Reaping What's Sown - Mass Effect 3 Deconstructed
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- Опубліковано 3 лип 2024
- How does a trilogy end when its first two installments hated each other? Let's find out.
This is the finale of a three-part series analyzing the main trilogy of the Mass Effect games to explore what made these games great and where things needed improvement. All three games are played on the recently-released Mass Effect Legendary Edition with no mods on PC.
ME 1 Analysis: • Galaxy of Mystery - Ma...
ME 2 Analysis: • Characters & Tools - M...
ME 3 Paragon Streams: • Stream Archive
- SOCIALS -
♻️Discord: / discord
🐧Twitter: / psessionsyt
🎥Stream Archives: • Stream Archive
- CHAPTERS -
00:00 - Intro
- 1 Gameplay Changes -
05:24 - 1.1. Gunplay
10:23 - 1.2. Skills and Leveling
14:26 - 1.3. Enemies and AI
19:53 - 1.4. System Scanning
- 2. Return of the Reapers -
28:55 - 2.1. Earth
42:19 - 2.2. Mars
55:30 - 2.3. Palevan's Moon
- 3. Catching Up -
59:01 - 3.1. Friends on the Citadel
1:10:54 - 3.2. Friends off the Citadel
1:31:03 - 3.3. Friends on the Normandy
- 4. The Allies Arc -
1:46:35 - 4.1. Curing the Genophage
2:15:28 - 4.2. The War for Ranoch
- 5. Omega and Citadel DLC -
2:35:01 - 5.1. Omega DLC
2:43:12 - 5.2. Citadel DLC
- 6. The Cerberus Arc -
2:54:56 - 6.1. Attack on the Citadel
3:10:13 - 6.2. Thessia
3:18:55 - 6.3. Sanctuary
3:26:26 - 6.4. Cerberus HQ
- 7. The Reaper Arc -
3:42:22 - 7.1. Reaper Recap
3:53:34 - 7.2. Leviathan DLC
4:03:24 - 7.3. London
4:12:57 - 7.4. The End
- 8. Legacy and Future -
4:34:32 - The Search for Meaning and Purpose
- MUSIC -
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#Retrospective #Analysis #Review #Privatesessions - Ігри
It took 9 months but the Me trilogy has finally been put to bed... Kinda.
I have a ton of topics I had to cut from all three videos that I'd like to discuss, especially the cut content of Me3 I learned about after I finished editing this video. No promises, but I'd like to do a brief followup video covering those topics.
I'd also like to do a 12 hour supercut of the three videos so I can get a chance to fix some of the audio and visual jank of the other two vids and maybe sneak in some bonus content. That's going to be up to my editing software, though. This video was already causing me a lot of trouble, so I need to solve those issues before I can get a 12 hour vid done.
Finally, Andromeda is going to get covered before ME4 releases but I want to take some time off from ME before tackling it.
Thanks for all the support and patience. All you people waiting for TES and Fallout content to return to the channel, don't worry, I got you covered in the coming months.
Been loving these videos. Can't wait for more.
I no lol I’m. You binnik
Fallout content coming back eh?
I hope that means fallout 1 and 2. Not 76
Btw, during all games - count having brought every single squad member on all missions and you see only 2 because of lack of processing power. I dont take Garrus anywhere because I really dislike him but he talks about how he spoke to the rachni queen, stopped Sovereign and Saren etc. AND sometimes behaves during ME3 like if he went planetside when all he did was calibrate the gun.
'before ME 4 releases', yeah I think that game will make Andromeda seem like the Odyssey by comparison.
Given the DA 4 issues, there's not much hope. I'd like to be surprised though.
In any case, excellent work. The algorithm works.
In the scene where you shoot Mordin to prevent the cure, you pull out a Carniflex. The same gun Mordin gave you in Mass Effect 2 in his recruitment mission. A good faith present. Doesn't matter what pistol you had prior or even if you didn't equip a pistol. You'll always pull out Mordin's gift to stop him.
Yeah I don't put any weight on that because that is the pistol Shepard uses in almost every cutscene in the game.
@@battlebear7214 in 3 his standard pistol In cutscenes is actually the M-3 predator heavy pistol.
Did he throw the gun away afterwards or was that just a piece of flotsam going past?
@@thomaskirkness-little5809 he did throw it away.
Wow
Captain Bailey is such a low-key badass. Nothing ruffles him. Watches Shepherd & Wrex trying to kill each other, resulting in Wrex getting blasted, and all he says is “What pissed him off” before basically shrugging his shoulders. I love him.
The combination of Gwyn's theme with the renegade conclusion of the Genophage arc is pure, soul-crushing tragedy.
You do get a choice in the Spectre terminal relating to the soldier getting briefed by the docks. If you drop by multiple times, you hear that her brother joined Cerberus before the war, and her unit is slated to deploy against Cerberus. Not wanting to ever have to make the implied awful choice, she asks to be reassigned to fight against the Reapers. Shepard can make that happen for her at the Spectre terminal.
