Why I think the ME3 fans are actually mad

[SajuukKhar]

Just like it's easy to forget that the whole scenario of the Citadel being moved to the Sol system doesn't make any sense

I don't find it that unreasonable, there was nothing that ever indicated it couldn't be moved.

 

[KingofMadCows]

Also, when the Collector base was destroyed, Harbinger says to the Collector General, "we will find another way." Another way to do what? Clearly the Collectors were supposed to be a part of the Reaper's plan but I guess Mass Effect 3 just forgot about that.

The Collectors were ordered to start the reproduction cycle early so they could get the new reaper done faster, and to find ways to weaken the other races, which is why they studied them so much.

The Reaper's saying "finding another way" is them talking about making the new reaper, and finding new ways to weaken the races and or get things to fight the races with.

Which they did with the Rachni queen, and the whole asari mutant spawner etc. etc.

that seemed kinda obvious.

Except none of that turned out to be important.

The Collectors still needed millions of humans to complete the Reaper so they wouldn't have gotten it done before the Reaper fleet arrived. Even if they did, one extra Reaper wouldn't have made a difference.

It's true the Collectors gathered data on the various races but again, it wouldn't really matter after the Reapers arrived since the Reapers could just do it themselves.

The fact that, as you mentioned, the Reapers were easily able to enslave the Rachni queen, create Asari husks, brutes, etc. without the help the Collectors suggests that the Reapers didn't really need the Collectors.

However, Harbinger telling the Collector General that the Reapers "will find another way" implies that it was something important to the Reaper's plans, something that the Reapers actually needed the Collectors to do, and that the destruction of the Collectors was as significant setback for the Reapers as the destruction of Sovereign. The fact that none of that mattered in Mass Effect 3 made the main story of ME2 kind of pointless. That seems kind of obvious.

 

[JediMB]

Just like it's easy to forget that the whole scenario of the Citadel being moved to the Sol system doesn't make any sense

I don't find it that unreasonable, there was nothing that ever indicated it couldn't be moved.

Thing is, there's no explanation for it. The whole incident is just layer upon layer of unexplained events.

How did the Reapers take control over the Citadel to begin with? It's basically indestructible, and impregnable when the wings are closed... and I just don't buy that they'd let the Reapers get inside the way Sovereign did, since they actually know about the Reaper threat in advance now. We can speculate, but even the most obvious answer (The Illusive Man) doesn't really make sense when you consider how he was presented in the final confrontation.

The Citadel is a huge Mass Relay. Way too actually travel through the regular Mass Relay network. So how would it move? Via a secret FTL drive? Even with the Reapers' advanced FTL drives (which are about twice as effective as the organics' drives) it would take at least a couple of years to travel from the Serpent Nebula to the Local Cluster.

And why would they move the Citadel to begin with? What was the strategic advantage? They certainly wouldn't have the time to do anything useful with it, and its impregnable nature would make it quite safe to simply leave it in the Serpent Nebula with a few of their agents onboard. Moving it to Earth and setting up a Conduit (which for some reason doesn't require a receiver, and sends passengers straight to a secret control room) is basically the Reapers exposing their throats and asking the organics to go for it.

Yes, I know, the Citadel's re-localization had an explanation in the Dark Energy ending that ended up not making it into the game. But the least they could do in this sorry excuse for an ending is let Shepard question it, as a form of Lampshade Hanging: acknowledge that it's an irregularity, and then move on.

 

[Therumancer]

You'll notice everyone seems to skirt around the issue of "Leng" when it's brought up.. Leng being an incredibly poorly written and designed character that does not fit in with the game, and who winds up beating Shepard in fights after losing the boss battle "JRPG style" in order to move the plot along in sequences that are even worse than quicktime events. That's not good writing, and it's not good game design and as several of the biggest "money moments" in the game rely on this, the game really deserved to get slammed for that in the ratings even before the ending. With ME3 it's probably most fair to say that the writig for the supporting stories and lesser plot events was excellent, but the major plot points and central structure, including the ending, was absolutly horrendous. Bioware blew not just the ending, but the whole bit at the end of Thessia that acted as the climax for Act 2, that only doesn't get more criticism because the actual finale was just so much worse.

