I think Mass Effect 3 is at it's strongest when telling the smaller more personal stories like Tuchanka, Rannoch, or the Ardat-Yakshi Temple, Utukku, and Grissom Academy. But it fails completely with the larger plot points, like Cerberus, the Reapers, and the Crucible. The problem is that Bioware never had a plan moving forward, and at best, had rough ideas of how the war would play out and end. Even Drew Karpyshyn, the lead writer for the first two games had no idea where the plot would go. The Dark Energy storyline was practically in it's early drafts, barely even mentioned outside of the Haestrom mission, and the way the war was going to be supposedly resolved according to him was Shepard luring the Reapers to the Relays and blowing them up, which doesn't sound all that compelling either. It's a shame that such a fantastic series had to have such bad end, but it is what it is.
Also factor in that EA was breathing down their necks. Plus they were the ones that demanded multiplayer and the DLCs including relegating Javik to a dlc
Bioware should have planned the trilogy out from the beginning. In fairness, they couldn't have seen how successful ME2 would be, and how EA would pressure them so much for 3 to be rushed out. Bioware had talent, but they didn't plan out ahead wel enough, DA has the same issues. And now, well, the studio is a shell of what it could have been.
story wise, I really can't think of a perfect ending, the series had way too many themes going on, Gameplay wise they definitly could of come up with something better than marauder shields
Disagree. ME3 was amazing. Legendary Edition was my first experience or ME, but I found ME3 to be incredibly moving. The tone, with Shepard looking more and more distraught as they near the conclusion... It crushed me. What an amazing finale. Of course not perfect. But I was very satisfied with the end. Fortunately I am an OCD completionist, so I got the Shepard gasp... that might be part of my love for this game, because I was CONVINCED that Shep would die... the whole third act was farewells!
I can explain why Javik was a DLC! This was back in the day when games were made for consoles but Gamestop was reselling games and the publisher would see none of that residual sales from the new players of their game, since it may get sold 2-3x more as used. So! Publishers would break a large part off that would seem important (and was important!) to the game to get those used copies to generate some revenue for the publisher. This actually happened in ME2 as well, as the character Zaeed Massani was also busted out in the same way.
I bet the guy has a bunch of clones working with him. I think it's also fair to register here that this channel is a haven of passionate and professional content among the predominant yt/"gaming community" toxicity these days.
I need more time to play 1 chapter of let's say pathfinder than he takes for playing a game 100%. To be fair choosing builds for companions takes forever. :D But yaeh you start the games together and a few days later he posts his 100% review video while you are still in the early levels. :o
You can do all achievs on ME LE in one playthrough (as I did), except for one; reach lvl 10 on a weapon on ME3 (because you must replay the game to unlock this option). But mostly of other games are so hard do 100%. This guy is a hero.
With retrospect, I really think that Leviathan could have been the main plot for either ME2 or even for ME3, rather than just be a DLC. It's just the foundation and core of the Mass Effect universe we're exploring with the themes of cosmic horror, space exploration and detective & mystery investigation
Hello, nice work as always; i just want to point out a thing about the plot hole that you mention about the reaper choosing not to use the citadel and blocking mass relays etc: not to say that they shouldn't be able to do something like that, but if you remember in mass effect 1 on Elios (hoping i remember the name correctly), before reaching for the conduit, it is said that some prothean scientists survived the cicle and, despite not being enough to save their race, they went (through the conduit) to the citadel and modified it so that the next cicle the reapers wouldn't be able to take control of it, at least remotely, supposedly. This doesn't really resolve the plot hole but i suppose it can be used as a kind of explanation. Again, keep up the good work, i really enjoy the channel.
The Javik thing is even more messed up than him just being a DLC character. He originally was going to be The Catalyst. But when EA wanted a DLC character, they had to strip that role from him, because they couldn't make a plot-crucial character a DLC. And yes, ME3 is a game that feels like it was written by two teams that didn't talk to each other until post...which it was. And neither team had an ending that they even liked.
I'd heard it a bit differently. Javik was going to be the Catalyst, yes, but Bioware couldn't find a way to make that work while still making the player feel like they were the heart of the story, and not just a tag along. The Javik as Catalyst idea was dropped late enough in development that the dialogue is still there in the leaked script, leaked about 6 months before release. It was too much work to take him out of the Catalyst role but still make him integral to the game in time for the game "going gold." So they cut him out, wrote the game to disc, then spent the next 3 months before release reintegrating him in the form of DLC while the rest of the team worked on bugs for the Day 1 patch. So not quite evil EA. More that what they were doing wasn't working and they didn't have time to fix it
He was never really a DLC character. Much of the DLC from these games came in the box day one at no cost. Not pre-order, just in the box. It was like a 20 digit pin you typed into xbox live and got the dlc free. They did it to prevent people from buying the game used. The pin was a one time code that people who got the game used couldnt take advantage of. Jarvik was always included in the box. There was never a point in this games existance where you could buy it new and it didnt come with that dlc included. Youre spreading gamer legend wives tales.
Something that I dont see mentioned as much anymore is the entire plot of ME3 got rewritten because the original one was leaked online. Originally there was going to be a larger focus on dark matter, and actually one of Tali's mission in ME2 was supposed to lead into. The one where she says stars are dying faster than normal and the sun is burning you if you're not in shade. Anyways, I think this is also why leviathan is what it is, because it was made after the game launched to help tie up the new plot. Anyways at least citadel was an absolute banger
I just made a comment saying this lol... way ahead of me.. cant remember where but I remember also the original writer/game director even said the plot was entirely different and its not just because of a leak.. more EA wasnt a fan. Dont quote me on that but the game def had production issues especially towards the end. also makes sense since there were tons of threads in the first and second game.. especially the dying star thing with tali that went absolutely no where.
As I remember Reapers couldn't turn off mass relays because Protheans reprogrammed Keepers to ignore orders from the Reapers. It's supposed to be like this reapers leave 1 reaper behind (whom we fight in the first game) him send a signal to Keepers (Alenn lifeform on Citadel) they activate mass relay for Reapers and block it for other races. But Proteans reprogrammed them before they die
Which is why sovereign has to physically go there at the end of ME1, to do it manually. Which is pretty easy for an entire fleet of reapers to do if they can just teleport the entire thing to them.
@@MortismalGaming I seem to remember a dev clarifying that the Citadel was able to "lock" the relays around it, which is why the Reapers aren't able to stage an attack on it in ME3 during the bulk of the game. Which makes sense because in ME1 Joker asks you to unlock them so the human fleet can join the battle Presumably the Reapers are amassing a number of indoctrinated on the Citadel via refugees, which grow over the course of the game, or the Illusive Man unlocks them to allow the Reapers to take control of it. The Reapers then move it physically via the Mass Relays Which all makes sense, it's just, it needed to be *in* the actual game
It's a shame that the multiplayer co-op is not included in the legendary edition. I remeber playing the demo and i liked more the multiplayer than the singleplayer. It was a co-op horde mode with game objectives and it was very fun.
Months late to this but oh well! ME3 is my favorite game I think I've ever played, if not top 5. So I do love this game a LOT. I feel like the biggest casualty of Legendary Edition was the Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer. You mentioned you liked the combat, the MP made the combat even more amazing. Each character you picked had a pre-set skill loadout(you still spent the points) and you could equip any gun(s) you wanted up to 2 for that class and you were off to the races. What was REALLY cool was, the MP had skills even Shepard never got, had guns not in the main game, AND many of these characters were not human, You had Turians, Quaraians, Krogan, Batarians, Vorcha, Geth, and some I'm probably forgetting. Each of these had different melee attacks, sprint speeds, dodge mechanics, hp/shield levels, etc. It truly felt like playing something unique from the main game with almost every character. Even some of the humans had totally different setups and designs as if they were a different race(looking at you N7 Destroyer and Paladin). it was PvE vs AI and while that sounds boring the difficulty levels truly made them way more fun than they had any right to be. I honestly can't gush enough about the ME3 MP, and it still has players to this day. I did like that you talked about the endings post DLC. I do wish more people went back and tried them to see if they became more...acceptable to them. I personally never had a huge issue with them myself. One thing I do have to disagree with you about is which ending is the canon or intended ending. You mentioned that Synthesis(green) is the intention, but I actually think its destroy. Primarily because a very high war asset destroy ending has Shepard waking up in the rubble with a sharp intake of breath. None of the other endings end this way. My headcanon does follow the Indoctrination Theory though, where basically everything after the big boom on the hill is just the reapers making an attempt to convert Shepard while he's out. And the destroy ending is the final rejection. Thus why Shepard wakes up in concrete and rebar(if you choose high asset destroy). One of my favorite tidbits about this theory is that: In the entire game trilogy, blue is paragon, red is renegade, but for the final choice, Control, which many would consider a renegade option is the blue, and destroy, is the red. But why would controlling the reapers, the choice the Illusive Man made and failed at, be the good option? Saren tried synthesis in ME1, ended poorly. Illusive Man tries control throughout ME3, ends poorly. Destroy is the only choice left. Which if this theory is correct, would be a mind blowing fourth wall break attempt at indoctrinating the player themselves to leave the reapers alive, despite all they've done, because blue = good, and don't think too hard about it. Which many people doing a paragon run for the sake of it would do. just pick blue cause blue = good regardless of the situation cause vidya gamez. Final note: shooting the kid makes him get really mad and just go to "You LOSE, GOOD DAY SIR" ending. Which I think reveals more that the kid is meant to be a palatable and softer interaction interface for Shepard instead of having him talk to another Reaper Hologram like he's done for the past 2 games. Anyway, just nerding out, I do love my indoctrination theory. Really does make the ME3 ending so much more interesting for me.
