND the correct choices of the previous titles. I mean why not? this is EA we are talking about, they sure as HELL that they will allow for this narrative direction to be greenlighted if it manages to suck more money of the gamers that didnt play the previous 2 titles. They market ME3 to the CoD noobs so they play the game and get bitchslaped with a shit ending for not playing the other games. Its like saying:
EA:"You the bad ending? well of course you did, if you didnt buy or Collector edicion of the previous titles then OF COURSE you going to fail! What are you waiting for? you dont want to be the only person of your group of friends that DIDNT play the whole trilogy, is it? you will make a fool of yourself and thank GOD that we exist to facilitate your life in this moment of your life. Buy the collector edicion or your friends will think that you are a meany!"
With this in the background:
That is all for the moment. BRB innundation coming.
I've never understood the hatred for the indoctrination theory, what's wrong with it? Can't people interpret media however they like?
Also what I hate the most about the Mass Effect franchise is that it ruins the potential for more games like it. Sure there have been plenty of trilogies in videogames, but none to the scope the Mass Effect. (Professor Layton and Ace Attorney probably being the best ones in keeping a constant plot)
Mass Effect was about choice, it was about creating a cohesive world across 3 games, games like Dragon Age have done that, but in only one game.
The problem was the change of staff members and EA rushing out the games, and that they hadn't planned ahead with the sequels, because I bet Cerberus would've been more important in Mass Effect 1 if they had Mass Effect 2 and 3 already cooking. It's like if Tolkien had only written Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King but C.S. Lewis had written the Two Towers, and Tolkien had only 200 pages to conclude the saga, and he also hadn't made any drafts, and he had a 3 week deadline.
Mass Effect might have been possible as a episodic game, or maybe each game coming out every 4 years.
(Also I've heard about the Walking Dead Game, I haven't played it, but does that implement choices across the episodes better than Mass Effect?)
Also what I hate the most about the Mass Effect franchise is that it ruins the potential for more games like it. Sure there have been plenty of trilogies in videogames, but none to the scope the Mass Effect. (Professor Layton and Ace Attorney probably being the best ones in keeping a constant plot)
Mass Effect was about choice, it was about creating a cohesive world across 3 games, games like Dragon Age have done that, but in only one game.
The problem was the change of staff members and EA rushing out the games, and that they hadn't planned ahead with the sequels, because I bet Cerberus would've been more important in Mass Effect 1 if they had Mass Effect 2 and 3 already cooking. It's like if Tolkien had only written Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King but C.S. Lewis had written the Two Towers, and Tolkien had only 200 pages to conclude the saga, and he also hadn't made any drafts, and he had a 3 week deadline.
Mass Effect might have been possible as a episodic game, or maybe each game coming out every 4 years.
(Also I've heard about the Walking Dead Game, I haven't played it, but does that implement choices across the episodes better than Mass Effect?)