The scene of Mordin regretting his decisions, standing up to Shep, and struggling against his own death in a fight to right all his wrongs, is heart-wrenching. 😭
If only we got to saw what caused Mordin to regret his decisions. No matter how hard you try in Mass Effect 2, he is steadfast and resolute that the Genophage was correct, to the point he was willing to destroy the Genophage cure research data. Even Wrex understood it wasn't the Genophage that was killing his people, but for some reason in Mass Effect 3, the switch has been flipped and both Mordin and Wrex become anti-Genophage extremists.
@@Edax_Royeaux wait it was never explained ?
@@MarkoLomovic "Every time we talked about this before, you've defended the Genophage. Hell, you even destroyed Maelon's data! How can you change your mind now?" - Shepard
"I made a mistake! I made a mistake...focused on the big picture. Big picture made of little pictures. Too many variables. Can't hide behind statistics." -Mordin
That's the explanation he gives. But the line is so vague, you could give it to anyone who 180's their previous stance. You could give the line to Churchill to explain why he'll now suddenly capitulate to the Germans instead of fighting on.
@@Edax_Royeaux That sucks because it is such a cop out to not explain it. Even if not from Mordin at least later.
Whole scene doesn't make scene to begin with since at any point Mordin can explain lol
@Edax_Royeaux If you do a Paragon run, Mordin becomes more anti-genophage throughout the game in ME2. Wrex is also always anti-genophage 😂
if you take miranda with you for the human reaper boss fight, you will get dialogue where she gets pissed at TIM and quits cerberus
My take on the whole "Wrex is different in ME3 than in other games" is that they made it much closer to Wreav in order to save on development time/dialogue/work
mid life crisis
@@cjvaye99 I just headcanon that he started drinking a lot and became a functioning alcoholic. So yeah basically lol
My main takeaway is, basically, that the whole franchise got derailed by the second installment in the series, that took too steep of a turn, and crashed.
Sounds just like another Sci-Fi franchise, Star Wars. Just like with Mass Effect, I like the second in the series the best (I'm talking about the sequel trilogy and ME2), but it does nothing for the overall plot and clearly demonstrates the creators didn't have an end-game in mind.
@@Poonchow honestly, recently bought Legendary edition, played ME1 and ME2 back to back, and it really shows, how different of a direction ME 2 picked. It's weird how inconsequential it is, it doesn't progress the overall Reaper plot whatsoever and feels more like a sort of spin-off. It's weird how you rekindle relations with your squadmates, it feels like they never should've been extinguished in the first place. It's as if Bioware were trying to soak as much drama as possible and it all felt forced to me, especially after the inspiring ending of ME1.
@@Poonchow I mean, apparently they had an ending in mind, but went with an entirely different one. Apparently having something to do with Dark matter, he mentioned it in the ME2 retrospect and I had no idea it was a thing til that vid
ME3 ensured it crashed and burned as brutally as possible. There was still tons of potential to course correct 2. One of them was stretching the timeline and another keeping the writing consistent with the Geth and Quarians. Maintaining good voice direction was another. Wrex acts like a goofy manchild in 3 and his voice sounds too human. ME2 was brilliant with the krogan voice filters for Wreav and Wrex, having them with super deep and reverberating voices.
@Onishiro The issue is ME3 has too much to do plotwise. What if ME2 instead was about the first half of the ME3 plot? Gathering war assets and solving big issues like the genophage and Quarian/Geth conflict. Those are the best parts of the base ME3 game, if they were expanded to a whole game length it'd be great.
Instead they end up rushed, because ME3 also has to do the entire reaper war in the last third of the storu
Diane Allers is basically fanservice to the gamers. She's a perfect one to one recreation of her voice actress Jessica Chobot who was a host on Xplay at the time. The real life actress looks, sounds and acts exactly as you see in the game, down to the lifeless onscreen presence.
Your comment made my day. Thank you sir
Is that really fan service? I was under the impression it was a bribe to Chobot's employers.
Get off my ship
The funny thing about kicking her off the ship is, upon your next visit to the Spectre terminal, you'll hear a report about the next ship she went on being blown up. @@Fami_Salami
It's even more fascinating to know how exactly Chobot came to be known in the first place - by taking a photo of herself imitating a blow job given to a PSP.
Really interesting choice to do the review on primarily the renegade character, seeing Mordin getting shot kills me 😢
I met the Rachni twice in ME1, once at the Hot Labs but also another time on a minor planet where some marines were struggling to hold position after a mining operation unearthed some Rachni. They've probably been in hiding in a few other places in the galaxy.
I don't remember the details exactly, but there is info that says they've only been on that planet for a short time, and they seem to have gotten there in a shipment from Noveria.
Your Andromeda video should be called 'ME:A Culpa'.