I'll not elaborate too on the endings, as I already did that extensively on your video about five more unsatisfying endings... However, Mass Effect 3 as a whole is janky about how it treats the previous choices... You have memorable moments with vastly different outcomes depending on previous and current choices (the Genophage episode, the Quarian/Geth war) and there's bits that almost ignore what you did (the Rachni bits... where there is a Rachni queen even if you did kill the last Rachni queen in the first game... handwaved with a "oh, the reaper just created it with spare parts"). There's the bits about the citadel and the overall strategy of the Reapers you mentionned... and the "oh, Reapers are just bugged AI" explanation that undermine completely the Eldritch Horror kind of vibe the Reapers had during the first two games. It's almost like you take Cthulhu and explain his behavior as "Oh, he's just giant squid mutated by oil spills, it made it psychic and not quite right in the mind..." The funny thing is, I'm convinced that this explanation - given through the Levianthan DLC - is some sort of damage control from Bioware because of the fan uproar around the Starchild ex Machina nonsense... And then, there's the option to "autodialogue" which doesn't feel right in a game where your choice is supposed to be meaningful. Either this option is out of place or your choices don't matter, but there's no in between. ... ... Eh, I'll add some two cents about the endings anyway. Synthesis doesn't count, it doesn't make any sense and is forcefed - sorry, heavily implied to be the correct ending - to you as the best one makes me wonder what were the writers thinking at this point. "You know what ? War is horrible, let's make peace... everyone will be the same organico-synthetico-blob thanks to the Catalyst... How ? errrr... Reapers are powerful and unknooooowable, of course they'd have the means to do so. That's not space magic, just science so alien we cannot comprehend. So yeah, peace and love and everyone is half organic, half synthetic, best ending !" While the destroy ending do destroy the reapers, it as arguably the worst in my opinion. First, it destroys the Geth. Second, it destroys the relays (I already told how it's a galactic size minor apocalypse at best). Third, it destroys advanced enough synthetic stuff... including Shepard's own implants, essentially killing him/her (unless you get enough galactic readyness... which doesn't make sense narratively speaking). And if Shepard's implants can be destroyed by this, we can safely assume that any existing technology will be too... including Solus or Quarian life support system, meaning that there's a chance a lot of Quarian will die from disease, stranded in the Sol system. But I'm sure the writer didn't even think about that. From where I stand, it feels like they put the Geth and Shepard's life in the collateral damage just to push people away from this ending. Control ending seems the best by default at this point but it feels kind of "meh" for the most part. The secret "eat my bullet stupid AI with stupid ideas" feels... here, how I see it : Player : Whoa, the ending are disappointing as f... I mean, choice A, B or C, one being meh, another making no sense and the third having so much drawback to shy away people ? I'm not taking any of this ! Devs : Well, FU then. You loose, the Reapers have won. Player : At least this one makes sense... And I'm ranting again...
Instead of Javick being a DLC it should have been James, and it should have come with a free copy of "Paragon Lost". That would have made more sense and I'm pretty sure people would have liked James more if they did it that way.
In a weird way the ME trilogy reminds me of Fallout New Vegas; both incredibly flawed, with 99% of those flaws being the fault of time crunch and impossible demands from publishers or management. But even after all of that, beloved in their own ways and games that most people will never forget. I still think ME3 is my favorite from the entire series and I'm sad to see it will never get the following up love it deserved. Sure, maybe Bioware will somehow spawn a perfect new Mass Effect out of their ass in a few years but I just don't see that happening
What added insult to injury about the endings with the original release is that Bioware went on record shortly before to say that it wouldn't be a "choose end A B or C" type of deal when it was exactly that. Add to that the slap that was the day 1 DLC companion, bullshit "franchise" integration for the war effort and the whole Cerberus storyline debacle, that why it left such a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people. Of course now with the LE, a couple of those points are not present anymore and you also didn't had to wait between ME2 and ME3 which make it so you cant get caught in the hype. I'm still mad about Cerberus going from this shadowy organization doing dubious things for (what they perceived as) the good of humanity to maniacal cartoon villains putting the logo of their secret org everywhere.
I normally don't comment on videos more than a month old, but hearing the name Javik dredged up some bitter memories and I had to vent. You see, at the time my modem was cheap: no Wifi or whatnot so my Xbox had no way of getting online, and even if it did Australian internet is so terrible it was a nightmare to download anything big. As a result I was cut off from this major piece of lore which infuriated me no end. It was the first major time I can remember the fears about the pitfalls of the DLC model coming true. Corporate greed cut a vital part of game for extra pennies. EDIT: combine that with being unable to get the updated endings and... yeah, my memories of Mass Effect 3 are rather mixed.
6:00 in mass effect 1 there’s dialogue Vigil on Ilos which explains exactly this, it’s revealed that a group of surviving protheans - who came out of hiding centuries after the reapers left - found a portal onto, discovered and subsequently prevented this aspect of the citadel from occurring in the next cycle - hence the plot of mass effect 1 and the need for Saren to take it by force
An excellent, detailed and quite thorough review, Mortym. I am looking forward to following in your footsteps with this game. I am about to start another playthrough of ME1 and will try the Vanguard build you suggested. I tried the Infiltrator build and that worked okay in insanity mode. Thank you for all the MELE videos and for making the experience more enjoyable!
All I wanted for an ending was to humbly spend the rest of my days with dear Tali in a peaceful Toussaint vineyard, was that too much to ask? 😢 oh glorious Shodan, why have you forsaken me?
Nice review. Yeah I was surprised to learn about the furore over the ending, probably because I only played LE and it was apparently somewhat improved. Over all I think I enjoyed 3 more than 2. One single gripe is the scanning missions. Contrived (and nosy) acquisition. Less tedious but now pointless planetary scanning mini game, UI didn’t show progress, or remind you where to go to awkwardly confront a stranger with the fact you had eavesdropped on them months ago. The last part could have been improved if quests could be completed using that com room on the ship rather than visiting the citadel.. and even overhearing them in the first place shouldn’t be vital. If you find some artificial or whatever some intelligence service should be able to locate people who might be interested in it.
For the secret ending, you can actually access it in a more natural Mass Effect-ey way through dialogue rather than shooting the space ghost. Instead, you can keep refusing the options that the space ghost offers. Shepard will question it, saying this is a big decision that he can't make for everyone, and that he wants to end the war on his terms. It's actually pretty perfect in that Shepard stays true to himself until the end. The only downside is the Reapers win, lol. (Although, if we could remove the 'Reapers win' part, as a head canon, I would argue that it's best ending. Shepard stays true to himself, and I don't think it's far fetched for him to believe he could win. None of the prior cycles had united all the races. And this cycle was preparing based on info from the previous cycle. Seems pretty perfect to me.)
Your war readiness could have been what decided victory. The story lines you complete could have in turn dictated how well each group survived. Instead we got an arbitrary pick a color ending. The series needed a true final ending in which your decisions leading to that ending changed how ready the galaxy was to survive afterwards. In the end shepherd needed to die.
Ironically enough it’s the ending I got on my first, and so far, only playthrough. I figured it would be in character to reject whatever the space kid was spouting. Too bad it ended in the reapers winning but I still like the choice itself regardless of its outcome.
The best part of the series is the 8 minute Blasto 3 ad in the citadel,followed by the Javik/Shepard/Blasto cinematic in the Citadel DLC. I still play Multi-player in vanilla 3. I have so many promotions I can skip every war asset in the base game at 50% readiness and still get the best endings
Javik was worse than just being DLC. He was the exemplar of day one DLC that ships on the disc with the game but you have to pay EA extra money to unlock him. One of the many things that pissed so many people off about this game on release, along with the original endings being terrible and requiring playing the multiplayer to get the least terrible versions of.
@@jmmywyf4lyf Yeah, but for example, Shale wasn't as important to the Dragon Age storyline than Javik was for Mass Effect. He was to be an integral part until EA decided to cut him out just for the sake of more DLC.
The big problem for me is that a lot of the writing was all over the place. It's almost like there were 2 different writers, or writing teams, that were not communicating with each other on what they were writing. The most obvious one is how everyone kept saying you can't defeat the Reapers conventionally, and yet you do exactly that more than once. Or how Anderson, who was more of the diplomat, decided to stay on earth to fight, while sending Shepard to the Citadel to beg the council for help, the same council that has never listened to him the whole trilogy. Just stuff like that throughout the game that really made it difficult to buy into. The combat was the best in the trilogy, and the smaller, personal stories were good, including the follow ups.
Anderson actually directly says to you that he's never liked or been good at being a diplomat in ME2 if you make him the councilor, he is definitely a leader of soldiers and not a negotiator. On the contrary it's possible that Shepard spends the entire games of 2 proving how good they are at making people work with each other, and both Anderson and Hackett state that they've read all your mission reports. So I don't think the decision to send Shepard is that out of the blue.
Andromeda is fine. It could have been way better, the potential is clearly visible. Janky as fuck, but decent gameplay. I hope they revisit this sometime, if they manage to do justice with the sequel to the main series.
Very much enjoyed all three of your ME trilogy reviews. Also, Jack? You naughty boy, you. Thanks for sharing and good luck getting through Andromeda without puking.
It felt like they really wanted the return to Earth moment to be a finale, and then shoehorned the whole teleport the Citadel thing to allow that to be the showdown. That and the whole little kid thing never really connected to me. Earth is home, sure, but it was never a focus in the series and just using the Citadel by itself would have been better.
Great video! I’m a huge Mass Effect fan and had to check out your review for the nostalgia. I was obsessed with this series in high school, and I remember absolutely loving the combat and overall story. That said, the ending they had on release was so disappointing. Indoctrination was always such a pivotal thing in the games, and it was so cool seeing how it transformed characters like Saren and the Illusive Man. While the game definitely seems to advocate for synthesis, I agree that destroy feels best. I always preferred the fan theory that the choices presented were all a hallucination as the reapers attempt to indoctrinate Shepherd. In that case, the destroyer option represents breaking free and resisting their mind control. If you think about it, the reapers taking the form of the little boy they murdered is so creepy and manipulative.
Excellent review, as always. I'm so glad someone finally pointed out the writers' memory lapse about the Citadel being the beginning point of the Reapers invasion in the previous cycles. Major plot hole there.
@@sandrogamer30018 On the portion of the video where he talks about the Citadel DLC, when they all take a picture, Jack is sitting next to Shepard, and they are looking at each other. That only happens to romance characters.
@@sandrogamer30018 I mean, it's literally the same Shepard that's in the rest of the whole video... The purple hair and all Unless you want to say that he took the whole playthrough from someone else, in which case I am inclined to say that Mort would've stated that, and for sure credited them.
Glad that you finally did it. Just wanted to add that in order to get the best ending (Shepard lives) you need to gather around 7900 readiness points. Which means you pretty much need to do all the major stuff plus other missions. Also the trailer and images we have got concerning ME4 suggests destroy ending because in one image we see a mass relay either in construction or in the process of being rebuilt (by Cerberus coz of white and yellow colors).
Personally, I really dislike the synthesis ending. It is way to perfect and doesn´t actually explain how it works. What exactly is a fusion of AI and organics? Does every organic get an onboard AI to...do what exactly? How would that be different than cybernetics (which are weirdly enough almost completly absent in Mass Effect)? Does it link organic brains and AI together so they can somehow truly understand each other? Just...HOW? I bet for Mass Effect 4 they most likely will go with destroy as the canon ending, as the destruction of the mass relays can also be used to do a bit of a reset of the setting. Maybe we see a fractured galaxy, where all sorts of small realms have developed since they where cut of from each other. I just hope they don´t make the control ending canon and we have to fight the Reapers again, just with evil Shepard as their leader. Please no!
I was pretty disappointed that they didn't take the time to put in any sort of colourblind mode. I really struggled with some mini games. I also managed to choose the wrong ending.
The shore leave missions are the best fan service I have ever experienced in a video game and I can't believe if I would have killed Wrex in the first game I wouldn't experience the funniest parts of it
Can we all agree that leaving earth opening is absolutely heart wrenching 😢…this is the first time we really get to see Earth in all it’s glory and we got decimated!
Totally respect opinions, and I don't believe my opinion is in any way better than another person's, but I really like the AI explanation for the Reapers. It's a pretty common sci-fi explanation if you read a lot, but to see it used in a big budget game is neat IMO. The big AI saw organic life being destroyed over and over by its own creation, and we even see that in the current game time with the Geth. Being able to create peace between the Geth and Quarians shows the flaw in the Reapers thinking before the final confrontation. Yeah, the three choices were garbage, but the plot as a whole is AMAZING.
