Preliminary Note: This is something I put together a little while back that I’ve simply updated and reworded, but I thought it would be the best thing I could post as the first entry in this blog. Please excuse the rambling and occasional random tangent, lol.
Now Mass Effect 3 is a game I was looking forward to more than any I’ve ever anticipated. With Mass Effect 1 being my favourite game of all time, and Mass Effect 2 not being far behind, the level at which I felt this game dropped the ball is huge. I’ve simply never been more disappointed by any video game I’ve had the misfortune of playing. That’s not to say this is the worst game I’ve ever played, or even a truly bad one, but it just didn’t reach anywhere near the potential that it had. It’s almost to the point where it feels like it was rushed out and released, just for the sake of it being released. Though the primary point of this post here is to detail things I felt were wrong with the game, I feel it’s only fair that I start by mentioning some of the things I thought it handled well.
The game is extremely cinematic from the in game play, to the woven in cut-scenes, to many perfectly placed Paragon/Renegade moments. It felt like the emotions of the moment were almost always encapsulated well through this work. This over reliance on this style did have adverse effects on other aspects of the game, but I’ll get back to it later.
Aside from the many awesome Renegade cut-scene moments littered throughout the game, I also liked how they handled the Paragon and Renegade meters in the game. The use of these to gauge your “influence” was effective. It leaves it so that you’re not pigeonholed into making choices simply for the sake of it being the Paragon option, or the Renegade option.
The moments in this game, like the ones with Mordin, or with Legion carry a lot of weight (that is of course depending on how you handle them), and are possibly the strongest individual moments of the series. In fact, if you play the whole game within a couple of days, and these moments string together as you’re still feeling the effects of the last one, then the game works really well.
When people speculated that that Mass Effect 3 was going to be a lot like Lair of the Shadowbroker, they were right. A lot of the mechanics are revamped from Mass Effect 2, and in large parts, the game simply flows better.
The combat is quite improved, and can stand on its own as a tactical shooter fairly well (for what’s supposed to be an RPG at least). It basically just took the model from Mass Effect 2 and improved on it. The RPG elements are better, with more of a skill tree available. Not as good as Mass Effect 1’s, but a lot better than whatever it is we got in ME2. I liked that there we more guns, and that the modding system was brought back, and actually improved upon. And although there wasn’t much armour to choose from and customize, taking the chest piece and legs from the Hahne-Kedar set made for the most bad-ass looking Sheppard I’ve seen.
I loved all the random cameos of people from the past. I’m not talking about your old squad mates, but all the small people you’ve interacted with in the past. A lot of people felt this was awkward and forced, but for me, I loved seeing what these people were up to during this time of war. To be honest, I think it was the only thing holding the game together when you weren’t on a main quest. I loved running into Conrad Verner. I loved the opportunity to finally kill Balak. And actually, I just loved the idea of being a Spectre again.
Also the game had a pretty haunting soundtrack. Now I loved the ones from the first two games, but I found it odd how they kept implementing music from ME2 rather than draw from the work that Clint Mansel made for them. Either way, on the whole, it worked.
Now I’m going to move on to some of the aspects where I felt like they dropped the ball. Some are obviously bigger than others, so I’ll elaborate when appropriate, because there’s a lot to talk about. Obviously there’s the ending, which is by far the biggest thing, but I’ll get to it later because it’d take a while to talk about.
For one, the game was way too short. This is supposed to be the grand finale, and I’m sure people were expecting to spend more then 30-35 hours to get through it. It’s no longer then Mass Effect 1, and it’s significantly shorter then Mass Effect 2. The game ended on such an awesome note at the conclusion of the IInd act, that you expect a IIIrd act with some sort of epic Asari storyline, akin to what the other races were given earlier in the game. This doesn’t exist though. There was no final act. It skipped directly to the finale.
Then there’s the issue I had with the story in general. When I heard the news and saw the initial trailer for the game, I already hated the idea of losing earth and “taking earth back”, rather than spending the game making sure it doesn’t happen in the first place. Why are such major certainties implemented directly to the beginning of the game?