About Wrex, I like him regardless. I like when he's joking, I like when he's serious and GOD DAMN do I like that bro moment with Shepard on Tachunka. Didn't have anything to say, just expressing my love for everyone's favorite Krogan
Wrex will always be my boi.
I think the 'excitement' in Wrex's characterization which Private mentions here comes across more naturally when you're playing Paragon - he's on the verge of curing the genophage and giving his people their future back. Of course he's excited!
These three have been honestly the most interesting video essay / discussion topic videos I've seen on mass effect because of the depth you went into and because you went almost full renegade which as someone who has never played the game and has only see things from outside, I've never seen or heard about before. It's always been about the average playthrough and the twists going down the paragon path that I've heard about.
Thank you so much for the videos, can't wait to see more of your work. : )
The Tuchanka Arc is brilliant. Fantastic storytelling where prior choices matter, adding depth to characters and worldbuilding, and making some hard choices that lead to replayability.
If only they had kept the Geth as nuanced as Legion's ME2 portrayal had set them up as. Also, having orbital bombardment on a Reaper seems pretty epic but makes zero sense. Anything that hit the Reaper would vaporize Shepard as well. Mass Effect "rail gun" style slugs as depicted in this universe would have ended up like nuclear bombs in the amount of force depicted. As the dude on the Citadel in ME2 stated, "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in the galaxy."
Yeah despite all the lore, depictions of space and ground battles make no sense in game. They look cool but an entire fleet bombing one place from orbit should make the entire continent turn to dust.
Yeah, I concur, but it was even worst in the battle for Earth, after the epic Fleets arrival, if you remember what the codex already stated about space battle tactics...there will be nothing left to be saved🤷♂️😒👍
My favorite part is that in the renegade option, you shoot Mordin with the gun he gives you in ME2. It doesn't matter what you have equipped, Shepard will always shoot Mordin with a Carnifex to really emphasize the betrayal.
And it would've seriously hindered the colonization of Rannoch. The damage to the atmosphere alone would be excessive, nevermind the ensuing, multiple, like 30 kiloton explosions. The sonic boom from 20 KG flying at 1.3%c would probably liquify shepard alone.
There would be a memorial lake on that continent for shepard. Or ocean.
It's entirely possible that given ship to ship munitions are said to be so powerful, (and the Codex mentions that Citadel military criminal conventions forbid the firing of large caliber ship-to-ship weapons when a miss risks striking an inhabited world) that most ships either have lighter slugs or lower power firing modes for precision orbital bombardment. Unfortunately, when it comes to large-scale military info, the Codex is more concerned with explaining doctrine and tactics, rather than getting into the specific technical details of ship armaments, so this is at best the writers leaving a gap with the expectation that a reasonable/informed reader will fill it with whatever explanation best suits them, or at worst a major oversight.
This is the most renegade Shepherd I've seen. I could never go full renegade.
"ME 3 had to deal with a first game that didn't define enough of the series and a sequel that hated its predecessor and spent its time telling side stories." - Fuck, it's the Disney Star Wars trilogy.
The scene where Shep threatens Mordin just solidified for me that he is one of if not the best written character in the entire series, and his death is undoubtedly the saddest death in the whole franchise no matter how he dies.
Sad it is but, I feel Wrex's death to renegade Shepard was sadder
Mordin would have figured out the "Leviathan" mystery in an instant.
"A Puzzle? Shepard? Well, let's analyze this."
4 hours and 16 minutes in I just realized why he keeps referring to The Illusive Man as Tim.
"I've never seen a sequel so violently turn on its predecessor."
The Last Jedi.
It's always hilarious to me how ME2 is the crowd favorite, but you could basically cut the whole game from the series and very little about 3 would change. Shepard dying and coming back doesn't ever matter, working with Cerberus doesn't stop them from being antagonists again right off the bat, and all the ME2 squad members are part of plot points and side quests that function just as easily without them incase they're dead in your imported save.
ME2 could've easily at least set up the super anti-Reaper weapon at some point so it didn't just come out of nowhere, but instead it was a meaningless diversion where you build the Suicide Squad and accomplish nothing of importance.
I mean... in ME2 you safe billions of people, especially colonists in the Terminus System and prevent a human Reaper from being constructed. That Reaper, depending on its strength could have caused a lot of damage I guess and maybe prior to an all-out Reaper invasion could have weakened the defenders even more. I mean it takes almost a whole fleet bombarding a Reaper to destroy it. And with the Collector Base not destroyed or purged, the Collectors would have multiple of their ships, countless ground troops and the locust swarm at the Reaper's command.
True, compared to ME3 the main quest seems less important and the games don't really clarify to you the scope of the threat but when you think about it, without the Suicide Mission the chances of stopping the Reapers would have been way lower.
Cerberus always were the "bad guys", even in ME2. Just the part of Cerberus directly working with Shepard is "nice" and he is not told anything about other Cerberus projects. But since they happen to be the only organisation willing to help Shepard against the Collectors he is forced to work with them, or at least use their assets.