Moving the Citadel is poorly explained, but is due to Illusive Man controlling the citadel from within, much like Saren would have done. It's probably not teleported but travels via a mass relay or two with Reaper escort. It's rather interesting though that he did not lock out the mass relays like the Sovereign's plan was, perhaps Reapers just decided to not bother, or perhaps their control was not quite absolute at the time.
Funny story. First time I played this game, when I got to the spectral boy at the end, I was a little disappointed with the three routes I had to take. So I decided to shoot the spectral boy just for fun. You can image my despair when the scene started to unveil...
It is a weird rollercoaster of a game. Particularly regarding the story, on the one hand you have some of the best character arcs and subplots on one side hitting some great notes, then you have an overarching story that feels so rushed and was doing the bare minimum which for a series like this is lacking. You are right about the use of the AI big bad trope, it doesn’t work if you have to make random jumps in logic to make it fit your story, it feels amateurish as far a sci fi goes. Still enjoyed the game but the story good and bad sticks with me. Thanks for great video Mort I have enjoyed this series.
As for which ending will be cannonized moving forward, I’ve heard that they’re using achievement data from the various different versions if the Legendary edition to see which ending most players chose, so they can please the largest portions of the fans going forward.
Original reasonong for Reapers was to stop creation of Dark Energy, that is created from mass effect technology, which would turn into cascade event that would destroy the universe. They were hoping to find species from harvest to create the special reaper that could solve it forever.
If you help scan the keepers in mass effect 1, they figure out that the reapers use them to control the station and they end up reprogramming them to stop that from happening.
they dont reprogram the keepers because thats impossible. What happens is that the keepers themselves evolved to kinda ignore the reepers which is why sovereign invades the citadel in 1
You're both wrong, the keepers were the true masterminds behind all evil in the universe, they even took control of EA and bodysnatched the whole Bioware staff
A lot of the hullabaloo about the ending was from the pre-patched version. Post-patch provided some closure on story beats with the still images, but pre-patch completely left that out and just had it be some ambiguous ending with the Normandy crashing on that planet.
Bioware has never been great with the overall plot of their games, they're (were) good with the details (side quests, characters, lore). So a franchise where the big evil bad guy is basically space Cthulu was always gonna have to end with a last minute macguffin or deus ex machina and therefore unsatisfactory (does this word even exist in english ?). Plus it's pretty obvious the last mission has been rushed compared to Rannoch or Tuchanka. But the journey ? To quote the end of the Citadel DLC : "-We've had a good ride. (love interest) -The best." (Shepard)
I am really curious where Mass Effect 4 will go from here but still looks like a good game, can't wait to play this one as it's the only Mass Effect I missed
So having just played through mass effect 1 isn’t there a quest with the keepers that leads you to knowing how it works and then blocking the signal they get from the reapers which would stop the reapers from actually controlling the citadel?
Congratulations!! You straightaway identified the biggest problem of the narrative: It's not the endings, but the plothole concerning the Citadel and the Reapers not attacking it right away. And Kai Lame
I'm glad you got to play the improved version of the game, at launch Mass Effect 3 felt like a major disappointment, and aside from the terrible endings (I assume you got a chance to see the original endings before the fixed them) it was also a disappointment because expectations were pretty damn high considering how big of an improvement Mass Effect 2 was over ME1. Going into this game with tempered expectations can definitely help in terms of enjoyment. I think it's similar to the Cyberpunk 2077 situation in that respect.
I might have gotten it from somewhere else but I think the game explained that after their purge a group of Protheans made it back to the citadel and disabled something to lock out the Reapers from controlling it. Which was why in this cycle the Reapers had to travel from Deep/Dark Space instead of jumping directly to the citadel like they normally would. Overall great review that pretty much on point mirror my own experience. As someone who missed out on Mass Effect due to the first game launching as a console exclusive I´m soo glad I got to play through it with the legendary edition. Gameplay just get´s better and better throughout the series and while the second installment is my favorite of them I think ME3 wrapped up the trilogy quite well and gave us a good ending. I think too many people are stuck on how the ending was when the game launched. As someone who only played the legendary edition I think it was a nice finish. Not the best but not the worst. I do believe though that the true heart of mass effect is not the main story but the companions and there were quite a few loyalty missions that brought a tear to my eye.
Yeah you slowed them down and they have to travel to the galaxy which took years because they couldnt signal the Keepers to shut down the mass relays and teleport them in. Which is why Sovereign tries to take the citadel manually at the end of ME1, but apparently being close enough to the citadel allows them to just teleport the entire thing which means they could have done that as soon as they arrived, it just doesnt make any sense.
@@MortismalGaming Fair enough. I assumed the Illusive Man took control of the Citadel and handed it over to the reapers. Already 100% it but still have that itch to do a 3rd playthrough some day.
Possibly the best Mass Effect 3 review I’ve watched. Love your work. Mass Effect 3 is my favourite Mass Effect game for the interactions with the characters and the way a lot of their arcs rap up, as well as the fun to play combat. I like how accurate and pointed your critiques were, much better than just the 1000th meme on the ending.
Ya I think the major hate is only really from the few of us on the first wave. Had it day one and played through it at its worse. I still have only seen the orginal vanilla ending. Then people got on the hype and kept hating on it even though they had fixed a lot. The game today is different then, I wish I didn’t play it right away.
9:30 Totally agree on the Red and Green ending, but totally disagree on Blue. I consider Blue a fantastic Paragon ending, and as to your comment about the reapers being alive asking for trouble, you had to prove you are a tremendously noble person throughout 3 games to get that far, to broker the alliances, I think we can trust this Sheppard... No will imposed. No genocide.
My biggest disappointment in ME3 is how it handled the story missions. In ME1 and 2 when you're done with the prologues you're given a list of story missions and you can do them in whatever order you want until the midgame, then the galaxy opens up again until the endgame. In ME3 you're given one story mission at a time, making things very linear. The only choices you have is when (or if) to do the side missions and when to do the DLC.
My gripe with ME3 is the weight limits and the fact that weapon upgrades had to be purchased instead of discovered discouraged me from experimenting with all the weapons. I stopped trying new weapons after I got the ridiculously overpowered Lancer with regenerative ammo and shotgun that fired charged grenades. I never touched like 85% of the weapons. I agree about the combat being the best. This was the first game where I took advantage of pausing the action to observe my surroundings from moment to moment. It wasn't a necessary tactic in the previous games.
When you say that the writing is bad, it should be specified that this only holds true for the macro-level. The writing on a per-character basis, the "voice" every NPC has is outstanding and is the reason why this game holds up so well. Most of the writing team stayed the same, but lead writer Drew Karpyshyn (who also wrote BG2, btw) stepped away from ME3. Why? What changed? Eh, that's all speculation. To me, the best explanation was always that the original ending (at least the vague version of it) was leaked/guessed and the bosses at EA weren't happy with that because remember, this was 2012, an era where everything was built around plot twists, no matter how far-fetched (the "Lost" effect), so when people guessed the ending, you couldn't twist. DK, not wanting to risk his reputation, fought it and got pushed out. That's also why the ending of ME3 didn't quite gel with the story so far while the plot threads themselves remained strong.
DK while has done somme amazing work, has had somme flops as well. his novel on Revan is on particular novel so i don't think its fair to put him on some pedestal. regardless his work here was stellar and its even crazier what the other writers were able to do in only 18 months
@@geronuis2295 As a novelist, he's definitely hit or miss, but as a lead writer who can delegate the stuff he's bad at (writing women, creating depth, tugging at the audience's heartstrings) it works fairly well.
Personally, the whole trilogy wasn't anything special plotwise. I'd even say that, for that very reason, I wasn't particularly bothered by the ending. The characters - most of them -, on the other hand, carried the whole thing from start to finish. Of course, the lore and worldbuilding also played a huge part in that, but the character writing/development was, for the most part, truly fantastic.
6 months old I know but, just to clarify. Drew left halfway thru ME2, he had nothing to do with ME3. That all falls on Mac Walters, who became lead writer after Drew left. Which is why ME2 became so character focused, because Mac is a character writer. He wrote Garrus in ME1.
I enjoyed the character stories and interactions. I enjoyed the combat. I did not enjoy how collecting war assets eventually just becomes “ping three times and dodge the reapers” over and over and over, while wasting credits on fuel. That was neither fun, nor interesting, and the “eavesdrop on people to get the quest” mechanic was also bad. I also hated the unskippable awkward slow motion dream sequences with the dumb kid. I’m sure BioWare had some deep meaning about PTSD or something, but the message was lost in the garbage. I think I’ve seen each ending a couple of times, both release and extended cut, and with the legendary edition I get to just before The Cerberus base, do the Citadel DLC, and that’s the end of the game. I just head canon that they destroy the reapers and everyone lives, because the actual endings are dumb. The secret ending just feels like pettiness on BioWare’s part. Upon release, with the backlash surrounding the endings, there were lots of posts, and probably videos, where people would just keep shooting the star kid as catharsis. So BioWare, being mad that their genius was being challenged by the masses, took that away. In fact, while not directly related to the mechanics of the game, BioWare’s response to the negative criticism came off as generally childish, unprofessional, and disconnected. That, as much as their poor performance since, did a number on their reputation. They really, really didn’t like people posting interviews from a month before release where Casey Hudson talked about how there definitely wouldn’t be just and A, B, or C ending. Whoops.
I'm going to drop a quick aside about readiness, before finishing the video. Also, fair warning, I'm going from memory, so I don't have the hard numbers off hand. In the original Mass Effect 3 release, it was not possible to achieve a high enough asset score to achieve the "breathe" ending, unless you'd also played most of the previous game's DLCs. (I think Synthesis was also locked out unless you'd played prior DLCs, or ground your multiplayer score up. (Also, your multiplayer readiness multiplier decayed over time. I forget exactly how quickly.) The reason is because, even if you'd played a perfect game of ME1 and 2, the available assets available in 3 weren't sufficient to unlock those endings. If you completed every (relevant) ME2 DLC (So, Lair of the Shadowbroker, Kasumi, and Zaeed (I don't remember if Firewalker or Arrival had any extra assets tied to them, but I think they did)), you'd get third options in a number of cases that would award you multiple asset payouts. From ME1, completing Bring Down the Sky would net you a nice chunk of assets from an interaction. This was something that Bioware walked back after launch (even before the extended cut), with Leviathan paying out a staggering amount of assets. And, your asset score only ever controlled which endings you could select, so the impact wasn't as severe as it sounds at first glance, but being told, "no, you can't get the ending you want, because you didn't grind enough multiplayer, and pay extra for a bunch of DLC two to five years ago," never felt good. Also, while I'm less certain it's true with ME3, creating a new save for ME2 (without importing, or using that game's comic save generator, which was paid DLC for non-Playstation users), and playing through ME3 would cut your legs out from under you on asset collection. The New Game Shepard in ME2 was an idiot in the first game (for whatever reason) and consistently made some of the worst decisions, when it came to collecting assets in 3. Why? I dunno. It's a lot of old outrage now, but back in the day, and, ironically, none of it applied for the people who were most perturbed with ME3's ending at release, but it was a (small) part of why the game was so poorly received. EDIT: Something I forgot from the first impressions video: In the original game, you were always on trial for snuffing the baatarian colony. If you didn't play Arrival, 3 would simply start with Shepard on trial for wiping out a colony, and you were left scratching your head going, "wait, I don't remember doing that." The Cerberus charge is new to Legendary Edition.