What I hated worse, was the idea that Cerberus had to be the bad guys, and that under no circumstance could you agree to continue to work with them if you felt like what they were doing was right. Now joining them is something I don’t think I’d ever do, but the fact that you can’t trivializes the whole linear nature of the second game.
ME2 I forgave for forcing me to work for Cerberus under the conditions that the decisions I made in the game (in conjuncture with those from the first) would lead to diverse and branching story plots in Mass Effect 3. But this wasn’t the case at all. It’s what they’ve been promising since the first game, but that isn’t what we got. The game follows an extremely linear basis, in which no matter what save you imported, you visit all the same planets, do all the same quests, which slightly vary based on the major decisions over the first 2 games. Like if you decided to kill the Rachni Queen and commit genocide, the Rachni are still forced into the game for one reason or another (because cloning, lol). It’s as if Bioware was afraid to program any aspect of the game that it was possible that people couldn’t see. This is the antithesis of what I believe Mass Effect 3 was supposed to be all about. None of my previous decisions that I spent real time contemplating were worth anything at all.
Also, the fears I had going into the game about the smaller squads turned out to be worse than I thought it could be. Everyone was tossed to the side, with the exception of most of the ME1 squad. With Mordin and Legion, it was ok as I felt their stories were better served outside the team. However with most of the rest of them, they don’t give you a proper reason as to why they’re not with you yet, and why they still can’t join you afterwards. And there’s not case of this more true than with Miranda. There was absolutely no reason she shouldn’t be aboard the Normandy with everyone. That she’s in hiding, or that she needs to stop her dad is a complete non excuse. As if joining Shepard, and letting him/her help would make things worse somehow. You could just as easily replace Miranda with any other old squad member of preference, and you could use the exact same argument. They just want to use these guys to service random missions to simply add bulk to the game. Seriously, if you’re not doing a quest where you meet up with an old squad member… then what is it you’re doing? That’s what they use to prop up the game. And also it’s an excuse to not have to implement all that effort into the writing, voice acting, and programming involved in having someone aboard the ship and in your squad during combat.
I remember one of the excuses Bioware made was that they were planning to use this available time with fewer squad members to make the conversations and such with those that are there more intimate and interactive, but that was a bold faced lie. There’s absolutely nothing to that statement. At best you get slightly less interaction than that in ME2, but there’s so much useless filler dialogue. “Ambient dialogue” is what they call it. It’s the kind you get when you used to try to talk to Kasumi or Zaeed. You just stood there and listened, and didn’t speak back. It does nothing to actually improve the relationship between Shepard and her crew. It makes it all seem so artificial. Again, they were either too lazy, or didn’t have the resources and time to get it done. But there’s no legit excuse for it.
And how useless are Vega and EDI? They’re just throwaway members. And considering how long it takes to pick up Ashley and Tali, you’re pretty much stuck using only Liara and Garrus for what’s at least half the game. I like them, but the lack of choice is frustrating, considering how big your squad gets in ME2 by comparison.
On a different note, the side quests are almost nonexistent in this game. There are a few of them, but they feel like chores more than anything. There are either those N7/Cerberus quests which seem to exist to simply show off or recycle a multiplayer map, or there’s just some lame fetch quests in which Shepard offers the Normandy services as a galactic delivery ship. These fetch quests are a pain. The only way you can get them is to walk up to everyone you can on the citadel, eavesdrop on their conversation and hope that a quest shows up. And to navigate this, you’re given vague descriptions without a location marker. And regardless of whether or not you pick up these items you need, the journal won’t update to tell you that you did.
The problems with importing saves were a pretty major one as well. A lot of people had both major and minor decisions they made get lost in the process. Or just had saves that wouldn't import all together. But one that affected the most was the face import glitch. It was near impossible for me to recreate one from scratch, so that was a pretty big loss. When I tried playing, it didn’t even feel like it was Shepard at first, and even then barely so at the end.