I can definitely agree in principle that games shouldn't be doing "failure-through-cutscene" boss battles anymore. It was at least mildly annoying in Final Fantasy IX (and really frustrating if you were attempting to steal all the goodies Beatrix was carrying on her), and creative developers should have no problem coming up with alternative scenarios.

That said, I think the Kai Leng thing worked because it made me hate the character even more, and that sort of drowned out my feelings on the game mechanic itself. That's why it was so goddamn satisfying to finally kill him off in the Cerberus base.

But, yes, it's easy to forget about the Thessia climax because of how the ending turned out. Just like it's easy to forget that the whole scenario of the Citadel being moved to the Sol system doesn't make any sense, and that the introduction of the Crucible was questionable to begin with... even if it hadn't degenerated into a nonsensical retcon Deus Ex Machina.

In my case I really couldn't bring myself to hate the character as much as being annoyed by him. Just the way he dresses doesn't really fit into the game, he looks like a character from an entirely differant franchise. Walking around in some kind of pseudo tech-ninja outfit that screams "hi I'm an assasin" carrying a couple of swords isn't exactly subtle and it makes me wonder how the guy even gets by, I mean he can't be cloaked all the time, and what does he do, change outfits constantly, or are we supposed to accept that everyone is even more oblivious than the average "Assasin's Creed" game. I mean at least with Shepard you at least have the excuse that the guy was Alliance Special Forces/Black Ops (N7) and then became a Spectre who is basically above the law, what's more pretty much everyone DOES recognize him so it's not like your exactly supposed to be doing the stealth thing... and your not an assasin.

Leng is just totally lulzworthy as a character, and then there is all the writing I mentioned.

Otherwise your right, the bit with The Citadel makes no sense. It's almost like The Reapers wanted to risk destruction. I mean they bring it to the one place where the super weapon that requires it to destroy them happens to be, and then put it on top of the giant transport beam... like they didn't have any other corpse harvester ships before this. I admit I was going "WTF" there as well. I couldn't figure out why anyone would do that.

See if I was the Reapers and I had just gotten the Citadel, I'd want to put it someplace well away from the guys I was fighting. I mean even if I didn't know about The Cruicible, I figure I want to hold onto that to use as bait for the next cycle since its part of the plan.

Not to mention that I felt a whole section of the game was missing. A lot of the little side activities revolved around "The Citadel Defense Force" and it's readiness for an attack. I got the impression there was supposed to be another battle there, and actuall expected to find more of an explanation after hitting the beam, and people still fighting the Reapers inside, with those desicians starting to pay off other than a war asset.

To be honest I cannot fathom how The Reapers managed to take "The Citadel" in this case, especially that quickly as in "oh hey, they just captured it in 15 minutes and are bringing it to eath for the finale". See, they could probably beat the space forces, but to get control of The Citadel that way they have to get inside, and in this case The Citadel would be ready for once unlike the surprise attacks by Saren and Cerberus. The Reapers *do* have a problem fighting troops on the ground and would be in a position of trying to take it over by sending in cannibals/marauders/husks/etc... and in the process be fighting bunches of military personel, C-sec, the bloody spectres (they have an office there), not to mention either a militia or a hugely armed population.... I just can't see it happening that quickly when they were ready (and not being ready was the key issue during the previous invasions).

I also didn't care for how the game made me assemble all these war assets but then they didn't figure into the game events. For example the battles shown seemed to show the Reapers stomping all over everyone, yet I managed to recover/develop things like Javelin missles which are supposed to be effective against Reapers (I'd have to check, but I seem to remember they are basically Dark MAtter/Singularity warheads) not to mention that my readiness which is expanding those war assets had me "pushing the Reapers Back" due to being at 100%. Basically come the finale, I was supposed to be winning, with them losing key locations and getting run off. It even says so when I load the game. Amazing how Bioware put that in, and then doesn't bother to take it into account for the finale, making me wonder at the point. When it comes to writing, they shouldn't let something like that be defined, and then proceed to just ignore it.

 

[Smeggs]

What I found funny was just how stupid and simplistic the Reapers truly were.

"Hay, guize, I got the Citadel here now. What? You want me to put a space elevator down on Earth so bodies can be beamed up to make a new Reaper? WELL OKAY! I can't see how just not making the new Reaper and simply roflstomping the other races as we were doing could work better, so I'll just put this space elevator down here now.