Very well put, I hadn't actually thought about why hadn't they moved the citadel before 🤔 good point! Can't wait for your extended thoughts on the series! Even on Andromeda, I would live to hear your analysis on that game. I personally found it okay, I had fun with it but... It has so many flaws.. Thank you for the great content as always.
I really enjoyed the lore and games of ME, like reading all the outside lore from the game and the lore steel-book that I got with the first game ME2 is still my favourite of the series, the companion stories and Collector mission where brilliant, to me that last great story telling to come from BioWare Even then as a massive fan of ME, I still haven’t brought myself to complete Andromeda, it’s upgraded art engine is nice, but the story is trash
For Mass Effect 4 I think they can set it far enough in the future to hand wave the ending. If the reapers are still around, hint that they left the Milky Way to deal with a certain unresolved threat in Andromeda (if the reapers aren’t around it can be a chunk of the Alliance that left instead), and with synthesis, the catalyst does say “it is inevitable” so have it anyway, BUT make it so it didn’t actually take for the whole galaxy so now there’s a separation between those that have that and those that don’t. Yeah not ideal but saves them from canonising an ending. Guess it depends what they think will piss off people more, I do think destroy was the most chosen ending by a distance according to their analytics so there’s that.
Expectations around release were huge, so it is no wonder how both its endings and Javik dlc were a huge controversy back then (Javik controversy seems rather small in hindsight, considering all the mess we've had with dlcs for games since then). There was also an issue of relatively short development time and changing story during it. Perhaps dark energy plot would have been more interesting than what we've got if they decided to develop it. Kai Leng's introduction was weird indeed, he was a character from the books and he wasn't received well. Despite its flaws, ME3 is still a very good game in my opinion. Better combat and many memorable moments with companions. While endings didn't account for decisions from previous games, some missions did.
Great reviews as always. Also I replayed Andromeda recently and it's actually a really solid game with some great characters like Drack and Jaal. Not as good as the original trilogy but still enjoyable for sure. Look forward to watching your review! 👍
That's what I was hoping for with the next ME game too. But from what I saw of the teaser trailer, it takes places X amount of years after the events of ME3.
I remember when I first played the game: at launch on xbox360. The game was full of bugs and various technical issues: one of the worst was the impossibility to play the mission to save Jack at the academy, the game would just crash while trying to starting the mission. I was (and still I am) not a fan of multiplayer games, so I wasn't able to max galactic readiness, with obvious consequences om the endings. Speaking of endings... what a sad mess. I was a great fan of the first two games (completed multiple times), which were THE games of my teenage years and my hype for the third chapter was immense. I still feel kind of bitter thinking about the very underwhelming gaming experience I went through, but I'm glad they put a lot of effort trying to fix a few issues with the Legendary Edition. Should I give this game a second chance? Or better avoid a resurgence of bitterness?
Ok spoilers ahead and some deep dive into a couple of points you raised: Reapers not just destroying the citadel: I think that is what Soverign in ME1 was supposed to do. It obviously failed and then the reaper where just engaged in a whole bunch of small skirmishes and very late understood that the citadal was actually still operational. Proceeding to then steal it away. Kay Lang: He feels out of place because he is. He is a comic character and they even end up killing him in the comics too. So yeah he is out of place because he is just an eastwr egg... A drawn out easter egg 4. Ending: you can actually also get that by leaving. Just walk away the way you came from. Both aren't the best ending but still nice to have.
While I really liked the game, I understand your comment on the citadel, etc. Also it maybe shows, that the original main author of the game left Bioware before Mass Effect 3, which may also be a reason for the way the story has been shaped in this part. On the other hand I like some very emotional moments with my favorite companions, so I feel I got my money's worth and still like the trilogy as a whole more than Andromeda - which I think is not bad after the bugs have been evened out, but not great either. PS: I preferred the "green" ending. ;-)
i wonder if you're gonna review some jrpgs. i think they would take longer to 100% them (with the grind and dodging 100 lightnings in a row and what not), so not 100% necessarily. but i'd like to hear what you think about some of the major ones.
On one hand, I want to commend you on your taste for playing a Vanguard who romances Jack. Just perfect choices. On the other hand, I can't help but feel sad that at least in the video shown, you're playing Vanguard without a shotgun, which just pains me to see. Charge>nova>shotgun is just such a special feeling.
Always fun to watch impressions of a new play through. I really think the developers did a great job in making a trilogy. Question is, if shown on tv, would you prefer a movie series or a tv series for Mass Effect?
finally played the trilogy... I think it was overall very good. already started my second playthrough. game is so much better the second time. I feel way more invested. and i kinda missed alot of content in ME1 so there is that. I just kept doing main story missions... on normal it was a joke for difficulty I just ran and shot-gunned all of them, fun time. super stoked for 4... hope they can nail it again. maybe even make it all tighter?
ME3 has the best combat system of all 4 games. It's why the multiplayer was so fun. I'm fine with getting rid of the galactic readiness, but I really wish they could have patched in the multiplayer from ME3 or made it a stand-alone download for the current consoles.
Was so weird, playing all three games as a paragon, then choosing the renegade (destroy) ending. Felt like the writers didn't understand the world they had created.
Destroy is not the renegade ending. If anything, it's the most paragon of the endings. Control is a stupid ending that will bite the galaxy in the ass later down the line, because Shepard will come to the same conclusion like the original AI, that the organics and synthetics will always wage war and try to eradicate each other. Synthesis is just you changing everybody against their will and turning them into androids. I know that the destroy ends with all of the synthetic life dying but it's the only ending where the reaper threat doesn't hang over the galaxy's head like the sword of Damocles. I know that the geth and EDI die, but they die free and for a greater good.
@@roboute-Terra exactly. I was saying renegade, as it's portrayed as the red choice, and it feels like the storytellers were implying that we should either embrace the artificial or control it, while destroying it was what an unenlightened barbarian would do.
From what I remember the original ending for Mass Effect 3 involved "dark energy" and dying suns becoming black holes due to Reaper interference. 🤯 It was all scrapped though, in favor of the red/blue/green endings. Big mistake, one that Bioware never truly recovered from.
Before I get into why I disliked Mass Effect 3, I just want to preface by saying that in 2012 I had realized that my backlog had become far too massive to control, so I adopted the mindset that any DLC updates released for any game I played from that point on were completely irrelevant to my initial experience. I'm not knocking anyone's personal opinions or trying to invalidate anyone else's experience, I'm simply describing my personal mindset on how I've played and judged games for the past decade. With that said, my biggest gripe with Mass Effect 3 wasn't that the developer promise to make every decision impactful for the remainder of the franchise went unfulfilled (though that's definitely a strong second), it's that they ruined my favorite class from ME2 😞 In the first game all of my favorite classes were the core classes: Soldier, Engineer and Scion, since the hybrid classes just felt like they were missing an identity, but in ME2 the hybrid classes felt amazing, and I actually preferred them over the Engineer and Scion in that game (Soldier was the most overpowered class in every game, so I can't claim I liked it less lol), especially the Sentinel which I felt was the perfect melee spec for people like me who prefer to fight up close, even in shooters, but ME3 RUINED that class! The way those shield worked in ME2 was fantastically fun, but in ME3 you'd pop the shield for what felt like no benefit whatsoever, making it the worst possible option, unless you just wanted to play that class as a pistol shaman, which I'm sure there's an audience for, but I ain't it 😞 Aside from that, it's pitiful that Bioware disrespected player choice so much that they didn't even include vignettes to tell you how your decisions played out at the end, which is the hallmark of any player choice driven storytelling. Such a shame. The first 2 games are my most played games of all time, and due to my statement at the start of this too long rant, some of the last games I ever put that kind of effort into, so as a true fan ME3 was an absolute betrayal of goodwill, far more than even Cyber Punk 2077 or Fallout 76 as far as I'm concerned, though I'm sure for many it's the opposite. If you bothered to read this far and are still interested in playing games in this narrative style and haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend Alpha Protocol. It's definitely far lower effort in terms of overall quality, but it's great spy fiction and proof that Obsidian's lack of technical prowess never dulls their excellence at telling compelling stories through video games 🙂
I feel about the same of it, the series is an amazing journey but it's flawed here and there. I think something I've always held as true is that Bioware in the past were never that great at main arcs, subjective of course but I think a lot of them are generic or really weirdly paced. However, the side stories and character relationships they always really did well clothing it in a kind of cinematic feel, and it really invests you in the games.
Yeah, the "bad" ending was even worse when it was released. If felt like the developers were pushing back on the fans pointing out that Shepard just going along with some random AI's decisions after going through the entire game and making your own decision. Fans pointed out that it'd make more sense for Shepard to shoot the AI and find his own solution. So the developers added the option where you shoot the AI and promptly die. ... I'm still bitter about this game after all this time.
I saw a video a month or two ago about a new mod that does everything possible to take Kai Leng out of Mass Effect. All his cut scenes are removed and his character model is replaced by a totally masked space ninja.
I think Mass Effect 3 is at it's strongest when telling the smaller more personal stories like Tuchanka, Rannoch, or the Ardat-Yakshi Temple, Utukku, and Grissom Academy. But it fails completely with the larger plot points, like Cerberus, the Reapers, and the Crucible. The problem is that Bioware never had a plan moving forward, and at best, had rough ideas of how the war would play out and end. Even Drew Karpyshyn, the lead writer for the first two games had no idea where the plot would go. The Dark Energy storyline was practically in it's early drafts, barely even mentioned outside of the Haestrom mission, and the way the war was going to be supposedly resolved according to him was Shepard luring the Reapers to the Relays and blowing them up, which doesn't sound all that compelling either. It's a shame that such a fantastic series had to have such bad end, but it is what it is.
Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.
Also factor in that EA was breathing down their necks. Plus they were the ones that demanded multiplayer and the DLCs including relegating Javik to a dlc
Bioware should have planned the trilogy out from the beginning. In fairness, they couldn't have seen how successful ME2 would be, and how EA would pressure them so much for 3 to be rushed out.
Bioware had talent, but they didn't plan out ahead wel enough, DA has the same issues. And now, well, the studio is a shell of what it could have been.
story wise, I really can't think of a perfect ending, the series had way too many themes going on, Gameplay wise they definitly could of come up with something better than marauder shields
Disagree. ME3 was amazing. Legendary Edition was my first experience or ME, but I found ME3 to be incredibly moving. The tone, with Shepard looking more and more distraught as they near the conclusion... It crushed me. What an amazing finale. Of course not perfect. But I was very satisfied with the end. Fortunately I am an OCD completionist, so I got the Shepard gasp... that might be part of my love for this game, because I was CONVINCED that Shep would die... the whole third act was farewells!