And there were a lot of minor things that confused the hell out of me, because the developers actively had to avoid implementing such aspects:
- On PC, the game still has no controller support. For a game released in 2012 this is unacceptable, and they never bothered to explain why it wasn’t implemented. Even PC exclusive games nowadays have 360 controller support.
- There is no option to holster your weapons for some reason. This makes it a pain to observe your surroundings properly, and locks you into to that stupid over the shoulder all out attack look at all times.
- And how the hell did they avoid fixing this the helmet toggle aspect? They managed to get rid of them for conversations, which was a step forward. Yet it still makes all the full armour sets useless if you don’t want to be wearing a helmet in the first place, because you can’t edit them. Why not? (If I’m wrong about this, please correct me)
There’s the introduction here of poor new characters and the absence of familiar and otherwise previously important characters. With Dianna Allers, I wish honestly wish I had the option to chuck her out the air lock. Then there was Kai Leng, who has to be the blandest yet somehow most ridiculous villain I’ve ever come across in a game. On the flip side of all this, where the hell was Harbinger? I could get into it all, but such things would be better served in its own topic.
Aside from the cut storylines, there’s just so much indicating all the corners they cut to rush this game out. You get things like Tali’s stock photo, all around poor animation, filled with stiff character models, along with copious amounts of clipping. But along with the choices from ME1 and 2 not reflecting significantly in any way, I would like to also like to cover the corner cutting in its own right at a later time. That’s because I need more time to elaborate on why I don’t feel “this is realistically the best that Bioware could offer us given the circumstances.” I cannot stand this statement so I need to go into great detail as to why what we were given was nowhere near good enough.
Another major hindrance for the game was how it handled relationships, both on an overall basis, and individual issues with each one. For a lot of them it didn’t get particularly deep. And one thing they completely shied away from, which a lot of people were expecting them to deliver on, was the sort of conflict between who you chose from ME1 and who you chose in ME2. The idea being that you’d reach some sort of impasse and that this love triangle that you set up would create for some awesome drama, but it’s not the case. They even go out of the way to make sure most of your love interests never even interact. And in the case of those you had in ME2, they go out of their way to try to make them invalid, or just altogether insignificant in one way or another. A lot of people were waiting for that Ashley Vs. Miranda moment in particular, but it never came. My personal problem, as was that the game decided Liara and Shepard’s relationship was over after she decided to sleep with Traynor. The game didn’t even tell me. It just ended without offering the ultimatum of choosing between the 2. And by the time I figured this out, 10+ hours of gameplay had passed, and couldn’t simply be replayed. That’s one massive ass oversight from the people who made the game, and it’s one that ended up affecting a lot more people than just me. I thought that was going to be the moment that completely ruined the game for me, and then like 2 hours later the ending happened, lol. It made me forget, but it doesn’t make it any better when it’s for all the wrong reasons.
Essentially every relationship possibility has some sort of flaw holding it back. I don’t want to break it down, because I don’t want to get into it with every character. The options for relationships in general are broken though. Male Shepard gets so many more options then the female does. And a female Shepard doesn’t even get a single new male love interest in the game, lol. Also, that she can’t be with Ashley, when the male Shepard can be with Kaiden… It just doesn’t make sense. It’s like it’s another thing they didn’t have the time to implement, because the active decision of avoiding doing that, I don’t think could be explained.
And now it’s time to tackle the big one, the ending of this game. If you look at many things I’ve listed so far, it’s hard to accept that the same people who botched the rest of the game were able to create something as intricately developed as what's outlined in several fan theories. That being that I cannot accept them at face value as being what the writers intended all along. I believe that they just screwed up, plain and simple. There’s some evidence out there about how grand a finale they originally had planned, with massive amounts of cut dialogue appearing on the game disc that didn’t appear ending, which would indicate that they possibly ran out of time to implement it. This is no excuse for what they gave us though. They didn’t bother to bear the responsibility to deliver on that aspect, and it’s their fault.
