Was Mass Effect 3's really that bad? (SPOILERS)

[throwmeawaykid]

Ok guys, FINALLY got around to finishing Mass Effect 3 due to being a massive fan of the series and the accumulated hate the endings got. I personally chose the "Synthesis" (green) ending, so all my words are coming from that experience but, well, I didn't find it that bad. Sure it was a simple "do you want ending A, B, C?" but I didn't really care. It provided closure, which is pretty rare in AAA titles today. The only really BAD criticism I can give about it is,
A) I hate that kids face.
and
B) It reminded me too much of Final Fantasy X IMO.
Anyway I'm sure there is probably another forum with the same topic as this and if that is so, sorry, and I know I'm probably opening up a pretty close subject, but I just wanted to get this out and share perspectives with other people (not many of my friends play Mass Effect)

 

[El Danny]

Before somebody comes in going ""the decisions you make completely shape the experience" and "your choices drive powerful outcomes""

I got that though out the game though, I don't see any false advertising, that advertising didn't mention the ending.

The ending was alright, could have been great, just poorly executed.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

I know what you mean, OP. From what I'd heard before I finished the game (on BSN even in the sections that were supposedly spoiler free you'd get idiots talking about it), I was expecting the absolute worst ending in gaming history, one that would come in your house and murder your kids or something. Instead I found it to be slightly lacking, but fine otherwise. And it reminded me not to put too much faith in the Internet.

 

[throwmeawaykid]

I know right personally the execution reminded me of Deus Ex: Human Revolution but they Deus Ex's ending were so much worse!! don't get me wrong that was an awesome game.

 

[Zhukov]

I guess we're gonna be getting these threads every time another straggler catches up with the crowd. Fun times.

Anyway, yes. Yes, it really was that bad. If you want a definitive explanation of why just do a forum search or watch that one 40-minute video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs].

If you want a quick rundown, well...

- No closure. Can you tell me what became of the various civilizations and characters? No, you cannot. That's because the ending failed to provide closure.

- No accounting for choice. Even the final A, B or C choice only changes the colour of the the explosion [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPelM2hwhJA].

- Introduces new plot elements and new conflicts in the final ten minutes of the narrative. This is bad storytelling. A good story does not introduce, explain and resolve an entire arc with the final 14 lines of dialogue.

- The motivations for the Reapers given in those final 14 lines make no sense. Perhaps that was intentional, but if so why don't we get to call them out on this?

- It invalidates and contradicts much of the previous games. For example, if the Citadel was housing an active super AI all along, why the fuck did Sovereign need to go to all that trouble to switch the damn thing on?

- Finally, well... it involves a glowing child emerging out of nowhere and rewriting the plot in the final ten minutes with 14 lines of dialogue. I should not have to explain why this is crap.

...

If you're satisfied by that standard of storytelling in your games then congrats. Go play Gear of War or something (hurr hurr). Some of us were expecting something of a slightly higher standard and were thus bitterly disappointed.

Thank you and goodnight.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Eh, it's your opinion if you disliked it or not.

I personally don't care for the ending, because of the fact that the choices you make in the game don't affect the ending. At all.

True, there is the "Indoctrination" theory involved. (Something about the Reapers affecting Shepherd's choices?) But to me, that makes it even worse, it's like s/he had no say in the final outcome anyway.

Or maybe that's because I don't like the idea of being a slave to one's destiny...

 

[AndrewF022]

Yea it was fine, not the best in the series, but a long way from what I'd consider a 'bad' game. Yea the ending kinda sucked, but if I hated every game that had a shitty ending my list of 'good' games would be very, very short. So overall a good experience, let down somewhat by its lackluster ending, but it doesn't detract much from the overall experience.

A good game can have a bad ending, in fact many do, Half Life 2 is one of my favorite games of all time and its ending was deplorable. Doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the hell out of playing it.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I guess we're gonna be getting these threads every time another straggler catches up with the crowd. Fun times.

