a9735z: Merkin Ball: Does the end of the game tell the player to go outside and live a little or something?

Heh, what it says is equally amusing (to me). "Sheperd is now a legend. You can now continue to expand his legend through the purchase of more DLC!"

Also, man EA's stock is taking a beating.

[i43.tinypic.com image 640x405]

/so glad I didn't pay money for me3

Good EA is a sh*t company run by a sociopathic DoucheLord.

Wayne 985: Sherpard dies at the end of ME3, but that doesn't seem inherently bad to me. I guess I'll have to play through the trilogy to see what the big deal is.

Him dying isn't the bad part of the ending. The bad part of the ending involves a godlike VI that basically makes the events of ME 1 and ME 2 seem like the most retarded plan ever, but it somehow works for millions of years.

Think of it like the ending to the Battlestar Galactica series. It's pretty much the same thing. The end invalidates the entire journey there and makes it meaningless.

Also why did they choose to use that photo of that guy? He looks like he's all pouty about people not liking his game.

My favorite analogy of the ME 3 ending:


So at the end of the Lord of the Rings triolgy, Gollum bites the ring off of Frodo's finger and falls into the lava. But instead of the ring melting and evil being destroyed, all of a sudden a ghostly image of the Bree gatekeeper shows up. He reveals that he is the "Fires of Mount Doom", and congratulates you on getting this far. He then points to three buttons on the wall. The first button will kill Sauron and all the other evil races, but will also kill off the elves, including Legolas, since they are too closely related to orcs. The second button will allow Frodo to replace Sauron as the lord of Mordor, whereupon he can stop the battle and return the evil races back to behind the gate where they belong. The third button will merge all of the sentient races into one, bringing about peace through some unclear mechanism. Frodo makes his choice. Regardless of which choice he makes, all the horses in the world die. The last scene has Gimli, Strider, and Gandalf riding eagles which crash into some random mountain.

I will never understand video game nerds. I like video games, but you know what happens in my world when there's something about one that I strongly dislike?

I don't play it.

I cannot begin to imagine how few problems and responsibilities I would have to have in my life before even the idea of writing angry letters about video games made it just to my radar.

Splinshints: I will never understand video game nerds. I like video games, but you know what happens in my world when there's something about one that I strongly dislike?

I don't play it.

I cannot begin to imagine how few problems and responsibilities I would have to have in my life before even the idea of writing angry letters about video games made it just to my radar.

The thing is the players didn't know about that thing about it that they'd strongly dislike until they bought it and played it to the end. It's only that final scene that's really farked up. The rest of the game is solid and pretty damned good.

ME3 is fantastic. The ending sequence is fantastic, too. The final moments of the ending do kinda suck, but whatever. That's like 5 minutes. What were people expecting, anyway? Shepard saves the galaxy and gets a burger with President Ronnie?

a9735z: From the studio that brought you the amazing variety in character/armor modeling in SWTOR, the $200 Million title.

[i40.tinypic.com image 192x1100]

I guess I don't see the point in this picture. Almost every MMO's pvp armour for a tier is just recolored. Perhaps you should add the Republics pvp armour in that if they use the same armor models.

Is it neccessary to read that message in a really awful accent done by some hearing-challenged "voice actor"?

Cubicle Jockey: My favorite analogy of the ME 3 ending:


So at the end of the Lord of the Rings triolgy, Gollum bites the ring off of Frodo's finger and falls into the lava. But instead of the ring melting and evil being destroyed, all of a sudden a ghostly image of the Bree gatekeeper shows up. He reveals that he is the "Fires of Mount Doom", and congratulates you on getting this far. He then points to three buttons on the wall. The first button will kill Sauron and all the other evil races, but will also kill off the elves, including Legolas, since they are too closely related to orcs. The second button will allow Frodo to replace Sauron as the lord of Mordor, whereupon he can stop the battle and return the evil races back to behind the gate where they belong. The third button will merge all of the sentient races into one, bringing about peace through some unclear mechanism. Frodo makes his choice. Regardless of which choice he makes, all the horses in the world die. The last scene has Gimli, Strider, and Gandalf riding eagles which crash into some random mountain.

Obligatory:

Splinshints: I don't play it.

You've just spent $60 on a product who's sole reason to exist is entertain you. It has failed to entertain you in part or whole, therefore it is defective, by design in fact. Except you can't return it. You can get an instore credit for turning in a console version but that won't give you a full refund.