Unguarded.

Even though we know the only organic to ever kill us is still out there, and has sworn to come back to take vengeance on us."

 

[KingofMadCows]

But that's the thing, no one sees the suicide mission. Even if you save the base, it's Cerberus that gets it and even then only the Normandy has the IFF needed to trigger the Omega-4 relay correctly (and EDI only activates it properly without getting infected because she has reaper code herself).

Then how did TIM plan to gain access to the Collector base? How did TIM gain access to the Collector base?

Point is, no one else gets proof. You're just one team. Dozen people, 2 or 3 if you include the ship crew.
The team believes in you and you've certainly made a small bunch more people around the galaxy believe too, but what I was saying is that none of the galactic governments really want to publicly acknowledge the Reapers and no one who believes in you, not even Anderson and Hackett, can change that fact. I also said "partly explained"; I agree that it's a little dumb and was practically yelling at the screen myself when my Shepard was dragged into a hearing minutes before the Reaper invasion.
But it's all excusable. Even right now, on this earth, we have a hard time imagining what it really entails to keep an entire country running efficiently or to mediate countries on the global stage; can we even fathom doing that on a galactic scale? Even in ME1, Garrus never fails to mention how bureaucracy is so much sand in the wheel of things. It's sad that no one takes your universe-threatening story seriously enough to really commit what's needed, but I have no trouble imagining it. It is, after all, in ME2 that the council tells you "Ah yes, the Reapers. A race of sentient warships allegedly waiting in dark space. We have dismissed that claim." And he says that after pieces of Sovereign rained all over the Citadel. Also, it's only because Hackett believed in you and he's pretty much the head of the Alliance Military that the Human fleet was even in any state of alert, however ineffective that turned out to be.

It would have been really stupid for Shepard not to get pictures and scans of the Collector base or gather technology and wreckage after they came back from the explosion so they have plenty of evidence.

Also, the governments may not believe but that doesn't prevent Shepard and his team from spreading the truth and gathering more support. Shepard would have much more support now that he stopped the threat of the Collectors. Plus they already have support from individuals in governments or other positions of power.

As for surrendering, Shepard demonstrates being Alliance Military at heart (you were Commander Shepard even before ME1) so it's not much of a stretch that he/she'd choose to submit peacefully and, of course, let them fully recover the Normandy SR2. Shepard's hope was probably to show goodwill and try to convince them, but it's a still a bureaucratic nightmare that your faithful squad can't change. So instead of stranding them all on earth, they all went their own way to their thing and without any kind of time frame as to how long does it take for a Reaper to actually fly into the galaxy from dark space (no one knows how fast reapers are or, more importantly, how far they really were), who can blame them? Maybe they figured they had at least a year.

But why even have that DLC at all. Why not just have ME3 follow the ending of the main ME2 story? Why not have ME3 begin with Shepard's team intact going around the galaxy gathering support to prepare for the Reapers? That way, even if the Collectors weren't important, the fact that they brought the team together and created the impetus for them to gather support would have made the main ME2 story significant.

Heck, even if they follow the DLC, why split the entire team apart? Why not have the team stay together and continue the mission without Shepard? Why didn't they all stay in contact while gathering support so they can help each other?

 

[PurePareidolia]

Lack of respect? no. After playing the rest of the game I can't agree with that. If the entire game was a cheap cash in that barely acknowledged the previous two, maybe, but as it stands 99% of the game is wonderful and deep and veterans of the series get some truly brilliant moments for their trouble.

The only source of anger is the ending, and the fact it was leagues worse than any conclusion I've played including the cel-shaded Prince of Persia which was my previous title-holder. It made no sense, made the reapers seem like idiots (more than ME2's ending even), essentially destroyed the entire galaxy I'd sunk so much time into and essentially meant for all Shepard had accomplished, everyone would be better off letting the reapers win. The reapers wouldn't have destroyed the mass relays, and would've left pirimitive races as survivors. Instead I turned each relay housing star system into a giant ball of fire, and the survivors were unable to go anywhere afterwards. The reapers would have called me a monster.

That is an insanely bad way to end a beloved trilogy. If Bioware didn't respect me, they'd have made an anticlimactic sequel hook, not systematically destroyed everything I'd sunk hundreds of hours working for. You have to work hard to make something this terrible.

