Sutter Cane said:
I think your problem is that your standards were set ridiculously high.There was no way that they were going to make drastically different levels for all of the choices that you made in the previous games (hell Skryim can't even have characters react to shit you've done within that same game. I mean I can be the archmage of the college at winterhold,the head of the theives guild and the listener for the dark brotherhood and it basically has no effect on anything outside their respective questlines. I know that has nothing to do with ME3 but it just really annoys me), and it's not like they have no effect on anything either. You get different dialogue, and different outcomes to the scenarios themselves. Also I don't really understand your point about character death. Sure you don't really see certain characters after a certain point, but in that case (and especially in the case of mordin) it's usually the end of their character arc. You might as well say that it doesn't matter if characters die at the climax of a film from a ramatic perspective, because the film is basically over and you never hear from them again (Unless there's a sequel). The death of well known characters is a legitimate consequence whether you want to admit it or not.
I think when playing a game that was built and sold 3 times on the promise that our choices would effect the fate of the universe, expecting some of those choices to come up, especially (ESPECIALLY!) the 2 at the climaxes of the previous games
Choosing the council seat and destroying/keeping the collector base. which were arguably the two most disregarded decisions in the series to at least have the most minute effect on literally any aspect of the story.
That was my standard going in to Mass Effect 3. if those two decisions were respected I probably would have let 75% of what they did slide, because I would have at least felt like they acknowledged the fact that the first 2 games existed.
When a character died in the suicide mission Bioware took that as an opportunity to write less, not differently, just less. or they replaced them with a character who was functionally the same
There's a mission where you fight Mirands's dad
and if Miranda survived ME2 she kills him
if she's dead you get to choose whether he lives or dies, but it doesn't matter because nothing he does comes up again
he doesn't continue working on the husk thing, you don't get to work with him, nothing.
People will accuse Mass Effect 2 of Cerberus railroading, but at least that was narrative justified. Mass Effect 3 has crucible railroading, which is stupid because it's the one option you know nothing about and it's the only option you're allowed to work towards (Wait choices... character deaths...right)
uh... when you first land on Rannoch with Tali her and Shepard have a really romantic scene regardless of you romanced her, or whether she was even loyal at the end of mass effect 2....
I mean if Tali is alive and an admiral (Which doesn't make sense) the Quarians shouldn't be at war with the Geth because her, Rahn and Corris all say they appose war and only Garrel and Xen are in favor of it. that's 3>2 how did Bioware get that wrong?
Ashley/Kaiden are both written out of the first half of the game
Daag and Grunt are the same character
Legion and Legion VI are literally the same character
Thane dies in such a stupid scene that it's impossible to feel anything for him
Anyway my point about Mordin is that saving him is hard to do (It's not, but what ever)
You need to keep Wrex alive and save the data in a renegade run. You need to make at least 1 decision that's outside your character's base. So it seems like it would be important.
But doing it nets you the same option as shooting Mordin in the back You get "Slarian numbers" instead of Krogan numbers"
That's really the core of it, everything is numbers, they're not people they're not choices they don't have any moral weight they're just numbers. they took all the emotional weight you invested in the first 2 games and boiled them down to math.
recognizing how bad Mass Effect 3 is doesn't have anything to do with my standards. Yes I liked the first 2 so I (Foolishly) expected the third one to be good, but it wasn't even bad, it turned out the absolute worst it could possibly have been. That's why it's a bigger fuck you than anything else I could imagine.