The ending we were given makes no sense, and it doesn’t take any effort to explain why. It introduces aspects to the story that weren’t even hinted at earlier on, and gives us statements about organics and synthetics that is not only proven patently false from our experience in the game, but are based in this ludicrous circular logic. And there is no option given to refuse it, and prove that such a statement has no basis for our cycle (One being the basic fact that they’ve outlawed AI’s in the first place). We must wipe out organic life with synthetic reapers to prevent organics to create synthetics which will wipe them out… right. Why not just wipe out the synthetics that those organics create?
And why are we left with three choices that appear no matter what you do? You could play the game like a total dunce with minimal allies, or with an EMS score of 8,000, it doesn’t matter. You cure the Krogan, doesn’t matter. You reunite the Geth and Quarians, it doesn’t matter. You have to show up, and then seemingly do the Reapers bidding for them. Why is this something that Shepard would do? He/she would take those solutions and tell the catalyst to shove it. But alas, all you get is the same ending cinematic, with a different coloured explosion based on whatever choice you were forced into making.
Also, the symbolism they were going for is just so forced. The idea that the galaxy has to be reset back to the dark ages regardless of what you chose? That only works if the galaxy needed saving before the Reapers showed up. It seemed pretty damn idyllic to me. And having the Normandy crash land on some garden planet so it could show Joker and EDI in some Adam and Eve situation… It’s all to showcase this clean slate new beginnings crap that they were trying to push, as if it reflects back on the story in some meaningful way. It doesn’t. It actually does the opposite. To take the idea from whomever it was that came up with it, the entire Mass Effect series was about accepting differences, and uniting for a single purpose. The strength that was there in this army that wasn’t there in past cycles was based in this diversity. The Protheans fell because they had all the other races subservient to their own empire. So when the reapers came, they were easier to pick apart. The synthesis option there decides that the only way peace can be achieved is by literally eliminating all the differences we were seemingly fighting to protect… garbage. Pure garbage. Contradicts almost everything the series was supposed to be about.
I can’t even begin to get into how this ending makes everything said in done in Mass Effect 1 and 2 utterly pointless. There’s too much to say. But just think back to the plot in Mass Effect 2. Does any of it make any sense? Have any purpose at all anymore? Why bother with the collectors and the human reaper? Think about it.
Also one thing about the destroy and synthesis options, how is it that they failed to see the long term validity of such a situation? In both you see the end of synthetics, thereby satisfying the apparent need to quell the eventual rising by them to overthrow the organics. However, what’s to stop the organics (or in the case of synthesis, cyborgs) from building synthetics all over again. Organics will get lazy again, and will create new synthetics out of metal parts to do their work for them. It’s as simple as that. Hell, I’m sure the space magic didn’t wipe out all the blueprints to create them, so why not start right away if they felt like it. What was solved again?
And finally, why does Shepard have to die? That’s what always hear from people “If you played the game and saw what you had to face, you would see that Shepard has to die”. That’s crap, and something I can’t accept. To quote some guy on the internet again, why is there an idea that Shepard HAS to _______ , in a game like Mass Effect? Also, how is there supposed to be honour and a sense of accomplishment for a sacrifice, when it’s not something you chose to do, nor something you want to do. It’s so horribly forced. For anyone that’s played Dragon Age: Origins, you can look to the ending of that. As the Warden, the final sacrifice is something you can choose to do, and if done, it carries with it meaning, and justifies being the end of your story. There’s none of that present in Mass Effect 3’s ending. You go out with what is not a bang, but probably the biggest whimper in videogame history.
And there’s that. That is some of what I have to say about Mass Effect 3 (Yes I left a lot of things out). This is all just frustrations based on high expectations, broken promises, and the fact that this ruins not only the series going forward, but makes the first two games pointless and unplayable knowing this is what they lead to. If they fix the ending, it would make all those other mistakes fade into the background, rather than stick out like they do now. It would make the game enjoyable enough for what it is, and keep it as a moderately serviceable bookend to the awesomeness that was Mass Effect 1 and 2. Though with the state Bioware is in right now, I don’t keep my hopes too high for true change.