So you are saying you're A-Ok with EA (or any other publisher) making off with $60 of your money and leaving you with a defective product? Fair play.

I'm not.

AdamK: bioware pretty much is ea and ea pretty much is bioware at this point, they're about as separate as arms on a body

Arms can work independently. Bioware is more like a Superboob. There's only one and in concept it's great. I mean, boobs are awesome so it would stand to reason that a superboob would be even more awesome. But the fact of the matter is that it's awkward and not really that appealing.

What I don't understand is that if you're going to try that hard to copy Deus Ex 1's ending from over a decade ago, how do you mangle it that badly?

Dafatone: What were people expecting, anyway?


At bare minumum, a "Where are they now?"sequence for your companions, even if done only through flat text panels like at the end of the BG series.

Instead, we got a flat text panel asking us to buy some DLC.

Earpj: My son says it's fine. He doesn't get what all of the whining is about.

Perhaps, then, your son will be able to explain how individual decisions made throughout the series directly affect the ending, as was promised by the developers within weeks of the game's release. Your son should also be able to explain all of the evident plot holes identified by other individuals.

a9735z: Obligatory:

Awesome. I hadn't seen the storyboard version of that yet.

Vaneshi: Splinshints: I don't play it.

You've just spent $60 on a product who's sole reason to exist is entertain you. It has failed to entertain you in part or whole, therefore it is defective, by design in fact. Except you can't return it. You can get an instore credit for turning in a console version but that won't give you a full refund.

So you are saying you're A-Ok with EA (or any other publisher) making off with $60 of your money and leaving you with a defective product? Fair play.

I'm not.

So you weren't entertained for those ~40ish hours it took you to play the game? Or you were, but you didn't like the final five minutes, so you've convinced yourself that you didn't like the whole thing.

/Christ, people, this game is AMAZING. Yeah the ending could have been better. Whatever, I'm there to play the game. If I just cared about the ending it's on youtube.

Vaneshi: You've just spent $60 on a product who's sole reason to exist is entertain you. It has failed to entertain you in part or whole, therefore it is defective, by design in fact.

I'd argue it did entertain, it just disappointed. The only real recourse isn't to demand a refund or a change, but to lose trust in the people who made it. Which is why New Moon. . . um, never mind, that doesn't work.

Seriously, Bioware's endings have sucked since the days of Baldur's Gate. At this point it should be clear that their games are rides you jump off at the last second. If you've been buying their games for good endings, I think your brain is hopelessly broken.

kingoomieiii: Mass Effect 3 concludes a trilogy with so much player control and ownership of the story that it was hard for us to predict the range of emotions players would feel when they finished playing through it. The journey you undertake in Mass Effect provokes an intense range of highly personal emotions in the player; even so, the passionate reaction of some of our most loyal players to the current endings in Mass Effect 3 is something that has genuinely surprised us.

Hey, guys? Do you maybe think it might have something to do with that bolded part, the entire reason the games are fun, being completely meaningless in the final five minutes as your writers pull the most ridiculous, non-sequitur deus ex machina ending ever seen in an RPG? All those various choices and story arcs you guys wrote in are invalidated and erased by a literal god living in a machine telling you the game has to end. Then he asks your favorite color, some shiat blows up, and there's no closure or real resolution of any kind.

Seriously, your writing team should get an award for the dumbest ass-pull ever seen in gaming.


Okay, can you please explain how the ending invalidates the choices you've made in the previous games? The decision to save the Rakni in 1 has a huge effect. The choice you make at the end of 2 has a huge effect. Are you upset because Shepherd doesn't survive or that it's not a happy ending where the sacrifice of millions matter in the way you think it's supposed to matter?

Get over it. This is Mass Effect here. This is a game where in the first installment, you have to make a conscious choice over which character lives and which character dies. You can't avoid sacrifice in this game. This isn't Halo or Gears of War where yes, main characters die, but as a part of the story and the choice is out of your hands; in Mass Effect, you are choosing which person to send to their death. This is not a happy-ending type franchise where you defeat the big bad and everyone dances in celebration. And I'm glad that it's not. Every other game franchise ends like that: victory without much personal and emotional sacrifice that you choose to make. You didn't tell Johnson or Miranda to sacrifice themselves in Halo. You didn't tell Adam to sacrifice himself in Gears of War; those points were set in the story and completely out of your hands.

