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

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Acton Hank

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MortisLegio said:
I liked parts of the game (Tuchanka in particular) but most of it was not very good (mediocre to down right awful). There are many missteps in the story, Kai Leng wasn't very threatening (in my opinion) and came off more as an annoyance than an Anti-Shepard. Some of the players choices were pretty much retconned (Anderson) or just didn't matter (Rachni Queen/Destroying the Collector Base). It seemed like someone (I wont point fingers) wanted a story and took out alot of player choice to keep the story he/she/they wanted. The side missions were boring and repetitive and many game mechanics were just lack luster (Military readiness/ Weapon Customization). The story overall could have been significantly improved upon like getting rid of the Crucible and instead had Shepard just unite the galaxy. The ending is what had originally set me off but when I looked back I saw so many glaring flaws that I can't really enjoy the game.

The game starts with Shepard being led to his/her trial by Vega in a player controlled scene (this allows for a simple walking tutorial for new/returning players). Anderson meets you outside the trial and tells you that he is knows why Shepard did it and believes it was the right thing. He also tells Shepard that he can't go in because (He's too close to Shepard or he has Council Business to attend to). Shepard enters the trial and the cut scene starts with the Judges receiving word about the reapers and asks Shepard what to do. Shepard gets a dialog option and the reapers attack. Combat tutorial as Shepard makes his/her way to the Normandy. During this time Shepard rescues Anderson who tells you that he is taking charge of the Alliance forces and asks you to warn the council (differing dialog depending on if he was/wasn't on the council). Shepard then precedes to his base of either the Citadel (Destroyed Collector base) or the Collector base (saved it). After setting up base (the different bases give Shepard different benefits), Shepard proceeds to contact retrieve Liara to help gather information (since she is the shadow broker). After that Shepard can pick up his other teammates in almost any order. Tuchanka would remain mostly unchanged (just a few small tweaks to help the story), as well as, Garrus' and Tali's/Legion's mission. Kai Leng and Cerberus would be hunting Shepard and trying to stop certain events from happening but with a few more dialog moments between Shepard and the Illusive Man. Kia Leng would also have a few more fights with Shepard in the game. Depending upon Shepard's choices, Shepard could take control of Cerberus and use them in the final battle (also you could kill or save the Illusive Man; it your choice). Finally, Shepard goes to Earth with the massive fleet and attacks the Reapers (The Citadel wasn't moved to the Earth in my story). When Shepard lands, he/she chooses different groups to do different jobs (Krogans,Turians,or Rachni to assault the front lines/ Asari, Quarians, or Salarians to cover a group of people Ect.). At the End it is Shepard versus Harbinger. Depending on Shepard's choices depends on how the final battle goes down (Total Defeat - Reapers Win, Massive losses- Shepard and Characters die, Small losses - Shepard and character could die, Shepard lives but some characters die, All characters live but Shepard dies, and All Characters live including Shepard). Final video of what happens with all that Shepard had chosen to do; roll credits. There would be no Crucible, no god-kid, no Reaper reasoning (leave that a mystery; believe me it's better that way) and have endings that most people will actually like.

Mass Effect 3 was good at times and awful at others. Personally, I think alot of the bad design choices came down as an EA mandate or something, but in the end it all depends on taste and if you personally like it than that's fine with me.
You try to write a better story and end up writing a worse one, nice...

Criticize all you want, you're still talking shit about people who have far more talent than most of you will ever have.
 

Fasckira

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If I was having sex with an awesome hot girl, really getting into it and suddenly a man jumps out from under the bed, pulls me off the girl before slamming a hammer down my gentleman parts, I'd probably remember the hammer blow more than the actual sex beforehand.
 

Acton Hank

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Casual Shinji said:
There were plenty of problems besides the ending, some small (Diana Allers) and some big (ME2 adding nothing to the overall plot).
Of course ME2 didn't have anything to do with ME3.

ME1 stop Saren and Sovereign from bringing back the Reapers. End of Mass Effect 1 plot resolved.

ME2 stop Collectors from kidnapping human colonies. End of Mass Effect 2 plot resolved.

How exactly does Mass Effect 2 have to be connected to ME3?
 

Acton Hank

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Fasckira said:
If I was having sex with an awesome hot girl, really getting into it and suddenly a man jumps out from under the bed, pulls me off the girl before slamming a hammer down my gentleman parts, I'd probably remember the hammer blow more than the actual sex beforehand.
Well thanks at least for not making a scatological reference; I've had more than enough of those.
 