And after Shepard is taken out of commission (and basically told TIM he won't work with them anymore) between ME2 and 3 TIM gets more desperate in face of the soon-to-arrive Reaper invasion and abandons all remaining bit of care, morals and restraint.
But I agree, the ME2 squadmates being pushed out of ME3's story to account for the suicide mission is the one most fatal flaw of ME2 in my opinion, the problem with having a Suicide Mission in the middle of a trilogy.
ME2's Plot would have made more sense if Shepard had been instructed to investigate Cerberus prior to getting blown up by the Collectors. Even an off-hand remark by Joker would have made the characterization more palatable: "They were rebuilding you and our ship. Hackett asked you to investigate them before you got spaced. When you died... I volunteered. Just watch out for the spy cameras, okay?"
ME1 and ME2 Cerberus felt like a justified off-shoot of the Alliance. A backup-plan gone wrong in case the newly allied aliens of the Citadel races didn't play nice and turned on humanity. It fit with the humans-as-underdogs theme that felt refreshing in ME1 that so few space epics seem willing to address (in Star Trek humans are leaders of the Federation, Star Wars has human supremacy, even Babylon 5 has humans as central to diplomacy...). We're given details in the Codex that each race is limited in their military capacity essentially by ship weight. A way of circumventing this would be for the Alliance and Earth-aligned ventures to form their own "off the books" military in case things went south with the council, but of course Cerberus goes rogue and start mucking things up when Shepard starts brokering deals between the various alien races. This would give a perfect explanation for Cerberus' strength and motivations in every game without elevating TIM to the same status as the Reapers themselves.
Stopping the collectors makes some sort of sense in the grand Reaper plot of the games. Sovereign was left behind as a vanguard to start the new cycle when the galaxy was ready, and the Collectors were the backup plan to conduct a harvest in secret if Sovereign failed. That's all square with me in the timeline of the games, but ME3's all-out Reaper war flies in the face of both of the games' premises and conclusions. It completely negates the effort of the first game to stop Sovereign and turns the Collectors into a joke the Reapers could have just used in the upcoming war. The urgency and stakes of both ME1 and ME2's story is instantly nullified by the fact that the Reapers, these ancient, immortal machines, were just a few months away from just coming in and starting a war anyway. They don't even go for the Citadel in their opening attack, instead attacking Earth! Like... what?!
Instead, a fight against Harbinger as it personally takes over the Citadel or indoctrinates key groups / leaders whilst cutting off systems and waging a personal war against Shepard's efforts, looking for an alternate way to bring the Reapers out of Dark Space, could have fulfilled the engaging deep sci-fi mystery feel of the first game and lend some personal storytelling threads to bridge ME2's plot that centered around companions. We could even get a hunt for a Macguffin that doesn't feel nearly as contrived as the Crucible.
ME2 feels disjointed, not just because it fails to bridge the entry and finale of the series, but mostly because ME3's entire premise revolving around an epic Reaper war is tone deaf and *requires* Shepard to find the Macguffin in order to stop the Cthulhu monsters set up by ME1. In Lovecraft's stories, the protagonists don't win by conventional means, IE shooting Cthulhu in the face, but instead usually have a tragic end that happens to save the world through happenstance and a combination of going insane. This is even stated by multiple characters throughout ME3... you simply **can't** win a war conventionally against the Reapers. It's part of the reason why the Indoctrination Theory got so popular upon ME3's release. I think ME3's ending is appropriate tonally with the way the Reapers are set up, but it's completely bonkers from a rational or even a traditional sci-fi perspective in terms of the narrative. It's just unsatisfying in so many ways.
I kind of like the war asset panel and approach to ME3 mechanically, and the way the Citadel feels like a refugee camp with a galaxy at war and the fact that Shepard has to unite all these races to work together. I just feel like Bioware could have made the galaxy feel vulnerable and at war, with Shepard running around trying to solve everyone's problems whilst also capturing the mystery and tension of the first game with the added companion roster of the second without a magical space machine that solves all the problems and a bullsh** explanation of the Reaper motivations. Leviathan DLC and Citadel DLC showcase the possible strengths of an alternate scenario, but completely undermine the core plot of the third game. In Leviathan, we see the Reaper origins and get a glimpse at their motivations - they (the writers) could use this opportunity to explain that Reapers essentially upload organic intelligence from whatever species they harvest in order to solve some unfathomable problem only relevant to an immortal species (like heat death of the universe which was originally planned). This is sort of implied in the games but never outright stated, as explanations are only vague hints at "Reapers preserve organic life in order to save them from synthetics." Uh... WHAT. We've seen AI go wrong in media before... we've seen it in THIS SERIES, but they essentially just rehashed that same concept for Reaper motivations in the final hour of the series, even post ending.