You're upset about the deus ex machina thing? Has it crossed your mind that the whole reason that being finally appears and offers the choice on how to break this cycle that's been going on for millions of years is because you've done the one thing that no organic in the history of the universe has been able to do? That you're the first organic to *unite* multiple races in some semblance of equality, rather than domination? That your example, whether through Paragon or Renegade, has lead to a unified front of billions? And that you're the first organic to make this machine intelligence think that maybe they've been wrong and that the organics can overcome the cycle of oppression?

The fact is, I'm happy ME3 ends the way it does; with a Pyrrhic victory. It makes it unique among all the other games out on the market. Are there plot holes in the game? Yes, but that's part of the reason for 4, 5,and 6. Is it a perfect game? No, but it comes close IMO. The game is excellent because it treats the subject of war how it truly is: a nasty, brutal, f*cked up thing that requires sacrifice and choices of who lives and who dies. The people that are b*tching about ME3 are really upset that they're being forced to actually make the tough choices instead of having the choice removed from them because of the story. No matter what you do, the blood of friends and allies will be on the hands of Shepard.

I just have one question:

Why did the Mass Relays explode? I clearly missed the reason behind it, and I really dont' want to play the game again to figure out why

rickycal78: Wayne 985: Sherpard dies at the end of ME3, but that doesn't seem inherently bad to me. I guess I'll have to play through the trilogy to see what the big deal is.

Him dying isn't the bad part of the ending. The bad part of the ending involves a godlike VI that basically makes the events of ME 1 and ME 2 seem like the most retarded plan ever, but it somehow works for millions of years.

Think of it like the ending to the Battlestar Galactica series. It's pretty much the same thing. The end invalidates the entire journey there and makes it meaningless.

I've never seen Battlestar Galactica.

ME players.

Told you it was crap.

RoyFokker'sGhost: The decision to save the Rakni in 1 has a huge effect. The choice you make at the end of 2 has a huge effect.

Yes, but the choices carry no weight in the end. It's as if the effects of these choices lack mass, for without mass, there is no weight. What people want is to experience the effects of that mass. . . a "mass effect" if you will.

Cubicle Jockey: Dafatone: What were people expecting, anyway?


At bare minumum, a "Where are they now?"sequence for your companions, even if done only through flat text panels like at the end of the BG series.

Instead, we got a flat text panel asking us to buy some DLC.

I spent more time laughing at the game than anything. The graphics are horribly outdated and the textures look so bad at anything above 720p. And the animations......good lord the horrible animations. Every time a character did that "diarrhea sprint" I started laughing.

The biggest "wait.....wtf" moment for me has to either be Udina being the council pres regardless of any combination of decisions in the previous game and the Rachni Queen being pulled out of thin air even if you kill her. And even if you kill her in ME3, they drop in a second one with a "uhhh we cloned her?" line to piss on your decision a second time in the same game. The combat is just so awkward and the AI path finding is honestly stunningly bad for a AAA title in 2012.

As a whole the game is just a mess. Some of the dialogue between characters is pretty good though and some of the side-stories are good but that's really its only saving grace. The whole main story is just a giant bag of fail.

Quoting myself, a handy summary of what the problems with the ending are...

At the end of a combined 100ish hour story over 5 years and 3 games which have pushed the idea of user choice driving the plot, the sum total of everything you do, which can be wildly different player to player, boils down to a number that determines how many of three total doors the literal Deus Ex Machina presents you with.

As if this wasn't annoying enough, you have to choose between these doors based on demonstrably faulty logic that you/your character takes at face value despite it being presented by the representative of the big bad, with no opportunity given to act 'in character' and challenge it. Instead you implicitly agree that the point of view of the entities that are in the process of systematically slaughtering everyone in the galaxy is correct. Then, despite having wildly different implications, each door leads to a largely samey, non-sensical cutscene, all of which include your loyal crew, possibly including members who should be dead, breaking the laws of physics to flee, and the primary mode of intra-galactic transportation being destroyed, stranding millions, possibly billions in situations where they will die. And, if you had a high enough magic number and pick the 'bad' end, Shepard apparently lives. But only in that ending. Ok, sure.

The end.