Anyway, yes. Yes, it really was that bad. If you want a definitive explanation of why just do a forum search or watch that one 40-minute video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs].

If you want a quick rundown, well...

- No closure. Can you tell me what became of the various civilizations and characters? No, you cannot. That's because the ending failed to provide closure.

- No accounting for choice. Even the final A, B or C choice only changes the colour of the the explosion [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPelM2hwhJA].

- Introduces new plot elements and new conflicts in the final ten minutes of the narrative. This is bad storytelling. A good story does not introduce, explain and resolve an entire arc with the final 14 lines of dialogue.

- The motivations for the Reapers given in those final 14 lines make no sense. Perhaps that was intentional, but if so why don't we get to call them out on this?

- It invalidates and contradicts much of the previous games. For example, if the Citadel was housing an active super AI all along, why the fuck did Sovereign need to go to all that trouble to switch the damn thing on?

- Finally, well... it involves a glowing child emerging out of nowhere and rewriting the plot in the final ten minutes with 14 lines of dialogue. I should not have to explain why this is crap.

...

If you're satisfied by that standard of storytelling in your games then congrats. Go play Gear of War or something (hurr hurr). Some of us were expecting something of a slightly higher standard and were thus bitterly disappointed.

Thank you and goodnight.

agreed on all of this.

when a game prides itself on choice/decisions, yet my paragon jesus get's the exact same thing as the fat donut shepard who did nothing but be an asshole, i find a slight problem with that, not to mention when a game can retro actively ruin plots of previous games in the final 10 MINUTES of that game, as zhukov mentioned, that is just horrible storytelling/writing.

everything that mass effect prided itself on was completely tossed out the window, not to mention how underwhelming it was as is, so yeah, doesn't matter which way you sprinkle it, it's still crap.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

I fucking hated the ending, everything else was golden.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I guess we're gonna be getting these threads every time another straggler catches up with the crowd. Fun times.

I have the sinking feeling we're going to be reading variations on this thread for at least another year.

snip

Yes, it was really that bad. A little reading on the subject demonstrated that it was bad on levels I hadn't even begun to appreciate. However, art is subjective, so if you enjoyed the ending, bully for you. There's no accounting for what people like, as the inexplicable popularity of Justin Bieber and Twilight and Nickelback demonstrate.

 

[hermes]

No, its not that bad. Even when you may not like the ending (in my opinion, it was poorly executed but not bad), the full game has its moments. I would even consider it better than Mass Effect 2 in some aspects.

 

[Comocat]

Assuming fusing man and machine even makes sense to anyone in the synthesis option (I doesnt to me) are you ok with the fact that your one character essentially destroyed all individual life in the entire galaxy? The reapers at least would have left some diversity, your choice essentially sterilized the galaxy... good job.

Personally the endings dont make any sense to me on any level. Maybe I'm an idiot but I have no idea what BioWare was messaging at the end.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Ok guys, FINALLY got around to finishing Mass Effect 3 due to being a massive fan of the series and the accumulated hate the endings got. I personally chose the "Synthesis" (green) ending, so all my words are coming from that experience but, well, I didn't find it that bad. Sure it was a simple "do you want ending A, B, C?" but I didn't really care. It provided closure, which is pretty rare in AAA titles today. The only really BAD criticism I can give about it is,
A) I hate that kids face.
and
B) It reminded me too much of Final Fantasy X IMO.
Anyway I'm sure there is probably another forum with the same topic as this and if that is so, sorry, and I know I'm probably opening up a pretty close subject, but I just wanted to get this out and share perspectives with other people (not many of my friends play Mass Effect)

I guess we're gonna be getting these threads every time another straggler catches up with the crowd. Fun times.

Anyway, yes. Yes, it really was that bad. If you want a definitive explanation of why just do a forum search or watch that one 40-minute video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs].

If you want a quick rundown, well...

- No closure. Can you tell me what became of the various civilizations and characters? No, you cannot. That's because the ending failed to provide closure.

- No accounting for choice. Even the final A, B or C choice only changes the colour of the the explosion [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPelM2hwhJA].

