Why do people completely ignore how great 98% of Mass Effect 3 was and just focus on the ending?

[MetallicaRulez0]

I can't even comprehend how anyone who was a fan of WRPGs can say the rest of the game wasn't awesome. The ending was TERRIBLE. It was utterly awful, perhaps the worst ending in video game history... but the rest of the game was excellent. The combat was the best I've played in an RPG. The characters, while much more limited than in ME2, were still excellent. The missions were the most interesting and fleshed-out in the series. There was a lot more emotional depth to the game, and more memorable moments.

I haven't played many new games this year, but of the few I have played ME3 is MILES ahead of the competition.

 

[votemarvel]

The ghost kid. People keep on saying that the ghost kid was pulled out of someones ass at the last second. This isn't true. There was a codex of said kid in Mass effect 1.

I assume you are referring the the planet Klencory and the entry about the Beings of Light?

True that could have changed over time from one being who has decided to kill us all to multiple being who want to save us from being killed by synthetic machine devils.

However as pointed out by the hologram kid, no-one but Shepard knew he existed. While legends of the Reapers would of course pass down through the ages, would a tale of something people didn't know existed. Would the Leviathans really passed on that knowledge if it increased their chances of being discovered?

It's possible that the Beings of Light are the Catalyst, though for me unlikely.

How Shepard's crew was on the Normandy. There was an evac. scene.

The evac scene was added in by the Extended Cut DLC. In the shipped endings they seemingly teleported onto the Normandy.

How Anderson was ahead of Shepard in the citadel. This has two explanations. The first being Anderson was flung into the beam by the explosion and still had the momentum. Or two the dialogue between them. The walls were shifting infront of them. They could have arrived about ten feet from each other and been far enough apart due to the whole wall business.

That's an interesting point but Anderson wasn't in front of Shepard when they were running to the beam, so the changes of him being thrown into it are slim.

The shifting walls idea is most likely true. PC modders who activated the floating camera found another passageway littered with corpses that Anderson could have gone through.

Why Joker left. If you saw the blast emitting from the crucible and had the i.q. of a deck chair would you stay there and wait.

A very reasonable point.

However it wasn't running that annoyed people. It was again the time frame. As originally presented, for Joker to be where he was, he would have had to start leaving before he knew the Crucible had activated.

Continued:

Multiple endings. Thinking about it no game had "Multiple endings". Let's take mass effect 2 for example. The only differences was the amount of people that died.

And to be honest I feel that Mass effect three has too many options to end it on. I feel that a game should have a definite ending, a proper conclusion, not be open ended. Many people may say otherwise, but those people can shut up.

If you need validation for the lack of endings think of it like this: a singular opening, a singular (almost) ending. Unless they reveal that Shepard received brain damage they shouldn't let you do the control option.

In the shipped ending, whatever you may think of the hologram kid's logic, it described three very different outcomes.

The game then proceeded to show us three near identical ending cinematics where the biggest difference seemed to be a palette swap.

Don't tell people your choices are going to produce wildly different results, only to then show them that they are virtually identical.

The Extended Cut fixed many of the issues with the endings. They added the evac for the crew, they added Joker being ordered to leave thus fixing the botched timeline, they added cinematics that made each choice truly distinct.

Have you played the endings without the Extended Cut installed? It seems to me that you haven't.

 

[FitScotGaymer]

Mass Effect 3 wasn't a bad game.

Discounting the ending I would have gave it a 6.5 out of 10 myself. Decent but not spectacular. My reason for that is that while the game has some truely memorable and awesome moments (Tuchanka as an example) it also had moments that were just appalling ("STEEEVVE!!!" anyone?) and it is this schizophrenic nature of the game and the fact that it has no proper introduction that makes the game not anywhere near as good as the prior ME's.

With the extended cut that score rises to about 7.5 out of 10 for me. Because while the ending is no longer batshit insane, it still has no real introduction, the game renders ME2 pointless, and is still schizophrenic in the nature of its writing.

Even Dragon Age 2, which was at the time the worst Bioware release ever, scores better from me (7.5 out of 10) prior to the EC because while the game had flaws it's narrative is more or less coherent and its characters are memorable. Even if the game does end on a flat note, ending on a flat note is better than being batshit insane.

The problem is now that there is a very real perception and culture in gaming right now that anything less than a 10 out of 10 is an abject failure and deserves flung out; and because of this people react more negatively than they really need to.

 

[Brotha Desmond]

The game then proceeded to show us three near identical ending cinematics where the biggest difference seemed to be a palette swap.