Oh, and then after the credits you're treated to a stinger where, some undisclosed time into the future, some kid is asking his grandpa(voiced by Buzz Aldrin for some reason) to tell him another story about 'the Shepard'. And the pitch for DLC. So that's nice.

scottydoesntknow: The Mass Effect team, like other teams across the BioWare Label within EA-

[Paragon Interrupt]
Fans: "Don't you see! You've been indoctrinated by the rEApers! You must fight it!"

Bioware: "Aghhh! I can't...do...it" *pulls out gun and commits suicide*

Fans: "It was the only way"

I totally heard the interrupt sound in my head when I read that.

Goddammit, I'm so close to the end now, up to about 6500 war readiness (without playing any multiplayer yet) & only 2 side missions left before I do the last point of no return mission. The game has been so stellar up to now that the end is going to have to be REALLY bad if it's going to sully my experience. And I means REALLY, really bad. I'm loving it so far.

Also, I'm hearing from friends who have completed it that the ending is good and fitting and that the nerdrage is undeserved. Can't wait to find out myself, and have avoided spoilers so far.

RoyFokker'sGhost:

Okay, can you please explain how the ending invalidates the choices you've made in the previous games? The decision to save the Rakni in 1 has a huge effect. The choice you make at the end of 2 has a huge effect. Are you upset because Shepherd doesn't survive or that it's not a happy ending where the sacrifice of millions matter in the way you think it's supposed to matter?

Get over it. This is Mass Effect here. This is a game where in the first installment, you have to make a conscious choice over which character lives and which character dies. You can't avoid sacrifice in this game. This isn't Halo or Gears of War where yes, main characters die, but as a part of the story and the choice is out of your hands; in Mass Effect, you are choosing which person to send to their death. This is not a happy-ending type franchise where you defeat the big bad and everyone danc ...

Please let us know what choice you made that directly affected the end of the game aside from palette swap.

Dafatone: Vaneshi: Splinshints: I don't play it.

You've just spent $60 on a product who's sole reason to exist is entertain you. It has failed to entertain you in part or whole, therefore it is defective, by design in fact. Except you can't return it. You can get an instore credit for turning in a console version but that won't give you a full refund.

So you are saying you're A-Ok with EA (or any other publisher) making off with $60 of your money and leaving you with a defective product? Fair play.

I'm not.

So you weren't entertained for those ~40ish hours it took you to play the game? Or you were, but you didn't like the final five minutes, so you've convinced yourself that you didn't like the whole thing.

/Christ, people, this game is AMAZING. Yeah the ending could have been better. Whatever, I'm there to play the game. If I just cared about the ending it's on youtube.

If you eat at restaurant and 90% of your meal is awesome but you find a cockroach in the last bit do you still think you should pay for it?

RoyFokker'sGhost: The decision to save the Rakni in 1 has a huge effect. The choice you make at the end of 2 has a huge effect


What huge effect? The only impact of the first one is towards your assets total, and the second one just changes the number of assets needed to get certain endings.

Meanwhile, a dedicated night of multiplayer affects your assets more than all other actions in the game COMBINED. Seriously. The biggest choice you can make in the game is whether you play MP before you get to the last sequence of events.

You seriously consider saving the Rachni as having a major impact in ME3? It's the same goddamn mission regardless. The only thiing that changes is the fake queen betrays you offscreen and lowers your assets.

I refuse to believe you played the game, and are instead just going by what other people have said happens at the end.

RoyFokker'sGhost: The decision to save the Rakni in 1 has a huge effect.

Which is why if you free her it's "lol we indoctrinated her" and if you kill her (the last queen in existence), it's "lol we cloned her".

Then if you kill her in ME3 they plop down ANOTHER one and repeat the "lol we cloned her". Your choices are irrelevant.

RoyFokker'sGhost: You can't avoid sacrifice in this game

Sure you can, Udina is council pres regardless of what you do and Rachni queens can be pulled out of thin air.

It's the same shiat Bioware pulled with DA1/DA2. Does anyone else remember that one character in DA1 where if you slit his throat he just magically shows up in DA2? Good lord was that bad. Can't for the life of me remember the character's name.

Wayne 985: I only recently started playing the first game. Cool so far.

I already know that

*SPOILERS*

Sherpard dies at the end of ME3, but that doesn't seem inherently bad to me. I guess I'll have to play through the trilogy to see what the big deal is.