A much more compelling argument for the villains of the entire franchise would be that they're preserving a form of consciousness, the Collector plot in ME2 being an attempt at this (Instead of gooing humans to make a new Reaper, implying this is just Reaper reproduction), and that their overall goal is something worthy of destroying countless civilizations; stopping the heat death of the universe which is what the Leviathans originally designed them to do. The Reapers couldn't figure out the problem on their own, instead relying on organic evolution to introduce more random variables in their design and giving Soveriegn's "We are each a nation" speech more weight, and the Geth consensus style AI more meaning.
Shepard could reject this ideology as being a short-lived species doesn't really care about something that might occur in a billion years, but at least it would be more interesting than "Synthetics will always turn against their creators, therefore we made a race of synthetics that destroy organics before they can make synthetics" dumbassery that we end up with. It's such a weak argument, especially if Shepard resolved the Geth-Quarian conflict in a positive way.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my ME3 Ted Talk.
@@Poonchow That was a really intriguing -read- TED Talk, nicely done! :D I agree with everything you wrote, the writers definitely didn't handle the trilogy as a whole in a well-thought out way. The biggest problem for me being the ME3 ending and the stupid "protect organics from synthetics"-reveal that makes no sense and stands against everything the first game set up (Why would Sovereign talk down on organics if their main priority was protecting them by all means?) and is in itself illogical.
Also with the ending we got I've always asked myself: Do the Reapers want to preserve advanced species by wiping them out and transforming them into Reapers before synthetics kill them as main priority or do they want to preserve basic organic life as a whole and thus wipe out advanced organics before they get the chance to build synthetic life, and merely preserve the wiped out species as a side objective?
The easiest fix for the tone-deafness of ME3, just as Escalating Barbarism said, would have been to set up the Deus Ex Machina McGuffin way earlier (maybe even as a side-note in ME1 and making the achievements of the first two games mainly about giving humanity more time to find/construct the Crucible, making it clear that if Sovereign would have startet the actual invasion early the galaxy would instantly be overwhelmed by the Cosmic Horror-unknowable power of the mysterious Reapers. Or that if the ME2 Human Reaper would have been completed it would wreck havoc on the Crucible's construction and also lead to the advanced species being wiped out during the full Reaper invasion.
Maybe because by being built from billions of humans it had insight into their way of thinking (foreseeing all the human's tactics and strategies and thus counteracting human forces) or increased ability to indoctrinate humans almost instantaneously or over lightyears of distance, basically annihilating systems and amassing an endless amount of slaves by merely making its way towards the Citadel or Crucible construction site. I always wished they would have gone more into the premise of each Reaper being built form a different species and thus being more different or unique.
This way ME3 would have started with the Crucible being 95% complete thanks to Shepard's previous achievements (which would even make ME2's Arrival DLC more significant to help delay the invasion just that tiny bit longer) and after a few major setbacks and losses the final battle/mission would have stopped the Reapers... preferably without an RGB ending.
Yeah yeah, I know this will never happen and is just wishful thinking in retrospective but your Ted Talk got me into a creative mood. :D
@@lordhelmchen3154 I still just think they could have bridged the gap without resulting to an all out Reaper war.
Hear me out (or don't, this is a long post). This is sort of my fanfiction "If I was Lead Writer" kind of bullshit for ME3's story, given that ME1 and ME2 are completely unchanged.
Shepard is still detained for their actions in ME2. I hate "Arrival" so we're ignoring that DLC.
Shepard is on trial and we get an actual trial, which details Shepard's service record (Background) and accomplishments (War Hero, Sole Survivor, Brutal Batarian slaughterer). This continues into the decisions of ME1 and ME2, catching the player up to the story and scoring some Paragrade score, where Shepard can actually emote and defend themselves against decisions they made through dialogue.
Suddenly, the feeds cut and we get a glimpse of an attack on the Citadel. It's Harbinger and a few Reaper destroyers with an army of past-harvested races; the Collectors, the Rachni, the Inusannon, and leftover Heretic Geth, all Reaper-fied and running amok on the Citadel, with Harbinger docking to the station itself. The feed cuts out and someone announces they've lost communication to the FTL Communication System, someone else in command is like: "And the relays?"
"Not responding, according to reports. We've been locked out. We're... trapped."
Shepard says there's one ship that can still get through, and you're looking at her captain. We have the Reaper IFF and a QEC. There's some grumblings but either Anderson or Udina (whoever is NOT the councilor) steps in and everyone eventually agrees.
The Alliance reinstates Shepard with a mission of finding out what's going on at the Citadel and what the damage is. We get our ship back with the crew we start ME3 with. When we get to the Serpent Nebula, we hear Liara's distress call coming from the Citadel and decide to go rescue her. We get our combat tutorial while figuring out Liara was researching the Citadel Archives using a combination of her mother's influence, credentials, and some Shadow Broker shenanigans. We rescue the Council, but before we can make it to the main control center to open the arms and take control of the relays, Harbinger fucks off somewhere.
Maybe the arms were already closed when we arrived and we have to go figure out how to reactivate the Ilos-Citadel relay to get on the station, making the isolation situation even more drastic. Like ME1's ending but at the start of the game.