 

[XandNobody]

To start with, I am a big Mass Effect fan, but since I lost my saves and need to replay the first two to get my Shepard back I did not buy ME3 at the beginning, and then I started hearing the news, as all of us have.

I think this issue comes down to more than just the ending, even though most people admit that the ending is terrible. I think the reason this has been so bad, and gone on for so long, is a sense of a lack of respect.

There's a sense of a lack of respect from Bioware itself, that it rushed a bad ending in its game and that it may very well try to sell DLC to make it better. This impression is not improved from Bioware statements that they would not do exactly what they did, or by putting out day 1 DLC.

But that's not the reason this flame war has gone on since the game has come out. This has continued, in my mind, because fans legitimate critiques have been openly derided by the gaming media, in what some have called a conspiracy and what I think is more likely to be just an emotional disconnect with fans.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/03/22/gaming-journalisms-problem-isnt-being-beholden-to-companies/

Instead of getting statements along the lines of "yes, the ending was bad for reasons X,Y, and Z" fans got called entitled and derided as immature children. Yes, some of them have acted like that but in characterizing the entire group as acting like that gaming journalism has gone too far. And if fans are getting disrespected by the mainstream media, gaming companies, AND gaming media, why shouldn't they be mad about that?

There are many people who say the attacks against Bioware threaten gaming as an art form, all the while claiming that we as gamers should seek no validation from non-gamers. I don't think validation from non-gamers is necessarily all that important, but I think respect from within the gaming community in general IS. Because if game companies are going to just treat us like walking wallets, then why should we treat them as artists? And if game journalism doesn't watch out for consumers against the exploitations of the companies, why shouldn't we think that the two are in league together?

This is the best post about this issue I have had the good graces to read in, well, what has it been? Two or three weeks now? I honestly lost track of how long this has gone on.

Honestly, I got over the ending, I hit a point where I just accepted it as the dreck it was and moved on. Yet, then, we have people like MovieBob move from defending Bioware to outright bashing the fans with baseless generalizations, and I'm suddenly pissed again. Apparently, if you didn't like the ending, you must be against art, and of course you want it changed, because you can't just, you know, not like the ending.

*sigh* This issue certainly seems to have opened a whole can of worms in the community, that much is for sure.

 

[JediMB]

But, yes, it's easy to forget about the Thessia climax because of how the ending turned out. Just like it's easy to forget that the whole scenario of the Citadel being moved to the Sol system doesn't make any sense, and that the introduction of the Crucible was questionable to begin with... even if it hadn't degenerated into a nonsensical retcon Deus Ex Machina.

You had to know there was going to be a Deus Ex Machina in there somewhere. The Reapers were too big and bad of a threat to be able to be defeated with anything less.

They really didn't need a Deus Ex Machina, because they had already introduced the Crucible as the game's driving plot device and the Catalyst/Citadel as the MacGuffin needed for it to work.

They could have done pretty much anything with the Crucible, but they chose to change the rules at last minute.

Not to mention that Shepard had assembled the largest fleet the galaxy had ever seen. Reapers were falling the very moment the fleet opened fire on them. The current cycle had an advantage never before seen, thanks to the Protheans' legacies and the destruction of Sovereign.

* * *

Think about it for a minute... the Crucible was constructed as a weapon against the Reapers. A weapon that is supposed to use the Catalyst/Citadel as a stabilizing component needed for it to work properly. It's designed to be a weapon, but The Illusive Man believes it can also be used to control the Reapers. So what manner of weapon can it possibly be with those two possible uses?

The Illusive Man also believed that indoctrination was the secret to controlling the Reapers. That the very thing that allows them to control their forces can be used to control them instead. Do you see the connection there?

The Crucible was an ambitious project (by the Protheans and races that preceded them) to disrupt Reaper indoctrination, and possibly even communication between the Reapers themselves. We were shown multiple times that the Protheans had studied indoctrination to the point where they had technology able to detect it. Working on a way to disrupt it is the logical way to proceed from there.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Except none of that turned out to be important.

The Collectors still needed millions of humans to complete the Reaper so they wouldn't have gotten it done before the Reaper fleet arrived. Even if they did, one extra Reaper wouldn't have made a difference.