That's not what is so bad about the ending. I expected him/her to die. In fact, I think it would be best so that they could continue the story with a fresh character. DeadShep has nothing to do with the outrage.

kaylward: Merkin Ball: Does the end of the game tell the player to go outside and live a little or something?

I think it says "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."

Alright, that would piss me off, too.

Dafatone:
So you weren't entertained for those ~40ish hours it took you to play the game? Or you were, but you didn't like the final five minutes, so you've convinced yourself that you didn't like the whole thing.

Well my car's really nice and I drive it everywhere but it's stank of fish since I got it new from the dealership. I'm happy you let your corporate masters get away with such shiat.

Just because this is a game does not mitigate the fact that a company has your money and you have a defective product.

It was a great game.

But you guys can still eat a bag of dicks for the ending.

Carth:
If you eat at restaurant and 90% of your meal is awesome but you find a cockroach in the last bit do you still think you should pay for it?

He would, he does and he is grateful for it. As is the person I originally replied to.

Wayne 985: I've never seen Battlestar Galactica.

This was my reaction to it. (new window)

/ Yes I know Fark hates me

Splinshints: I will never understand video game nerds. I like video games, but you know what happens in my world when there's something about one that I strongly dislike?

I don't play it.

I cannot begin to imagine how few problems and responsibilities I would have to have in my life before even the idea of writing angry letters about video games made it just to my radar.

ME fans don't have the option of not playing it because there's only a problem at the very end of three games. We can't go back and unplay 100+ hours.

Vaneshi: Dafatone:
So you weren't entertained for those ~40ish hours it took you to play the game? Or you were, but you didn't like the final five minutes, so you've convinced yourself that you didn't like the whole thing.

Well my car's really nice and I drive it everywhere but it's stank of fish since I got it new from the dealership. I'm happy you let your corporate masters get away with such shiat.

Just because this is a game does not mitigate the fact that a company has your money and you have a defective product.

The biggest problem is that they fail to deliver what they hyped and advertised for so long. That your choices affect the outcome of the story. They don't.

Even if you kill off characters/let characters die, the sequel just plops in "Placeholder for character X with slightly tweaked voiceover" so they don't actually have to change any of the cutscenes. Mordin dies in ME2? That's ok we have.....Nordin. He's...a...uh...completely different Salaraian scientist who sounds the same and has similar mannerisms.

The graphics are just outright bad for a PC game (although since it's a console port they're limited), the animations and AI are atrocious, and the combat is stunningly repetitive.

The ONE thing it had, it's hook, was the "player driven" story and a "mysterious" plot that everyone liked. And both of those turn out to be big pathetic jokes. The only thing remaining are the (overall) good voice acting and some interesting side-missions.

So a lot of people seem to be calling the people who don't like the game's ending "entitled", but aren't they the patron for Bioware? This seems to be more of a "we want you to fix this thing we don't like about your game" and Bioware has the ability to do just that. Sure if Bioware doesn't change the ending fans won't complain forever, but when their next game comes out people will remember the bitterness they felt at this ending. It seems like it would be in their best interests to make the fans happy, they do give them money after all. (especially all that sweet, sweet DLC cash)

Summarized "We have DLC conning that helps makes sense of the ending. What, did you think you got the full ending for your $60? Haha, suckers. Please keep giving us and EA money."

a9735z: [i.imgur.com image 634x347]
[i.imgur.com image 632x340]
[i.imgur.com image 630x347]
[i.imgur.com image 633x349]
[i.imgur.com image 635x335]
[i.imgur.com image 631x342]
[i.imgur.com image 628x342]
[i.imgur.com image 632x342]

You're a little off with the point you're trying to make.
Do you really think you'd need a 500 meg download for the sake of appearances?

Freakman: Wayne 985: I only recently started playing the first game. Cool so far.

I already know that

*SPOILERS*

Sherpard dies at the end of ME3, but that doesn't seem inherently bad to me. I guess I'll have to play through the trilogy to see what the big deal is.

That's not what is so bad about the ending. I expected him/her to die. In fact, I think it would be best so that they could continue the story with a fresh character. DeadShep has nothing to do with the outrage.

I think they could have made a bigger deal about the shep survival secret ending.
Get everything right and fark over the synthetic friends you've made and you live to play shep in the dlc, or something.

Otherwise I found the endings perfectly acceptable.
Not over the top, but not very detailed. It was short for being the close of an epic series, but then maybe it isn't. So I can't say that is a complaint.