We learn that all the other major systems are in disarray. Relays aren't communicating, comms are fucked, and everyone wants to tend to their homeworlds and figure out what's happening. The human councilor stays behind to coordinate with the others, and Shepard is off to run errands for the various species while Shepard fixes things. The human councilor also says to find Hackett and the 5th Fleet with their last known coordinates.
Liara gives us intel she found in the Citadel Archives about ancient harvests before the Keeper-Citadel trap was set up, but she can't make much sense of it and knows the Protheans from Ilos were studying the data in order to sabotage the Keeper signal. The Archives only technically begin when the Asari first discovered the station, but this bit was left behind by the Protheans who died on the station which the Asari couldn't interpret, starting the whole Archival process. Shepard has the Cipher, and it still doesn't make much sense, but it leads them to believe there is some ancient, lost relays that lost their tidal anchors and maybe this is what Harbinger was looking for - another way to bring in the harvest... the final way to wake up the Reapers and bring them in from dark space.
We don't have any leads on these relays so we go to the various Citadel species' homeworlds to both alleviate their councilors and try to find out anything on un-mapped relays they never opened.
We get Garrus back when we go to Palavin, but turns out their home system is a mess with indoctrinated leadership and they think they're in an all-out civil war. Sovereign had been laying the groundwork for decades, and Saren wasn't his only agent in the Hierarchy. Harbinger shows up just as Shepard and Garrus are about to put things right, so this adds a bunch of chaos to the mix, and the Normandy's stealth systems can't fool Harbinger, so they have to get out of dodge if they want to live.
Without leadership, the Turians are bogged down in a chaotic pseudo-civil war mixed with Reaper forces. Garrus joins our quest when/if we convince him that throwing his life away for another lost cause won't yield any purpose.
We go to Hackett's last known coordinates and find them entrenched against Cerberus forces. This is where we get to confront TIM and find out that the Alliance set up Cerberus as gatekeepers for human interests in case the Council races turned their backs on humanity, and he's fulfilling his role, and blah blah. You point out the hypocrisy of this, as TIM is actively fighting human forces, and TIM just says he's consolidating power in order to achieve humanity's full potential or some such as the Alliance ignored the Reapers for years along with the Council races. Either Hackett's fleet is decimated or you chase off Cerberus depending on your choices, and the Virmire survivor confronts you on this.
Regardless of who you side with, they lead you to Eden Prime and Javik, who gives some insight on possible lost relay locations (the colony recently unearthed the pods, and it was classified while Shepard was in house arrest). Alliance-aligned Shepard faces Cerberus troops here, and Cerberus-aligned Shepard has to confront the colonists / Alliance.
From here on out, which relays the player unlocks potentially advances the plot, either leading Harbinger closer to finding a lost relay or the player doing so. Garrus points out the Krogan might have potential information, as they had to chase the Rachni back to their homeworld which was the whole conflict that started the practice of not unlocking new relays, and if Grunt is alive he might have some leftover imprints on those. Speaking of the Rachni, did we save the queen? She might have some helpful input. Liara points out that the Batarian Hegemony acted outside of council space, and the Terminus systems could lead to some clues, and that her own home system might help. Javik points out finding more beacons that he may better interpret could lead to some clues.
Any way you approach it, the galaxy opens up, the player is on a chase for clues to find lost relays before Harbinger and find a way to shut them down for good.
"Shut them down?" Javik asks. "That is easy, Commander. Provided you command enough ships."
SO we get our themes of uniting the galaxy. We have our galaxy-at-war conflict with the various races dealing with Reaper forces and indoctrination. We have indoctrination being a sinister element again without it being a convenient contrivance. We have our galaxy-spanning space detective motif re-introduced. We have opportunities to reunite and talk to our favorite characters. The major council races can all be embroiled in some indoctrination-fueled plot or just plain political paranoia at the relay network going down. We can discover the Leviathan and see if they help while getting answers on the origins of the Reapers. We can help Aria unite the Terminus systems without it feeling like a dumb side-quest. We can cure (or not) the genophage in order to gain knowledge and trust. We can resolve the Geth-Quarian conflict in order to gain access to either species' knowledge. We can see the Batarians outside of their generic villainous slaving selves without them getting genocided at the start. Javik doesn't just hand out spicy dialogue but can be integral to the plot. We get some of our space mystery back with opportunities to reunite with old friends. We get an opportunity for actual closer, not just with characters but with the story itself and the main character.
The Reapers are coming, and Shepard is the only one that can stop them. You know, without it being a galactic war against immortal space robots. We can also get a final battle that isn't a meme and actually utilizes our choices throughout all the games.
@@Poonchow Man you just keep these coming, don't you? :P That immediately sounds like a better first half of the game than we got in ME3 and would give us a decent main villain again with Harbinger, though I guess his dialogue also should feature fundamental changes to make him a cool villain instead of wannabe-Sovereign 2.0.