It's true the Collectors gathered data on the various races but again, it wouldn't really matter after the Reapers arrived since the Reapers could just do it themselves.

The fact that, as you mentioned, the Reapers were easily able to enslave the Rachni queen, create Asari husks, brutes, etc. without the help the Collectors suggests that the Reapers didn't really need the Collectors.

However, Harbinger telling the Collector General that the Reapers "will find another way" implies that it was something important to the Reaper's plans, something that the Reapers actually needed the Collectors to do, and that the destruction of the Collectors was as significant setback for the Reapers as the destruction of Sovereign. The fact that none of that mattered in Mass Effect 3 made the main story of ME2 kind of pointless. That seems kind of obvious.

They were never intended to finish before the Reapers arrived, only get a head start.

Secondly again they were getting data TO GET A HEAD START, sure the Reapers COULD have just got all the data on the races themselves but when you cold get others to do it for you before you get there NOT taking advantage of that would be stupid.

Actually no, it doesn't imply importance, it implies they will do something else to get the same result. Your extrapolating nonexistent importance out of a quote that doesn't imply any sort of real importance beyond "now we will have to do ourselves what you could have done for us before we got there".

 

[KingofMadCows]

Except none of that turned out to be important.

The Collectors still needed millions of humans to complete the Reaper so they wouldn't have gotten it done before the Reaper fleet arrived. Even if they did, one extra Reaper wouldn't have made a difference.

It's true the Collectors gathered data on the various races but again, it wouldn't really matter after the Reapers arrived since the Reapers could just do it themselves.

The fact that, as you mentioned, the Reapers were easily able to enslave the Rachni queen, create Asari husks, brutes, etc. without the help the Collectors suggests that the Reapers didn't really need the Collectors.

However, Harbinger telling the Collector General that the Reapers "will find another way" implies that it was something important to the Reaper's plans, something that the Reapers actually needed the Collectors to do, and that the destruction of the Collectors was as significant setback for the Reapers as the destruction of Sovereign. The fact that none of that mattered in Mass Effect 3 made the main story of ME2 kind of pointless. That seems kind of obvious.

They were never intended to finish before the Reapers arrived, only get a head start.

Secondly again they were getting data TO GET A HEAD START, sure the Reapers COULD have just got all the data on the races themselves but when you cold get others to do it for you before you get there NOT taking advantage of that would be stupid.

Actually no, it doesn't imply importance, it implies they will do something else to get the same result. Your extrapolating nonexistent importance out of a quote that doesn't imply any sort of real importance beyond "now we will have to do ourselves what you could have done for us before we got there".

Really? So you're not supposed to think that the main quest of a 30 hour game that's in the middle of a trilogy is important to the overall plot of the series? Yeah, that makes sense.

 

[Savagezion]

What I found funny was just how stupid and simplistic the Reapers truly were.

"Hay, guize, I got the Citadel here now. What? You want me to put a space elevator down on Earth so bodies can be beamed up to make a new Reaper? WELL OKAY! I can't see how just not making the new Reaper and simply roflstomping the other races as we were doing could work better, so I'll just put this space elevator down here now.

Unguarded.

Even though we know the only organic to ever kill us is still out there, and has sworn to come back to take vengeance on us."

LOL, I never thought about that. There is so much stuff wrong with the end I probably missed more than that one too. That one is pretty funny though.

 

[Infernai]

Thanks for the welcomes guys, and the cooling of the sarcasm engine

It is unfortunate that these conversations do become flame wars. I think if we truly feel games are an art form then it should be saddening whenever one fails to live up to its potential, as many feel Mass Effect has done (I for one had initially hoped that ME3 would branch off in so many different directions that there could be no spoilers for my Shepard, and as soon as I heard that it wasn't so I knew that I would be disappointed by it no matter what else happened).

If we are to advance gaming we can't be content with mediocrity and disappointment, and I am disturbed by attacks on fans by the gaming industry stifling that discontent, even though some do take that too far.

Publishers don't like it when we fight against their marketing campaign hype-machines. They prefer us impressionable and aloof.

fight against their marketing campaign hype-machines.

marketing campaign hype-machines.

hype-machines.

Reapers! The Reapers are real!