I can explain why Javik was a DLC!
This was back in the day when games were made for consoles but Gamestop was reselling games and the publisher would see none of that residual sales from the new players of their game, since it may get sold 2-3x more as used. So! Publishers would break a large part off that would seem important (and was important!) to the game to get those used copies to generate some revenue for the publisher.
This actually happened in ME2 as well, as the character Zaeed Massani was also busted out in the same way.
Its truly impressive that you 100% games this quick but even that takes a back seat to your work ethic. Well deserved success so far and more to go.
I bet the guy has a bunch of clones working with him. I think it's also fair to register here that this channel is a haven of passionate and professional content among the predominant yt/"gaming community" toxicity these days.
I need more time to play 1 chapter of let's say pathfinder than he takes for playing a game 100%.
To be fair choosing builds for companions takes forever. :D
But yaeh you start the games together and a few days later he posts his 100% review video while you are still in the early levels. :o
You can do all achievs on ME LE in one playthrough (as I did), except for one; reach lvl 10 on a weapon on ME3 (because you must replay the game to unlock this option). But mostly of other games are so hard do 100%. This guy is a hero.
With retrospect, I really think that Leviathan could have been the main plot for either ME2 or even for ME3, rather than just be a DLC. It's just the foundation and core of the Mass Effect universe we're exploring with the themes of cosmic horror, space exploration and detective & mystery investigation
Hello, nice work as always; i just want to point out a thing about the plot hole that you mention about the reaper choosing not to use the citadel and blocking mass relays etc: not to say that they shouldn't be able to do something like that, but if you remember in mass effect 1 on Elios (hoping i remember the name correctly), before reaching for the conduit, it is said that some prothean scientists survived the cicle and, despite not being enough to save their race, they went (through the conduit) to the citadel and modified it so that the next cicle the reapers wouldn't be able to take control of it, at least remotely, supposedly. This doesn't really resolve the plot hole but i suppose it can be used as a kind of explanation.
Again, keep up the good work, i really enjoy the channel.
The Javik thing is even more messed up than him just being a DLC character. He originally was going to be The Catalyst. But when EA wanted a DLC character, they had to strip that role from him, because they couldn't make a plot-crucial character a DLC.
And yes, ME3 is a game that feels like it was written by two teams that didn't talk to each other until post...which it was. And neither team had an ending that they even liked.
I'd heard it a bit differently.
Javik was going to be the Catalyst, yes, but Bioware couldn't find a way to make that work while still making the player feel like they were the heart of the story, and not just a tag along.
The Javik as Catalyst idea was dropped late enough in development that the dialogue is still there in the leaked script, leaked about 6 months before release.
It was too much work to take him out of the Catalyst role but still make him integral to the game in time for the game "going gold."
So they cut him out, wrote the game to disc, then spent the next 3 months before release reintegrating him in the form of DLC while the rest of the team worked on bugs for the Day 1 patch.
So not quite evil EA. More that what they were doing wasn't working and they didn't have time to fix it
He was never really a DLC character. Much of the DLC from these games came in the box day one at no cost. Not pre-order, just in the box. It was like a 20 digit pin you typed into xbox live and got the dlc free. They did it to prevent people from buying the game used. The pin was a one time code that people who got the game used couldnt take advantage of. Jarvik was always included in the box. There was never a point in this games existance where you could buy it new and it didnt come with that dlc included. Youre spreading gamer legend wives tales.
Something that I dont see mentioned as much anymore is the entire plot of ME3 got rewritten because the original one was leaked online. Originally there was going to be a larger focus on dark matter, and actually one of Tali's mission in ME2 was supposed to lead into. The one where she says stars are dying faster than normal and the sun is burning you if you're not in shade. Anyways, I think this is also why leviathan is what it is, because it was made after the game launched to help tie up the new plot. Anyways at least citadel was an absolute banger
I just made a comment saying this lol... way ahead of me.. cant remember where but I remember also the original writer/game director even said the plot was entirely different and its not just because of a leak.. more EA wasnt a fan. Dont quote me on that but the game def had production issues especially towards the end. also makes sense since there were tons of threads in the first and second game.. especially the dying star thing with tali that went absolutely no where.
For Mass Effect 4, it seems like they're going to canonize the Destroy ending and bring the geth back (and possibly Shepard as well).
As I remember Reapers couldn't turn off mass relays because Protheans reprogrammed Keepers to ignore orders from the Reapers.
It's supposed to be like this reapers leave 1 reaper behind (whom we fight in the first game) him send a signal to Keepers (Alenn lifeform on Citadel) they activate mass relay for Reapers and block it for other races. But Proteans reprogrammed them before they die
yes, this what happened 👍
Which is why sovereign has to physically go there at the end of ME1, to do it manually. Which is pretty easy for an entire fleet of reapers to do if they can just teleport the entire thing to them.
@@MortismalGaming I seem to remember a dev clarifying that the Citadel was able to "lock" the relays around it, which is why the Reapers aren't able to stage an attack on it in ME3 during the bulk of the game. Which makes sense because in ME1 Joker asks you to unlock them so the human fleet can join the battle
Presumably the Reapers are amassing a number of indoctrinated on the Citadel via refugees, which grow over the course of the game, or the Illusive Man unlocks them to allow the Reapers to take control of it.
The Reapers then move it physically via the Mass Relays
Which all makes sense, it's just, it needed to be *in* the actual game
It's a shame that the multiplayer co-op is not included in the legendary edition. I remeber playing the demo and i liked more the multiplayer than the singleplayer. It was a co-op horde mode with game objectives and it was very fun.
I would argue that the multiplayer took full advantage of the improved combat mechanics without the compromised storytelling (Because it was absense).
Months late to this but oh well! ME3 is my favorite game I think I've ever played, if not top 5. So I do love this game a LOT.
I feel like the biggest casualty of Legendary Edition was the Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer. You mentioned you liked the combat, the MP made the combat even more amazing. Each character you picked had a pre-set skill loadout(you still spent the points) and you could equip any gun(s) you wanted up to 2 for that class and you were off to the races. What was REALLY cool was, the MP had skills even Shepard never got, had guns not in the main game, AND many of these characters were not human, You had Turians, Quaraians, Krogan, Batarians, Vorcha, Geth, and some I'm probably forgetting. Each of these had different melee attacks, sprint speeds, dodge mechanics, hp/shield levels, etc. It truly felt like playing something unique from the main game with almost every character. Even some of the humans had totally different setups and designs as if they were a different race(looking at you N7 Destroyer and Paladin). it was PvE vs AI and while that sounds boring the difficulty levels truly made them way more fun than they had any right to be. I honestly can't gush enough about the ME3 MP, and it still has players to this day.
I did like that you talked about the endings post DLC. I do wish more people went back and tried them to see if they became more...acceptable to them. I personally never had a huge issue with them myself. One thing I do have to disagree with you about is which ending is the canon or intended ending. You mentioned that Synthesis(green) is the intention, but I actually think its destroy. Primarily because a very high war asset destroy ending has Shepard waking up in the rubble with a sharp intake of breath. None of the other endings end this way.
My headcanon does follow the Indoctrination Theory though, where basically everything after the big boom on the hill is just the reapers making an attempt to convert Shepard while he's out. And the destroy ending is the final rejection. Thus why Shepard wakes up in concrete and rebar(if you choose high asset destroy). One of my favorite tidbits about this theory is that: In the entire game trilogy, blue is paragon, red is renegade, but for the final choice, Control, which many would consider a renegade option is the blue, and destroy, is the red. But why would controlling the reapers, the choice the Illusive Man made and failed at, be the good option? Saren tried synthesis in ME1, ended poorly. Illusive Man tries control throughout ME3, ends poorly. Destroy is the only choice left. Which if this theory is correct, would be a mind blowing fourth wall break attempt at indoctrinating the player themselves to leave the reapers alive, despite all they've done, because blue = good, and don't think too hard about it. Which many people doing a paragon run for the sake of it would do. just pick blue cause blue = good regardless of the situation cause vidya gamez. Final note: shooting the kid makes him get really mad and just go to "You LOSE, GOOD DAY SIR" ending. Which I think reveals more that the kid is meant to be a palatable and softer interaction interface for Shepard instead of having him talk to another Reaper Hologram like he's done for the past 2 games.
Anyway, just nerding out, I do love my indoctrination theory. Really does make the ME3 ending so much more interesting for me.
I'll not elaborate too on the endings, as I already did that extensively on your video about five more unsatisfying endings...
However, Mass Effect 3 as a whole is janky about how it treats the previous choices...
You have memorable moments with vastly different outcomes depending on previous and current choices (the Genophage episode, the Quarian/Geth war) and there's bits that almost ignore what you did (the Rachni bits... where there is a Rachni queen even if you did kill the last Rachni queen in the first game... handwaved with a "oh, the reaper just created it with spare parts"). There's the bits about the citadel and the overall strategy of the Reapers you mentionned... and the "oh, Reapers are just bugged AI" explanation that undermine completely the Eldritch Horror kind of vibe the Reapers had during the first two games. It's almost like you take Cthulhu and explain his behavior as "Oh, he's just giant squid mutated by oil spills, it made it psychic and not quite right in the mind..." The funny thing is, I'm convinced that this explanation - given through the Levianthan DLC - is some sort of damage control from Bioware because of the fan uproar around the Starchild ex Machina nonsense... And then, there's the option to "autodialogue" which doesn't feel right in a game where your choice is supposed to be meaningful. Either this option is out of place or your choices don't matter, but there's no in between.
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Eh, I'll add some two cents about the endings anyway.
Synthesis doesn't count, it doesn't make any sense and is forcefed - sorry, heavily implied to be the correct ending - to you as the best one makes me wonder what were the writers thinking at this point. "You know what ? War is horrible, let's make peace... everyone will be the same organico-synthetico-blob thanks to the Catalyst... How ? errrr... Reapers are powerful and unknooooowable, of course they'd have the means to do so. That's not space magic, just science so alien we cannot comprehend. So yeah, peace and love and everyone is half organic, half synthetic, best ending !"
While the destroy ending do destroy the reapers, it as arguably the worst in my opinion. First, it destroys the Geth. Second, it destroys the relays (I already told how it's a galactic size minor apocalypse at best). Third, it destroys advanced enough synthetic stuff... including Shepard's own implants, essentially killing him/her (unless you get enough galactic readyness... which doesn't make sense narratively speaking). And if Shepard's implants can be destroyed by this, we can safely assume that any existing technology will be too... including Solus or Quarian life support system, meaning that there's a chance a lot of Quarian will die from disease, stranded in the Sol system.
But I'm sure the writer didn't even think about that. From where I stand, it feels like they put the Geth and Shepard's life in the collateral damage just to push people away from this ending.
Control ending seems the best by default at this point but it feels kind of "meh" for the most part.