Darkmantle

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Because it really wasn't 98% great... The story was pretty bad overall if I must say so myself. And I usually LOVE bioware stories.

It could just be me though, as I've said before, the blatant power creep in ME3 drove me insane, and I was already dissatisfied with the story before I even reached Rannoch, let alone the shit ending.

Gameplay was very solid though, I give them that, it's just that the story overall was average, for every part I liked, I found another part I disliked
 

Kargathia

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Overusedname said:
When you have amazing sex and get shot in the crotch with a crossbow afterwards, you don't remember how good the rest of the night felt.
These metaphors really are getting progressively more painful.
 

Acton Hank

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Fappy said:
Zhukov said:
(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. I enjoyed the game, but that doesn't mean I was disappointed in more than just the ending.

And also, how the eff are we STILL talking about Mass Effect 3? It's almost September people!
Well I guess it proves Mass Effect isn't the shit game some people say it is.

How many people were still talking about Alpha Protocol or Mindjack 6 months after they came out?
 

Fappy

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ChrisRedfield92 said:
Fappy said:
Zhukov said:
(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. I enjoyed the game, but that doesn't mean I was disappointed in more than just the ending.

And also, how the eff are we STILL talking about Mass Effect 3? It's almost September people!
Well I guess it proves Mass Effect isn't the shit game some people say it is.

How many people were still talking about Alpha Protocol or Mindjack 6 months after they came out?
Well the problem is that most ME3 topics I still see come up today are old fans just digging up rotten corpses. Why do people still feel the need to defend this game so long after it came out. The people who hate it are not going to change their minds at this point. The same shit happened with DA2 as well.

People just can't accept that some people don't like what they like. D:
 

Acton Hank

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MacNille said:
Trilligan said:
Read this:

http://badassdigest.com/2012/08/06/film-crit-hulk-smash-a-few-words-on-the-ending-of-mass-effect-3/

Then this:

http://badassdigest.com/2012/08/17/film-crit-hulk-smash-a-few-more-words-on-the-column-about-the-ending-of-mas/

Read them both before passing judgement, and consider what's being said. I found it an enlightened take, when taken all together.
I tried to read them. They are unreadable because of all CAPS. The ending was and will never be poeatic. They are shit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBETU-uOGh8&list=PLA99BA14B8860EE67&index=12&feature=plcp
You have trouble reading CAPS? Oh and it's Poetic.
 

Woodsey

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Depends on how you look at it. I'd wager most people look at ME3's ending as the series' ending, whereas I think it's more appropriate to look at the entirety of ME3 as the series' ending. If you're the type of person to view it as the former then I can understand them being bitter - those 5 minutes are what everything's built up to. If you look at it from the point of view as the latter, then the ending has 5 dodgy minutes in it.

For me, ME3 was full of endings, and a lot of them were really fucking good, whilst the tone and feel of the entire game was palpably desperate and gritty. And I loved that, and I can take the final ending being crap in light of all that goodness that came before it. I just didn't find it offensive as a lot of people seemed to.
 

BloatedGuppy

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ME3 was an aggressively average game in many respects long before the ending. It definitely had its strong moments, but most of those carried through on the emotions/connections created in the previous two (superior) titles. It was riding on their coattails, so to speak, and picking up some of their reflected glory.

ME3 was riddled with pacing issues, animation and graphic glitches, bland characterizations (Vega) and awful characterizations (Allers), even further retconning of Cerberus making them more ridiculous and improbable than ever, some painfully stilted dialogue, and a dodgy plot that focused entirely around an 11th hour MacGuffin. This is not to say the game does not have merits, but it is most certainly NOT a GOTY candidate, even if you overlook the ending. I'm not sure where the whole "It was 98% amazing" fallacy came from. Presumably it's because compared to the ending everything seemed amazing.
 

hermes

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Because people like to hate, and haters are among the most loud people on the Internet.

Yeah, I wasn't thrilled about the ending, but the game had some pretty big moments. This is a personal opinion, but I found nothing that feels as epic in ME2 as the cure the genophage, save the quarians/geth and the final push missions; except for the suicide mission and some of the DLC.
 