- Introduces new plot elements and new conflicts in the final ten minutes of the narrative. This is bad storytelling. A good story does not introduce, explain and resolve an entire arc with the final 14 lines of dialogue.

- The motivations for the Reapers given in those final 14 lines make no sense. Perhaps that was intentional, but if so why don't we get to call them out on this?

- It invalidates and contradicts much of the previous games. For example, if the Citadel was housing an active super AI all along, why the fuck did Sovereign need to go to all that trouble to switch the damn thing on?

- Finally, well... it involves a glowing child emerging out of nowhere and rewriting the plot in the final ten minutes with 14 lines of dialogue. I should not have to explain why this is crap.

...

If you're satisfied by that standard of storytelling in your games then congrats. Go play Gear of War or something (hurr hurr). Some of us were expecting something of a slightly higher standard and were thus bitterly disappointed.

Thank you and goodnight.

^ This.

Also - it's only so bad in comparison to the rest of the game being pretty much everything I could have wanted it to be. There's a disappointment factor that compounds the general flaws of the ending when the game builds up the experience so much and lets it fall just in the final moments to something that doesn't quite live up to mundane.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

Mass Effect 3 is a great game right up until the last 5 minutes. The first one is still my favourite due to it being an RPG and not a cover based shooter with RPG elements like it's sequels. But Mass Effect 3 overall is a great game.

 

[MetalDooley]

You didn't think it was that bad fine.However as far as I'm concerned introducing a Deus Ex Machina,and in this case it literally was a Deus Ex Machina FFS,in the final few minutes is storytelling at it's absolute worst

snip

Zhukov summed it up perfectly

 

[Von Strimmer]

I guess we're gonna be getting these threads every time another straggler catches up with the crowd. Fun times.

Anyway, yes. Yes, it really was that bad. If you want a definitive explanation of why just do a forum search or watch that one 40-minute video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs].

If you want a quick rundown, well...

- No closure. Can you tell me what became of the various civilizations and characters? No, you cannot. That's because the ending failed to provide closure.

- No accounting for choice. Even the final A, B or C choice only changes the colour of the the explosion [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPelM2hwhJA].

- Introduces new plot elements and new conflicts in the final ten minutes of the narrative. This is bad storytelling. A good story does not introduce, explain and resolve an entire arc with the final 14 lines of dialogue.

- The motivations for the Reapers given in those final 14 lines make no sense. Perhaps that was intentional, but if so why don't we get to call them out on this?

- It invalidates and contradicts much of the previous games. For example, if the Citadel was housing an active super AI all along, why the fuck did Sovereign need to go to all that trouble to switch the damn thing on?

- Finally, well... it involves a glowing child emerging out of nowhere and rewriting the plot in the final ten minutes with 14 lines of dialogue. I should not have to explain why this is crap.

...

If you're satisfied by that standard of storytelling in your games then congrats. Go play Gear of War or something (hurr hurr). Some of us were expecting something of a slightly higher standard and were thus bitterly disappointed.

Thank you and goodnight.

Hey man... Even Gears of War had more closure than the ME3 ending. No one would think that was physically possible. But everything can be answered in the Gears ending.

Spoiler

what about the locust? Doesn't matter all dead
What about the Lambent? Doesnt matter, its dead
What about... Thats probably dead too.

Everything else you say though in regards to ME3 is exactly spot on. Still feel the pain man, when will Bioware give us the extended ending? I feel the internet is in need of another good rage-a-thon.

 

[Jaeke]

What closure?

Your squadmates somehow went half way around London,Joker broke off from the main fleet battle even though he promised Shepard he wouldn't retreat, got all the way to Mars to get to the nearest Mass Relay, survive a catastrophic explosion from the Crucible, by the way, the explosion of a 7.1 billion metric ton station would cause more damage than even the Reapers could hope to achieve, and then crash on an alien world where there's no food, the only hope for reproducing is interbreeding, and Buzz Aldrin tells you to buy DLC.

Anything else?