The secret "eat my bullet stupid AI with stupid ideas" feels... here, how I see it :
Player : Whoa, the ending are disappointing as f... I mean, choice A, B or C, one being meh, another making no sense and the third having so much drawback to shy away people ? I'm not taking any of this !
Devs : Well, FU then. You loose, the Reapers have won.
Player : At least this one makes sense...
And I'm ranting again...
Instead of Javick being a DLC it should have been James, and it should have come with a free copy of "Paragon Lost". That would have made more sense and I'm pretty sure people would have liked James more if they did it that way.
In a weird way the ME trilogy reminds me of Fallout New Vegas; both incredibly flawed, with 99% of those flaws being the fault of time crunch and impossible demands from publishers or management. But even after all of that, beloved in their own ways and games that most people will never forget. I still think ME3 is my favorite from the entire series and I'm sad to see it will never get the following up love it deserved. Sure, maybe Bioware will somehow spawn a perfect new Mass Effect out of their ass in a few years but I just don't see that happening
What added insult to injury about the endings with the original release is that Bioware went on record shortly before to say that it wouldn't be a "choose end A B or C" type of deal when it was exactly that. Add to that the slap that was the day 1 DLC companion, bullshit "franchise" integration for the war effort and the whole Cerberus storyline debacle, that why it left such a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people. Of course now with the LE, a couple of those points are not present anymore and you also didn't had to wait between ME2 and ME3 which make it so you cant get caught in the hype.
I'm still mad about Cerberus going from this shadowy organization doing dubious things for (what they perceived as) the good of humanity to maniacal cartoon villains putting the logo of their secret org everywhere.
Really keen on the companions video!
I normally don't comment on videos more than a month old, but hearing the name Javik dredged up some bitter memories and I had to vent.
You see, at the time my modem was cheap: no Wifi or whatnot so my Xbox had no way of getting online, and even if it did Australian internet is so terrible it was a nightmare to download anything big. As a result I was cut off from this major piece of lore which infuriated me no end. It was the first major time I can remember the fears about the pitfalls of the DLC model coming true. Corporate greed cut a vital part of game for extra pennies.
EDIT: combine that with being unable to get the updated endings and... yeah, my memories of Mass Effect 3 are rather mixed.
6:00 in mass effect 1 there’s dialogue Vigil on Ilos which explains exactly this, it’s revealed that a group of surviving protheans - who came out of hiding centuries after the reapers left - found a portal onto, discovered and subsequently prevented this aspect of the citadel from occurring in the next cycle - hence the plot of mass effect 1 and the need for Saren to take it by force
Correct, and taking something by force is very easy if all you need to do is teleport it too your army when you're in range
An excellent, detailed and quite thorough review, Mortym. I am looking forward to following in your footsteps with this game. I am about to start another playthrough of ME1 and will try the Vanguard build you suggested. I tried the Infiltrator build and that worked okay in insanity mode. Thank you for all the MELE videos and for making the experience more enjoyable!
As someone who appreciates you and this channel, you definitely don't have to review Andromeda my dude. Excited to see your companion rankings!
Thank you for the hard work you put into your videos. Not just for 100% but the quality for every video you do
All I wanted for an ending was to humbly spend the rest of my days with dear Tali in a peaceful Toussaint vineyard, was that too much to ask? 😢 oh glorious Shodan, why have you forsaken me?
Nice review. Yeah I was surprised to learn about the furore over the ending, probably because I only played LE and it was apparently somewhat improved.
Over all I think I enjoyed 3 more than 2. One single gripe is the scanning missions. Contrived (and nosy) acquisition. Less tedious but now pointless planetary scanning mini game, UI didn’t show progress, or remind you where to go to awkwardly confront a stranger with the fact you had eavesdropped on them months ago.
The last part could have been improved if quests could be completed using that com room on the ship rather than visiting the citadel.. and even overhearing them in the first place shouldn’t be vital. If you find some artificial or whatever some intelligence service should be able to locate people who might be interested in it.
I've been looking forward to this!
Catching up with your content after short vacation
For the secret ending, you can actually access it in a more natural Mass Effect-ey way through dialogue rather than shooting the space ghost. Instead, you can keep refusing the options that the space ghost offers. Shepard will question it, saying this is a big decision that he can't make for everyone, and that he wants to end the war on his terms. It's actually pretty perfect in that Shepard stays true to himself until the end. The only downside is the Reapers win, lol. (Although, if we could remove the 'Reapers win' part, as a head canon, I would argue that it's best ending. Shepard stays true to himself, and I don't think it's far fetched for him to believe he could win. None of the prior cycles had united all the races. And this cycle was preparing based on info from the previous cycle. Seems pretty perfect to me.)
Your war readiness could have been what decided victory. The story lines you complete could have in turn dictated how well each group survived. Instead we got an arbitrary pick a color ending. The series needed a true final ending in which your decisions leading to that ending changed how ready the galaxy was to survive afterwards. In the end shepherd needed to die.
Ironically enough it’s the ending I got on my first, and so far, only playthrough. I figured it would be in character to reject whatever the space kid was spouting. Too bad it ended in the reapers winning but I still like the choice itself regardless of its outcome.
The indoctrination theory is the only thing that made me not absolutely hate the game back then.
There is a really good order list online on when to do each mission and dlc, in a way that makes it flow better
The best part of the series is the 8 minute Blasto 3 ad in the citadel,followed by the Javik/Shepard/Blasto cinematic in the Citadel DLC.
I still play Multi-player in vanilla 3. I have so many promotions I can skip every war asset in the base game at 50% readiness and still get the best endings
Been excited for this review!
Javik was worse than just being DLC. He was the exemplar of day one DLC that ships on the disc with the game but you have to pay EA extra money to unlock him. One of the many things that pissed so many people off about this game on release, along with the original endings being terrible and requiring playing the multiplayer to get the least terrible versions of.
@@jmmywyf4lyf Yeah, but for example, Shale wasn't as important to the Dragon Age storyline than Javik was for Mass Effect. He was to be an integral part until EA decided to cut him out just for the sake of more DLC.
The big problem for me is that a lot of the writing was all over the place. It's almost like there were 2 different writers, or writing teams, that were not communicating with each other on what they were writing. The most obvious one is how everyone kept saying you can't defeat the Reapers conventionally, and yet you do exactly that more than once. Or how Anderson, who was more of the diplomat, decided to stay on earth to fight, while sending Shepard to the Citadel to beg the council for help, the same council that has never listened to him the whole trilogy. Just stuff like that throughout the game that really made it difficult to buy into. The combat was the best in the trilogy, and the smaller, personal stories were good, including the follow ups.
Anderson actually directly says to you that he's never liked or been good at being a diplomat in ME2 if you make him the councilor, he is definitely a leader of soldiers and not a negotiator. On the contrary it's possible that Shepard spends the entire games of 2 proving how good they are at making people work with each other, and both Anderson and Hackett state that they've read all your mission reports. So I don't think the decision to send Shepard is that out of the blue.
Andromeda is fine. It could have been way better, the potential is clearly visible. Janky as fuck, but decent gameplay. I hope they revisit this sometime, if they manage to do justice with the sequel to the main series.
Finally, I was waiting for this
Very much enjoyed all three of your ME trilogy reviews. Also, Jack? You naughty boy, you. Thanks for sharing and good luck getting through Andromeda without puking.
It felt like they really wanted the return to Earth moment to be a finale, and then shoehorned the whole teleport the Citadel thing to allow that to be the showdown. That and the whole little kid thing never really connected to me. Earth is home, sure, but it was never a focus in the series and just using the Citadel by itself would have been better.
The way you mentioned the DLC made it seem like it was a quest centered around killing 300,000 batarians haha
Great video! I’m a huge Mass Effect fan and had to check out your review for the nostalgia. I was obsessed with this series in high school, and I remember absolutely loving the combat and overall story. That said, the ending they had on release was so disappointing. Indoctrination was always such a pivotal thing in the games, and it was so cool seeing how it transformed characters like Saren and the Illusive Man. While the game definitely seems to advocate for synthesis, I agree that destroy feels best. I always preferred the fan theory that the choices presented were all a hallucination as the reapers attempt to indoctrinate Shepherd. In that case, the destroyer option represents breaking free and resisting their mind control. If you think about it, the reapers taking the form of the little boy they murdered is so creepy and manipulative.
Excellent review, as always. I'm so glad someone finally pointed out the writers' memory lapse about the Citadel being the beginning point of the Reapers invasion in the previous cycles. Major plot hole there.
You romanced Jack, I see you're a man of culture as well
He 100% it, so he romanced everyone. :P
I don't think he mentions he romanced Jack I believe
@@sandrogamer30018 On the portion of the video where he talks about the Citadel DLC, when they all take a picture, Jack is sitting next to Shepard, and they are looking at each other.
That only happens to romance characters.
@@99Bobson True but are those really recordings from his playthrough? Or from random videos?
@@sandrogamer30018 I mean, it's literally the same Shepard that's in the rest of the whole video...
The purple hair and all
Unless you want to say that he took the whole playthrough from someone else, in which case I am inclined to say that Mort would've stated that, and for sure credited them.
Glad that you finally did it. Just wanted to add that in order to get the best ending (Shepard lives) you need to gather around 7900 readiness points. Which means you pretty much need to do all the major stuff plus other missions.
Also the trailer and images we have got concerning ME4 suggests destroy ending because in one image we see a mass relay either in construction or in the process of being rebuilt (by Cerberus coz of white and yellow colors).
Personally, I really dislike the synthesis ending. It is way to perfect and doesn´t actually explain how it works. What exactly is a fusion of AI and organics? Does every organic get an onboard AI to...do what exactly? How would that be different than cybernetics (which are weirdly enough almost completly absent in Mass Effect)? Does it link organic brains and AI together so they can somehow truly understand each other? Just...HOW?
I bet for Mass Effect 4 they most likely will go with destroy as the canon ending, as the destruction of the mass relays can also be used to do a bit of a reset of the setting. Maybe we see a fractured galaxy, where all sorts of small realms have developed since they where cut of from each other.
I just hope they don´t make the control ending canon and we have to fight the Reapers again, just with evil Shepard as their leader. Please no!
I was pretty disappointed that they didn't take the time to put in any sort of colourblind mode. I really struggled with some mini games. I also managed to choose the wrong ending.
The shore leave missions are the best fan service I have ever experienced in a video game and I can't believe if I would have killed Wrex in the first game I wouldn't experience the funniest parts of it
Can we all agree that leaving earth opening is absolutely heart wrenching 😢…this is the first time we really get to see Earth in all it’s glory and we got decimated!
Totally respect opinions, and I don't believe my opinion is in any way better than another person's, but I really like the AI explanation for the Reapers. It's a pretty common sci-fi explanation if you read a lot, but to see it used in a big budget game is neat IMO. The big AI saw organic life being destroyed over and over by its own creation, and we even see that in the current game time with the Geth. Being able to create peace between the Geth and Quarians shows the flaw in the Reapers thinking before the final confrontation. Yeah, the three choices were garbage, but the plot as a whole is AMAZING.