I also like the increased importance of indoctrination. Fighting Cosmic Horrors and their abominations of life is already bad enough, but with the aspect of enemies in the own ranks everywhere ME3 could have been incredibly bleak... betrayals everywhere (and even from people who were good at the beginning and only indoctrinated after Shepard had already met them, making the betrayal hit even harder).
Welp, here's to hope ME5 will have a good story... though I guess few people have any faith left in Bioware to actually produce a good game, so I won't let me guard down and allow myself to jump on the hype train. :P
Congratulations on getting this massive 3 part project completed. They've all been enjoyable and I've been looking forward to this!
Mordin's scene in this game, just holy shit. if you go paragon it's such a bittersweet end to his character arc, and if you go Renegade you get some fo the most powerful dialogue in the series. iirc this scene is the only time Mordin ever says "I" instead of distancing himself from his own decisions with logical reasoning.
When I do a Paragon playthrough I always choose the destruction ending. And when I do a Renegade, it's always a control ending. Only once did I choose the synthesis decision to simply see that ending.
ME1 is my personal favourite as well. I do believe that they just did not know what to do going forward after ME1 which is why we got what ME2 was and subsequently the third. So they removed us from everything of the first... the council, being their Spectre, Alliance and humanity in relation to all others, the variation of choices from the first game and how to honour all these within a story where you are still connected, and so on.
Good video and thank you for the work.
After playing through the original trilogy, I got mods that change the ending of ME3 and gets rid of the Star Child. Play full paragon, destroy ending keeps the geth and EVI alive.
Man, one of the moments that made me kind of sad is the part where you and clone shepard are hanging off the bay and shepard is like "what do you have that I don't have" and then shepards squad helps him up and clone shepard is still hanging off the edge looking at brooks while she tries to retreat. If you try to save him he's like "then what" and you say "you live" and clone shepard says "for what?" And let's go so he could fall off and die. Made me real sad because it seemed to me no one really cared about him, even though he was a clone he was still a living breathing entity with emotions, all he will be known as is just shepards clone which doesn't give him an opportunity for individuality
You’re not kidding about there being obvious solutions they didn’t take at the end. They even have Leviathan (after the fact, but still) switching faces of people it possessed, when instead of the bad meme that is star child it could’ve spoken through characters that are sure to die like Thane. I might’ve cared a little more about what it said, or even gotten really angry, if it appeared as him, especially after his cheap death by anime Mary Sue.
I’ll always think this series should have been a planned tetralogy instead of the messy trilogy we got in order to both elaborate on the story that began in the first game while also allowing for character stories like in the second game.
WOW! At least 4 playthroughs, incl. the Legendary edition, and I never notice that different squadmate appearances also have stat bonuses.
My favourite ending for Javik is him going to Kahje and living like a God among the Hanar. You get this 3rd alternative ending if you don't do the paragon Interrupt when Liara is yelling at him after Thessia.
I honestly thought you were joking , but I’m shocked it’s actually an ending we can get
I really don't like the premiere system, I can't start watching after it starts without missing stuff and can't rewind to start it from the beginning. So I have to wait for it to end to watch the video
I love long form content like this. I see the hours long video and I get giddy. You earn a another sub and now I go through all your vids in the next month, you are right up there with salt factory now
Your videos on Mass Effect are now my favorite critiques of them by far. Thank you so much for your time and effort.
Interesting thing about ME worldbuilding is that Asari are even more of a threat to life in galaxy than Reapers are. Mathematicaly they will sooner or later replace all other species by breeding. If some situation justifies genofage, it's Asari.
Nah they’re hot so it’s ok
Theyre usually not destructive though unlike krogan, batarian or vorcha
@@BeyondNormal. It's the "not with a bang, but with a whimper" kind of destructivity.
Apparently what they look like is nothing like what the game shows. In one of the books (I think, can’t remember exactly) there’s a statue somewhere and it’s very different. The Asari basically appear attractive according to the person seeing them in order to be less threatening and make it easier to manipulate others. So I have to agree they’re a big threat.
Also Ardat Yakshi, Morinth literally describes herself as "the genetic destiny of the Asari."
In ME2, the Normandy SR2 gets a Reaper IFF installed and EDI uses that to deceive the Reapers into thinking that the Normandy is a Reaper. EDI got built from hardware and software of the Reaper Sovereign.
But now reapers are chasing us on the galaxy map because???😂😂😂 What a fail
@@Fami_Salamithe beginning of ME3 is about the alliance retrofitting the Normandy to take out all the reaper tech except EDI. It's why the game starts with shepherd on earth.
@@supreme1572 if that’s true then why the fuck does harbinger not blow the Normandy out of the sky in that stupid extended cut ending? I’d just headcanoned it away as the IFF.
@@nozza4742 rushed writing to give you a final goodbye with your partner.
@@nozza4742 it's never explained how it works but EDI also has cyber warfare tech too she could spoof the reaper ID while fighting maybe.