Casual Shinji

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ChrisRedfield92 said:
Casual Shinji said:
There were plenty of problems besides the ending, some small (Diana Allers) and some big (ME2 adding nothing to the overall plot).
Of course ME2 didn't have anything to do with ME3.

ME1 stop Saren and Sovereign from bringing back the Reapers. End of Mass Effect 1 plot resolved.

ME2 stop Collectors from kidnapping human colonies. End of Mass Effect 2 plot resolved.

How exactly does Mass Effect 2 have to be connected to ME3?
The Reapers.

In ME1 we learn about their existence, that one is already here, and that more are coming. In ME2 we learn... nothing, except that the Reapers turned the Protheans into the Collectors - who all die at the end and are never mentioned again - and that they were building that stupid human Reaper that you destroy and which is also never mentioned again.

We learn absolutely nothing of any interest about the Reapers in ME2. No weakness or anything else that can be used to fight them.
As a result ME3 was left holding the ball and we were presented with the Deus ex Machina plot.
 

Fasckira

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ChrisRedfield92 said:
Fasckira said:
If I was having sex with an awesome hot girl, really getting into it and suddenly a man jumps out from under the bed, pulls me off the girl before slamming a hammer down my gentleman parts, I'd probably remember the hammer blow more than the actual sex beforehand.
Well thanks at least for not making a scatological reference; I've had more than enough of those.
*tips his hat* No problem good sir!
 

Paladin2905

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Yeah I'm going to have to agree with many of the people on this thread and say that 98% is a gross overestimation of what was good in Mass Effect 3. I'd probably set it around 15-25% for the improved fighting engine and the random parts that did actually impress me. The other 75-85% was just unacceptably bad writing, programming, planning, marketing and support for a game that was expected to be extremely good. I could continue to rant about why, but I think that has been handily taken care of already on the forum.
 

Acton Hank

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Fappy said:
ChrisRedfield92 said:
Fappy said:
Zhukov said:
(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. I enjoyed the game, but that doesn't mean I was disappointed in more than just the ending.

And also, how the eff are we STILL talking about Mass Effect 3? It's almost September people!
Well I guess it proves Mass Effect isn't the shit game some people say it is.

How many people were still talking about Alpha Protocol or Mindjack 6 months after they came out?
Well the problem is that most ME3 topics I still see come up today are old fans just digging up rotten corpses. Why do people still feel the need to defend this game so long after it came out. The people who hate it are not going to change their minds at this point. The same shit happened with DA2 as well.

People just can't accept that some people don't like what they like. D:
I'm not a Dragon Age fan, I played the first one and hated it, I have no idea what DA2 did to piss of some people the way it did; I'm sure if I actually played it I'd go: "seriously, this is what pissed you off this much?"

But you're right, I'm just tired at this point, even tired of the people who still ***** about the ending, even though I hated it like most people.
 

Acton Hank

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MacNille said:
ChrisRedfield92 said:
MacNille said:
Trilligan said:
Read this:

http://badassdigest.com/2012/08/06/film-crit-hulk-smash-a-few-words-on-the-ending-of-mass-effect-3/

Then this:

http://badassdigest.com/2012/08/17/film-crit-hulk-smash-a-few-more-words-on-the-column-about-the-ending-of-mas/

Read them both before passing judgement, and consider what's being said. I found it an enlightened take, when taken all together.
I tried to read them. They are unreadable because of all CAPS. The ending was and will never be poeatic. They are shit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBETU-uOGh8&list=PLA99BA14B8860EE67&index=12&feature=plcp
You have trouble reading CAPS? Oh and it's Poetic.
It hurts my eyes when it is all caps (dyslexsia brother). And it is not Poetic. It is full of itself. It try to be "arty" and fail so hard. To take an example from film, look at the film Persona. The tone of the whole film is dreamlike and continue so to the end credit. The change in tone for the ending in ME3 just leave to many question to be asked.
Don't know what happened there, I was saying you misspelled Poetic.
 

Krantos

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*Looks at title*

Yep, this will be an entirely unbiased and thought-provoking discussion.

*Grabs popcorn*

In all seriousness, a large part of the problem is it changes the player's perspective on everything that happened before. The Reapers are demystified (in a extraordinarily unsatisfying way I might add) which changes the basis of how many viewed the game.

Taken with the fact that the big seller with the franchise was the story, and you realize a story related failing at the very end can cause an insurmountable problem.