Moving the Citadel is poorly explained, but is due to Illusive Man controlling the citadel from within, much like Saren would have done. It's probably not teleported but travels via a mass relay or two with Reaper escort. It's rather interesting though that he did not lock out the mass relays like the Sovereign's plan was, perhaps Reapers just decided to not bother, or perhaps their control was not quite absolute at the time.
Funny story. First time I played this game, when I got to the spectral boy at the end, I was a little disappointed with the three routes I had to take. So I decided to shoot the spectral boy just for fun. You can image my despair when the scene started to unveil...
That's hilarious 😂
Looking forward to your companions and trilogy videos :) oh and glad that you will be doing andromeda's review as well lol
Good video as allways
It is a weird rollercoaster of a game. Particularly regarding the story, on the one hand you have some of the best character arcs and subplots on one side hitting some great notes, then you have an overarching story that feels so rushed and was doing the bare minimum which for a series like this is lacking. You are right about the use of the AI big bad trope, it doesn’t work if you have to make random jumps in logic to make it fit your story, it feels amateurish as far a sci fi goes. Still enjoyed the game but the story good and bad sticks with me. Thanks for great video Mort I have enjoyed this series.
As for which ending will be cannonized moving forward, I’ve heard that they’re using achievement data from the various different versions if the Legendary edition to see which ending most players chose, so they can please the largest portions of the fans going forward.
Original reasonong for Reapers was to stop creation of Dark Energy, that is created from mass effect technology, which would turn into cascade event that would destroy the universe. They were hoping to find species from harvest to create the special reaper that could solve it forever.
More precisely "one of the original ideas discarded during the development of ME2".
If you help scan the keepers in mass effect 1, they figure out that the reapers use them to control the station and they end up reprogramming them to stop that from happening.
they dont reprogram the keepers because thats impossible. What happens is that the keepers themselves evolved to kinda ignore the reepers which is why sovereign invades the citadel in 1
You're both wrong, the keepers were the true masterminds behind all evil in the universe, they even took control of EA and bodysnatched the whole Bioware staff
keep up the good work.
A lot of the hullabaloo about the ending was from the pre-patched version. Post-patch provided some closure on story beats with the still images, but pre-patch completely left that out and just had it be some ambiguous ending with the Normandy crashing on that planet.
Bioware has never been great with the overall plot of their games, they're (were) good with the details (side quests, characters, lore). So a franchise where the big evil bad guy is basically space Cthulu was always gonna have to end with a last minute macguffin or deus ex machina and therefore unsatisfactory (does this word even exist in english ?).
Plus it's pretty obvious the last mission has been rushed compared to Rannoch or Tuchanka.
But the journey ? To quote the end of the Citadel DLC :
"-We've had a good ride. (love interest)
-The best." (Shepard)
I am really curious where Mass Effect 4 will go from here but still looks like a good game, can't wait to play this one as it's the only Mass Effect I missed
So having just played through mass effect 1 isn’t there a quest with the keepers that leads you to knowing how it works and then blocking the signal they get from the reapers which would stop the reapers from actually controlling the citadel?
Congratulations!! You straightaway identified the biggest problem of the narrative: It's not the endings, but the plothole concerning the Citadel and the Reapers not attacking it right away. And Kai Lame
That's not a plot hole. The explanation went over his head.
The multiplayer was fun. I was disappointed that it wasn't included
I'm glad you got to play the improved version of the game, at launch Mass Effect 3 felt like a major disappointment, and aside from the terrible endings (I assume you got a chance to see the original endings before the fixed them) it was also a disappointment because expectations were pretty damn high considering how big of an improvement Mass Effect 2 was over ME1. Going into this game with tempered expectations can definitely help in terms of enjoyment. I think it's similar to the Cyberpunk 2077 situation in that respect.
I might have gotten it from somewhere else but I think the game explained that after their purge a group of Protheans made it back to the citadel and disabled something to lock out the Reapers from controlling it. Which was why in this cycle the Reapers had to travel from Deep/Dark Space instead of jumping directly to the citadel like they normally would.
Overall great review that pretty much on point mirror my own experience. As someone who missed out on Mass Effect due to the first game launching as a console exclusive I´m soo glad I got to play through it with the legendary edition. Gameplay just get´s better and better throughout the series and while the second installment is my favorite of them I think ME3 wrapped up the trilogy quite well and gave us a good ending. I think too many people are stuck on how the ending was when the game launched. As someone who only played the legendary edition I think it was a nice finish. Not the best but not the worst. I do believe though that the true heart of mass effect is not the main story but the companions and there were quite a few loyalty missions that brought a tear to my eye.
Yeah you slowed them down and they have to travel to the galaxy which took years because they couldnt signal the Keepers to shut down the mass relays and teleport them in. Which is why Sovereign tries to take the citadel manually at the end of ME1, but apparently being close enough to the citadel allows them to just teleport the entire thing which means they could have done that as soon as they arrived, it just doesnt make any sense.
@@MortismalGaming Fair enough. I assumed the Illusive Man took control of the Citadel and handed it over to the reapers.
Already 100% it but still have that itch to do a 3rd playthrough some day.
great review.
Possibly the best Mass Effect 3 review I’ve watched. Love your work.
Mass Effect 3 is my favourite Mass Effect game for the interactions with the characters and the way a lot of their arcs rap up, as well as the fun to play combat. I like how accurate and pointed your critiques were, much better than just the 1000th meme on the ending.
Ya I think the major hate is only really from the few of us on the first wave. Had it day one and played through it at its worse. I still have only seen the orginal vanilla ending. Then people got on the hype and kept hating on it even though they had fixed a lot. The game today is different then, I wish I didn’t play it right away.
9:30 Totally agree on the Red and Green ending, but totally disagree on Blue. I consider Blue a fantastic Paragon ending, and as to your comment about the reapers being alive asking for trouble, you had to prove you are a tremendously noble person throughout 3 games to get that far, to broker the alliances, I think we can trust this Sheppard... No will imposed. No genocide.
I think Javik was in the base game earlier but before the Release they cut it off as a DLC but im not quite sure
@@p4radigm989 before they buy the game it was a day 1 dlc
My biggest disappointment in ME3 is how it handled the story missions. In ME1 and 2 when you're done with the prologues you're given a list of story missions and you can do them in whatever order you want until the midgame, then the galaxy opens up again until the endgame. In ME3 you're given one story mission at a time, making things very linear. The only choices you have is when (or if) to do the side missions and when to do the DLC.
My gripe with ME3 is the weight limits and the fact that weapon upgrades had to be purchased instead of discovered discouraged me from experimenting with all the weapons. I stopped trying new weapons after I got the ridiculously overpowered Lancer with regenerative ammo and shotgun that fired charged grenades. I never touched like 85% of the weapons.
I agree about the combat being the best. This was the first game where I took advantage of pausing the action to observe my surroundings from moment to moment. It wasn't a necessary tactic in the previous games.
When you say that the writing is bad, it should be specified that this only holds true for the macro-level. The writing on a per-character basis, the "voice" every NPC has is outstanding and is the reason why this game holds up so well. Most of the writing team stayed the same, but lead writer Drew Karpyshyn (who also wrote BG2, btw) stepped away from ME3. Why? What changed? Eh, that's all speculation.
To me, the best explanation was always that the original ending (at least the vague version of it) was leaked/guessed and the bosses at EA weren't happy with that because remember, this was 2012, an era where everything was built around plot twists, no matter how far-fetched (the "Lost" effect), so when people guessed the ending, you couldn't twist. DK, not wanting to risk his reputation, fought it and got pushed out. That's also why the ending of ME3 didn't quite gel with the story so far while the plot threads themselves remained strong.
DK while has done somme amazing work, has had somme flops as well. his novel on Revan is on particular novel so i don't think its fair to put him on some pedestal. regardless his work here was stellar and its even crazier what the other writers were able to do in only 18 months
@@geronuis2295 As a novelist, he's definitely hit or miss, but as a lead writer who can delegate the stuff he's bad at (writing women, creating depth, tugging at the audience's heartstrings) it works fairly well.
Personally, the whole trilogy wasn't anything special plotwise. I'd even say that, for that very reason, I wasn't particularly bothered by the ending. The characters - most of them -, on the other hand, carried the whole thing from start to finish. Of course, the lore and worldbuilding also played a huge part in that, but the character writing/development was, for the most part, truly fantastic.
6 months old I know but, just to clarify. Drew left halfway thru ME2, he had nothing to do with ME3. That all falls on Mac Walters, who became lead writer after Drew left. Which is why ME2 became so character focused, because Mac is a character writer. He wrote Garrus in ME1.
I enjoyed the character stories and interactions. I enjoyed the combat. I did not enjoy how collecting war assets eventually just becomes “ping three times and dodge the reapers” over and over and over, while wasting credits on fuel. That was neither fun, nor interesting, and the “eavesdrop on people to get the quest” mechanic was also bad. I also hated the unskippable awkward slow motion dream sequences with the dumb kid. I’m sure BioWare had some deep meaning about PTSD or something, but the message was lost in the garbage. I think I’ve seen each ending a couple of times, both release and extended cut, and with the legendary edition I get to just before The Cerberus base, do the Citadel DLC, and that’s the end of the game. I just head canon that they destroy the reapers and everyone lives, because the actual endings are dumb. The secret ending just feels like pettiness on BioWare’s part. Upon release, with the backlash surrounding the endings, there were lots of posts, and probably videos, where people would just keep shooting the star kid as catharsis. So BioWare, being mad that their genius was being challenged by the masses, took that away. In fact, while not directly related to the mechanics of the game, BioWare’s response to the negative criticism came off as generally childish, unprofessional, and disconnected. That, as much as their poor performance since, did a number on their reputation. They really, really didn’t like people posting interviews from a month before release where Casey Hudson talked about how there definitely wouldn’t be just and A, B, or C ending. Whoops.
I'm going to drop a quick aside about readiness, before finishing the video. Also, fair warning, I'm going from memory, so I don't have the hard numbers off hand. In the original Mass Effect 3 release, it was not possible to achieve a high enough asset score to achieve the "breathe" ending, unless you'd also played most of the previous game's DLCs. (I think Synthesis was also locked out unless you'd played prior DLCs, or ground your multiplayer score up. (Also, your multiplayer readiness multiplier decayed over time. I forget exactly how quickly.) The reason is because, even if you'd played a perfect game of ME1 and 2, the available assets available in 3 weren't sufficient to unlock those endings. If you completed every (relevant) ME2 DLC (So, Lair of the Shadowbroker, Kasumi, and Zaeed (I don't remember if Firewalker or Arrival had any extra assets tied to them, but I think they did)), you'd get third options in a number of cases that would award you multiple asset payouts. From ME1, completing Bring Down the Sky would net you a nice chunk of assets from an interaction.
This was something that Bioware walked back after launch (even before the extended cut), with Leviathan paying out a staggering amount of assets. And, your asset score only ever controlled which endings you could select, so the impact wasn't as severe as it sounds at first glance, but being told, "no, you can't get the ending you want, because you didn't grind enough multiplayer, and pay extra for a bunch of DLC two to five years ago," never felt good.