Don't tell people your choices are going to produce wildly different results, only to then show them that they are virtually identical.

The point I was trying to make it that if you took a few seconds to think about each ending you would see that it made sense, even the choice to control the reapers. It's not the creators fault everyone needs every little detail spelled out.

 

[alik44]

Well in hind sight about 50-68% of mass effect 3 is just a plain old disappointing. the ending on the other hand was just a huge huge misstep out of nowhere that just just....its that bad.

 

[carpathic]

I waited a long time to play it, hoping the EC would fix things.

It didn't. I cannot even do a second playthrough of this game. The story is all there, on ME1 and ME2 I have still found the odd thing I either did not remember, or had never found (the toilet in Shepard's room in ME2 for instance, never found it until my last playthrough).

The game was destined to be crushed by expectations. Playing up the bromance with Garrus helped, I almost cried when Legion died. I wanted to throw my controller when I didn't get to Kill Kai Leng on first meeting him (especially since a healthy Thane would've owned that little punk).

Also, (almost) mandatory multiplayer made me FURIOUS. If I want to play with an asshole, I'll just play by myself.

Even parts of the ending I liked - like where Shepard and Anderson talk about being tired. I just felt like the ending didn't live up to its possibilities. Maybe one option where I could have a happy ending. The whole sacrifice for the good of all didn't fit thematically.

 

[The Human Torch]

That's a silly question.

(a) Some folks don't consider the 98% to be great. (EDIT: See above.)

(b) The ending is the final impression, the taste that lingers on your tongue so to speak.

(c) The climax and the ending of a story are what everything before it leads up to. If those parts suck then I can't blame people for no longer being enthusiastic about the lead-up parts.

This.

Plus, who needs an ending, right? Endings are for losers, real men play games without coming to a satisfying conclusion. /sarcasm

 

[votemarvel]

The point I was trying to make it that if you took a few seconds to think about each ending you would see that it made sense, even the choice to control the reapers. It's not the creators fault everyone needs every little detail spelled out.

There is a famous saying "show, don't tell."

So there is the flaw in the endings. Bioware told us they were going to be vastly different and then showed us that they weren't.

That's not people not being able to figure out the endings and needing it spelt out, it's simply bad story telling.

Also in regard to the destruction of the Mass Relays. Bioware seemed shocked that people would conclude that it meant that the fleets would be stuck in the Sol System and the turians and quarians would starve before reaching a suitable system at conventional FTL speeds.

Another conclusion they didn't seem to think people would come to is that when the Citadel exploded it would mean the death of everyone on it, both the presidium and the wards.

That's shocking to me as those are conclusions the overall dark theme of the game would draw people.

Bioware said that they'd never just kill off all the people on the Wards you spent the game saving just like that but it's hard to see how people could think differently.

Just speaking of Destroy, if the explosion didn't kill all the people on the Citadel by destroying the power sources that kept the atmosphere together, and why should we think it didn't when the pulse disabled not only the Reapers but their technology, then the millions of people on the Wards would also starve because there is no way the Alliance could get enough food and water to them with the trade routes now inaccessible because of the destruction of the Mass Relays.

So even if the turian and quarian fleets could get to a system with enough food for the fleets, it's even more likely that the people on the Citadel are now dead.

It seems to me that Bioware intended the endings to be interpreted in one way, then were shocked when people thought something different.

 

[Judgment90]

tbh, I didn't think the ending was good, but it wasn't terrible, kinda lazy, but not terrible.

also, just because the game didn't have a good ending, it doesn't mean the rest of the game is horrible.

 

[crimsoncheesecake]

when you have a game that clearly focuses on and shines with its compelling story, setting, characters and cinematics (the actual gameplay was never that important in ME, lets face it) i understand completely why ppl got pissed off that the ending just completely turned all that made the trilogy so good in the first place on its head. Adding to that all the seemingly significant choices u made in ME1 and 2 turned out to have no real consequence whatsoever (except for some bs "galactic readiness" rating which just didnt really work well at all), this raises the question of why they ever bothered giving you a choice in the first place (e.g the collector base, the geth heretics, rachni queen etc.). The only part of the game that to felt like it truly gave choices made in me1 & 2 meaning was the tuchanka campaign. I understand it would have been hard to pull off so im not pissed off about it, just dissapointed. I still enjoyed playing me3 but the only thing it wasnt worse at than me1&2 was gameplay, which was a lot more fun but then again not why i played the ME games.