Nooooooooooooo!

The cycle will continue whether we like it or not

Shit, is this playing out like an accelerated version of Mass Effect?

As the first to discover their motives, that must mean I'm Commander Shep-awwww shit.

I guess that makes me Liara....

Question: can Asari masturbate?

>.>

Don't get any funny ideas.

Where's Garrus? I was promised that there would be a Garrus.

Well, in that case, guess that makes me Wrex.

...Cause I'll be damned if I'm gonna be stuck being Kaiden.

 

[JediMB]

Then how did TIM plan to gain access to the Collector base? How did TIM gain access to the Collector base?

We, like Shepard's crew in ME3, can only really speculate on what exactly happens to a ship that passes through the Omega-4 relay without an IFF module.

It's quite possible that ships entering were torn apart when every single laser-eyed drone hovering around the relay attacked at once. These security systems might have then been permanently disabled when the Collectors were destroyed.

It would have been really stupid for Shepard not to get pictures and scans of the Collector base or gather technology and wreckage after they came back from the explosion so they have plenty of evidence.

Also, the governments may not believe but that doesn't prevent Shepard and his team from spreading the truth and gathering more support. Shepard would have much more support now that he stopped the threat of the Collectors. Plus they already have support from individuals in governments or other positions of power.

Here's the really stupid part... we saw that Shepard had collected evidence in the base. S-/he had this nice little holo-scan or whatever of a Reaper during the post-mission cutscene. The game seemed to imply that they finally had the evidence they needed...

And then nothing came from it.

*sighs*

But why even have that DLC at all. Why not just have ME3 follow the ending of the main ME2 story? Why not have ME3 begin with Shepard's team intact going around the galaxy gathering support to prepare for the Reapers? That way, even if the Collectors weren't important, the fact that they brought the team together and created the impetus for them to gather support would have made the main ME2 story significant.

Heck, even if they follow the DLC, why split the entire team apart? Why not have the team stay together and continue the mission without Shepard? Why didn't they all stay in contact while gathering support so they can help each other?

Take Earth Back. Marketing. Electronic Arts.

 

[J.d. Scott]

The reason you're being derided as immature children is because you are. The fact that you didn't like the ending, and to claim that this "ruined" the entire product and constituted false advertising is ridiculous. It's their story. More importantly, if you took the time to actually understand what they were trying to do with that ending instead of simply joining the knee-jerk reaction parade, you might realize that the ending is brilliant. It's a smart, creative, subtle ending - slightly flawed, but it literally reshapes 300+ hours and thousands of paths and choices in less then two minutes. It gives qualities to the plot and characters that were never there before, and makes you question every moment and every choice you ever made. The fact that they used a scalpel and not a sledgehammer seems to make inaccessible to people, and I think that any changes will simplify appeal to the lowest common denominator by simply explaining what was supposed to be thought-provoking and diagramming what was once philosophical.

The "Retake Mass Effect" is the singularly most egotistical, self-entitled, derisive pile of shite I've witnessed in a long time. As if it ever, ever, EVER belonged to you, you pompous windbags. Perhaps you should retake some humility instead.

More importantly, this isn't a pair of sneakers, or a Burger King Cheeseburger, and you don't get to have it your way. This is art, and you don't get to rewrite it to serve your needs. You don't have to buy anything they do again, but it's pretty short-sighted to boycott a product simply because you don't understand it. Make an effort. Don't just throw up your hands, or your dollars, or bash them on Reddit.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Really? So you're not supposed to think that the main quest of a 30 hour game that's in the middle of a trilogy is important to the overall plot of the series? Yeah, that makes sense.

Lol exaggeration much?

The point of the game was to delay the reapers, and blow up some of their preparations, which you did. It was important in that it made the Reapers less powerful coming into the system then they would have been.

the fact that The Reapers were able to mangle together a few half assed attempts to make more things to use against the organic races does NOT negate the fact that they are worse off then they would have been had they gotten all the things from the collectors day 1 of the invasion.

 

[JediMB]

Otherwise your right, the bit with The Citadel makes no sense. It's almost like... ~snip~

A-fucking-men. On everything.

It's mind-boggling how incomplete the game seems once you start thinking about it. It's easy to get distracted by the awesome recruitment missions, I guess.