Also, while I'm less certain it's true with ME3, creating a new save for ME2 (without importing, or using that game's comic save generator, which was paid DLC for non-Playstation users), and playing through ME3 would cut your legs out from under you on asset collection. The New Game Shepard in ME2 was an idiot in the first game (for whatever reason) and consistently made some of the worst decisions, when it came to collecting assets in 3. Why? I dunno.
It's a lot of old outrage now, but back in the day, and, ironically, none of it applied for the people who were most perturbed with ME3's ending at release, but it was a (small) part of why the game was so poorly received.
EDIT: Something I forgot from the first impressions video: In the original game, you were always on trial for snuffing the baatarian colony. If you didn't play Arrival, 3 would simply start with Shepard on trial for wiping out a colony, and you were left scratching your head going, "wait, I don't remember doing that." The Cerberus charge is new to Legendary Edition.
Very well put, I hadn't actually thought about why hadn't they moved the citadel before 🤔 good point! Can't wait for your extended thoughts on the series!
Even on Andromeda, I would live to hear your analysis on that game. I personally found it okay, I had fun with it but... It has so many flaws..
Thank you for the great content as always.
The readiness was a reward for players who did full exploration. If you got Tali to shake hands with the Geth, you were fine.
I really enjoyed the lore and games of ME, like reading all the outside lore from the game and the lore steel-book that I got with the first game
ME2 is still my favourite of the series, the companion stories and Collector mission where brilliant, to me that last great story telling to come from BioWare
Even then as a massive fan of ME, I still haven’t brought myself to complete Andromeda, it’s upgraded art engine is nice, but the story is trash
Trash story, I agree. I also dislike the narrative direction, damn thing plays out like an episode of Friends.
Underrated game. Just slogged down by its launch and nobody will ever let that go
For Mass Effect 4 I think they can set it far enough in the future to hand wave the ending. If the reapers are still around, hint that they left the Milky Way to deal with a certain unresolved threat in Andromeda (if the reapers aren’t around it can be a chunk of the Alliance that left instead), and with synthesis, the catalyst does say “it is inevitable” so have it anyway, BUT make it so it didn’t actually take for the whole galaxy so now there’s a separation between those that have that and those that don’t. Yeah not ideal but saves them from canonising an ending. Guess it depends what they think will piss off people more, I do think destroy was the most chosen ending by a distance according to their analytics so there’s that.
Expectations around release were huge, so it is no wonder how both its endings and Javik dlc were a huge controversy back then (Javik controversy seems rather small in hindsight, considering all the mess we've had with dlcs for games since then). There was also an issue of relatively short development time and changing story during it. Perhaps dark energy plot would have been more interesting than what we've got if they decided to develop it. Kai Leng's introduction was weird indeed, he was a character from the books and he wasn't received well. Despite its flaws, ME3 is still a very good game in my opinion. Better combat and many memorable moments with companions. While endings didn't account for decisions from previous games, some missions did.
Great reviews as always. Also I replayed Andromeda recently and it's actually a really solid game with some great characters like Drack and Jaal. Not as good as the original trilogy but still enjoyable for sure. Look forward to watching your review! 👍
Has to be Mortismal, someone else might have gotten it wrong.
I agree, Andromeda is a fairly good game. I had considerable fun with it.
The only thing I remember from the series was having some bro time with my boy Garrus
Personally I'd love the setting of MA4 to be about Humanity's discovery of the Mass Relay, and the following First Contact War with the Turians
That's what I was hoping for with the next ME game too. But from what I saw of the teaser trailer, it takes places X amount of years after the events of ME3.
I remember when I first played the game: at launch on xbox360.
The game was full of bugs and various technical issues: one of the worst was the impossibility to play the mission to save Jack at the academy, the game would just crash while trying to starting the mission.
I was (and still I am) not a fan of multiplayer games, so I wasn't able to max galactic readiness, with obvious consequences om the endings.
Speaking of endings... what a sad mess.
I was a great fan of the first two games (completed multiple times), which were THE games of my teenage years and my hype for the third chapter was immense.
I still feel kind of bitter thinking about the very underwhelming gaming experience I went through, but I'm glad they put a lot of effort trying to fix a few issues with the Legendary Edition.
Should I give this game a second chance? Or better avoid a resurgence of bitterness?
give it a chance. LE is the perfect chance to get back into them and the game has aged well. the added dlc 100% helps too
Ok spoilers ahead and some deep dive into a couple of points you raised:
Reapers not just destroying the citadel: I think that is what Soverign in ME1 was supposed to do. It obviously failed and then the reaper where just engaged in a whole bunch of small skirmishes and very late understood that the citadal was actually still operational. Proceeding to then steal it away.
Kay Lang: He feels out of place because he is. He is a comic character and they even end up killing him in the comics too. So yeah he is out of place because he is just an eastwr egg... A drawn out easter egg
4. Ending: you can actually also get that by leaving. Just walk away the way you came from. Both aren't the best ending but still nice to have.
I stand by the Indoctrination Theory. It is just head cannon but it brings me a lot of joy.
While I really liked the game, I understand your comment on the citadel, etc. Also it maybe shows, that the original main author of the game left Bioware before Mass Effect 3, which may also be a reason for the way the story has been shaped in this part. On the other hand I like some very emotional moments with my favorite companions, so I feel I got my money's worth and still like the trilogy as a whole more than Andromeda - which I think is not bad after the bugs have been evened out, but not great either.
PS: I preferred the "green" ending. ;-)
i wonder if you're gonna review some jrpgs. i think they would take longer to 100% them (with the grind and dodging 100 lightnings in a row and what not), so not 100% necessarily. but i'd like to hear what you think about some of the major ones.
On one hand, I want to commend you on your taste for playing a Vanguard who romances Jack. Just perfect choices. On the other hand, I can't help but feel sad that at least in the video shown, you're playing Vanguard without a shotgun, which just pains me to see. Charge>nova>shotgun is just such a special feeling.
Always fun to watch impressions of a new play through. I really think the developers did a great job in making a trilogy.
Question is, if shown on tv, would you prefer a movie series or a tv series for Mass Effect?
finally played the trilogy... I think it was overall very good. already started my second playthrough. game is so much better the second time. I feel way more invested. and i kinda missed alot of content in ME1 so there is that. I just kept doing main story missions... on normal it was a joke for difficulty I just ran and shot-gunned all of them, fun time. super stoked for 4... hope they can nail it again. maybe even make it all tighter?
ME3 has the best combat system of all 4 games. It's why the multiplayer was so fun. I'm fine with getting rid of the galactic readiness, but I really wish they could have patched in the multiplayer from ME3 or made it a stand-alone download for the current consoles.
Hey Mort, are you also going to play Andromeda? Really curious what you think about that game.
Was so weird, playing all three games as a paragon, then choosing the renegade (destroy) ending. Felt like the writers didn't understand the world they had created.
Destroy is not the renegade ending. If anything, it's the most paragon of the endings. Control is a stupid ending that will bite the galaxy in the ass later down the line, because Shepard will come to the same conclusion like the original AI, that the organics and synthetics will always wage war and try to eradicate each other. Synthesis is just you changing everybody against their will and turning them into androids. I know that the destroy ends with all of the synthetic life dying but it's the only ending where the reaper threat doesn't hang over the galaxy's head like the sword of Damocles. I know that the geth and EDI die, but they die free and for a greater good.
@@roboute-Terra exactly. I was saying renegade, as it's portrayed as the red choice, and it feels like the storytellers were implying that we should either embrace the artificial or control it, while destroying it was what an unenlightened barbarian would do.
From what I remember the original ending for Mass Effect 3 involved "dark energy" and dying suns becoming black holes due to Reaper interference. 🤯
It was all scrapped though, in favor of the red/blue/green endings. Big mistake, one that Bioware never truly recovered from.
My first playthrough, I romanced Jack in ME2 then screwed up the timed mission (Don't ignore Traynor!), and completely missed out on Jack in ME3.
Before I get into why I disliked Mass Effect 3, I just want to preface by saying that in 2012 I had realized that my backlog had become far too massive to control, so I adopted the mindset that any DLC updates released for any game I played from that point on were completely irrelevant to my initial experience.
I'm not knocking anyone's personal opinions or trying to invalidate anyone else's experience, I'm simply describing my personal mindset on how I've played and judged games for the past decade.
With that said, my biggest gripe with Mass Effect 3 wasn't that the developer promise to make every decision impactful for the remainder of the franchise went unfulfilled (though that's definitely a strong second), it's that they ruined my favorite class from ME2 😞
In the first game all of my favorite classes were the core classes: Soldier, Engineer and Scion, since the hybrid classes just felt like they were missing an identity, but in ME2 the hybrid classes felt amazing, and I actually preferred them over the Engineer and Scion in that game (Soldier was the most overpowered class in every game, so I can't claim I liked it less lol), especially the Sentinel which I felt was the perfect melee spec for people like me who prefer to fight up close, even in shooters, but ME3 RUINED that class!
The way those shield worked in ME2 was fantastically fun, but in ME3 you'd pop the shield for what felt like no benefit whatsoever, making it the worst possible option, unless you just wanted to play that class as a pistol shaman, which I'm sure there's an audience for, but I ain't it 😞
Aside from that, it's pitiful that Bioware disrespected player choice so much that they didn't even include vignettes to tell you how your decisions played out at the end, which is the hallmark of any player choice driven storytelling.
Such a shame.
The first 2 games are my most played games of all time, and due to my statement at the start of this too long rant, some of the last games I ever put that kind of effort into, so as a true fan ME3 was an absolute betrayal of goodwill, far more than even Cyber Punk 2077 or Fallout 76 as far as I'm concerned, though I'm sure for many it's the opposite.
If you bothered to read this far and are still interested in playing games in this narrative style and haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend Alpha Protocol.
It's definitely far lower effort in terms of overall quality, but it's great spy fiction and proof that Obsidian's lack of technical prowess never dulls their excellence at telling compelling stories through video games 🙂
I feel about the same of it, the series is an amazing journey but it's flawed here and there. I think something I've always held as true is that Bioware in the past were never that great at main arcs, subjective of course but I think a lot of them are generic or really weirdly paced. However, the side stories and character relationships they always really did well clothing it in a kind of cinematic feel, and it really invests you in the games.
The reapers very likely just led the citadel through the mass relay network.
Yeah, the "bad" ending was even worse when it was released.
If felt like the developers were pushing back on the fans pointing out that Shepard just going along with some random AI's decisions after going through the entire game and making your own decision. Fans pointed out that it'd make more sense for Shepard to shoot the AI and find his own solution.
So the developers added the option where you shoot the AI and promptly die.
...
I'm still bitter about this game after all this time.
i dont recall the ninja dude in the original version
I saw a video a month or two ago about a new mod that does everything possible to take Kai Leng out of Mass Effect. All his cut scenes are removed and his character model is replaced by a totally masked space ninja.