 

[Atmos Duality]

It's sad that I have to preface this with "In my opinion", but there it is.

The reason is twofold:
1) The main appeal of Mass Effect as a series, at least for me, was never in the gameplay but the story and characters.
The gameplay is bare-bones, Gears of War gunfights. They look cool, but they are not mechanically engaging.

Dialog leads almost entirely to predestination, with the Paragon and Renegade choices being the only significant deviations for most branches. But at least there are branches until ME3.
If nothing else, the multiple branches helps punch up the dialog on repeated playthroughs, but it isn't really gameplay.

2) When one is invested that firmly in the story, a terrible ending is about the worst thing that could happen; it denies the player closure.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a game with MUCH MUCH better gameplay, despite also being a cover-based shooter.
I was far more lenient with it for that reason, though its awful ending (which works in a remarkably similar fashion to ME3) still pisses me off to no end.

Mass Effect 3 takes the premise of choice, a central theme in the series, both in narrative and gameplay mechanics, and stomps it into a mudhole. The ending of ME3 is essentially the same no matter what you do; you choose the color of the explosion, and that shows who lives and who dies.

Some have interpreted this as a near-death "dream sequence" (Indoctrination Theory); others, an "artistic" commentary on the futility of choice.
However, I see this more as people trying to take something that is blunt and devoid of meaning, and imagining that is has meaning because of vague connections, "Inspired by the abyss" and such.

If there is any argument to be made about "artistic merit" in video games, it's that this ME3 nonsense has caused me to think more about the subject than warranted. Not all art is pretty, and neither are its motives.

 

[GildaTheGriffin]

I liked Mass Effect 3 and there is one thing to say to everyone that won't leave the issue alone: SHUT UP! I'm mean, I'm serious here, please shut the hell up! The game was amazing and it had all I ever wanted from an amazing story. Just because you didn't get an erection from the final cutscene of the game doesn't make it a bad game. Please, you people are too over zealous in your opinion and wish on the name of Jesus Christ that you shut up and move on!

 

[Acton Hank]

Oh for the love of... This thread again?

It's simple. You make a fantastic three-tiered cake. The first layer is amazing and breaks with the norms. It's filling, yummy as hell and even though it was big and delicious it left you wanting more. The second tier is even better. It's exactly what you wanted, a fantastic continuation of that first tier you enjoyed so much. The expectations of the third tier is now somewhere in the clouds, and for many it fulfills them perfectly. For others, it doesn't quite get where it should be, but frankly it doesn't matter. Why? Because nestled right on top of that third tier is a giant cow patty. After creating one of the most amazing cakes in the history of this type of cakes, someone pulled down their pants and shat right on top of it.

Guess what bit of it people will be talking about?

The really sad bit is that the turd right at the end of that third one sours and ruins the first two games as well. Playing them feels pointless and crappy knowing that it'll all end in a giant blob of feces anyway.

Why is every comparison a food or sex metaphor?
can't we think of anything else?

 

[FitScotGaymer]

I liked Mass Effect 3 and there is one thing to say to everyone that won't leave the issue alone: SHUT UP! I'm mean, I'm serious here, please shut the hell up! The game was amazing and it had all I ever wanted from an amazing story. Just because you didn't get an erection from the final cutscene of the game doesn't make it a bad game. Please, you people are too over zealous in your opinion and wish on the name of Jesus Christ that you shut up and move on!

Damn straight! If we like a game, NO ONE MAY DISLIKE IT OR VOICE OPINION TO THAT EFFECT! (Mass Effect even. Eh? Eh? Oh shut up, that was funny.)

Indeed.

How dare anyone dislike a game he likes and thinks is "amazing". How dare they!

 

[Vegosiux]

*sigh* 98% of ME3 was not great. The quarian/geth and the genophage lines, they were good, yes. The rest of the game? Mediocre. Even without the ending debacle, ME3 was hardly "great".

 

[TK421]

That's a silly question.

(a) Some folks don't consider the 98% to be great. (EDIT: See above.)

(b) The ending is the final impression, the taste that lingers on your tongue so to speak.

(c) The climax and the ending of a story are what everything before it leads up to. If those parts suck then I can't blame people for no longer being enthusiastic about the lead-up parts.

This is pretty much what I was thinking, the bold parts especially. Yeah, maybe the game was pretty good, but when the ending just dumps everything you have worked for (including whether you wanted to be a Paragon or Renegade) down the crapper, the whole thing just becomes one giant disappointment to me.

 

[Mau95]

Alls well that ends well, as they say. It goes in both directions.