A very well made video. I watched two videos in two days! And that's considering how long they are!
Like your Reapers recap as well. Thank you for the grandest work!
This has been such an enjoyable series to watch. A thorough analysis all around. I'm looking forward to your next work!
That was amazing. Over the last two days I watched your entire trilogy analysis back to back, and I know I will spend many more hours with your videos. Mass Effect is what got me into gaming in the first point, and being led along everything that makes this series so amazing, sometimes frustrating and always special, was a great experience. Especially as your perspective is often one I hadn't considered before, you truly managed to shine a new yet light on something so familiar. Thank you!
Excellent video! I had no problem with the length. I look forward to watching many more of your videos!
Wow...
You not only betrayed Wrex, but Mordin as well. So unbelievably cold hearted and evil. I hate you private sessions!
Ki lang is a fucking mall ninja with no reason to exist in Mass effect
Real. I didn't understand the need for him, either. The dude was barely even able to survive Thane, and he was terminally ill.
This was a joy watching you stram and then the finished result! Also gotta say dam that fable music slaps...
God I can't wait to watch all 3 videos now, back to back. Good shit man keep it up.
Easily some of the best game analysis videos I’ve seen from this channel. Keep them up!
You did miss one detail. One crucial detail about the Reapers in ME 1.
The Citadel wasn't JUST the gate to dark space. The reason it was retroactively made into the crucible and the reason the reapers auto-win all the time: the Citadel is the central control unit for THE ENTIRE MASS RELAY NETWORK. From it one can open and close traffic to and from any relay in the galaxy. That's why control of it is so important.
So ... why do the Reapers go for Earth instead of the Citadel? Even Arrival says that unless we have a solution to the citadel problem, as soon as reapers reach us it's over. They arrive, they hit the Citadel, they remove all mass relay travel, game over.
Oh wait, we wanted big reaper war spectacle and tragedy all over the galaxy and cheap religious nightmare imagery ... So um ... Reapers go for earth. And we forget about the whole "Citadel controls all relay travel" revelation. Sad thing is that revelation is HOW you get a reaper war. After ME 1 and using Vigil and the Ilos archives by ME 3 the galaxy has figured out HOW to control the Relay network via Citadel. So when the reapers come they start using that to fight the reapers by closing their methods of travel and forcing them to be slow and incapable of simply zipping around space destroying everything. They allow the galaxy to concentrate forces locally. Reapers fight back by hacking individual relays as time goes on blah blah blah ...
It also can be used to justify WHY we get invasion of the Citadel, be it from cerberus indoctrination magic army or better yet from the reapers themselves.
Great video series keep it up man!
I find it funny how you're constantly at odds against Cerberus, Shephard is basically beatin' their asses to hell and back, and somehow, they still have the sizeable funding and fleet to always be present. At this point, that company would be blacklisted in both The Alliance and The Council, actively hunted down by both, and yet, somehow, they're still present and persistent. With how many times their asses have been beaten over the course of the entire series, even pirates/privateers/black markets wouldn't touch Cerberus/Illusive Man because of how much an embarrassment they are. Bioware sincerely and severely wrote themselves into a corner with the Illusive Man and Cerberus.
Great content! Was definitely cool to see the renegade options through this series.
Hey, i really enjoyed these video essays, thank you for making them. You did a great job.
Just wanted to say I really appreciate your content. I hope you continue to grow your channel and make videos. I know I’ll be watching every one.
I must say I very much disagree regarding the Rannoch arc
The whole nuance and grey is there in the arc but the issue is that BioWare makes an active attempt to make the Geth innocent by either ignoring or disregarding their atrocities, such as them wiping out 99.9% of the entire Quarian population (mass majority being billions of innocent men women and children) or killing any organic who attempted contact for 300 years. I’d argue that because of that attempt BioWare unintentionally made the Geth either malicious or just really dumb. And it doesn’t help that they willingly joined the Reapers instead of moving to a lifeless system or cluster (which 95% of the Milky Way is)
In terms of pragmatism, I find the decision of joining the Geth plain contradictory and counter intuitive, not only do the Geth want to reupload the reaper Code (which contradicts what Legion said), a code that was just enslaving them two minutes ago, which gives the very high possibility that the Reapers would use it to control them again in their next encounter, but the Geth willingly joined the Reapers, which automatically makes them untrustworthy; they did this for self preservation (despite other options being present), and we’re in a losing war where the Reapers are crippling every organic species and their military by the minute, why would I believe the Geth won’t join the Reapers again when realising that the Reapers are most likely gonna kill us all? I know the Quarians are competent and even more effective according to the War Assets for some reason but most importantly, I know for a fact they won’t join the Reapers at all, nor are they gonna put reaper tech in their brains that’d potentially brainwash them. But I do the Geth might.
There are also other reasons such as why would the council support you after joining the Geth and giving them reaper tech. But in conclusion, the Geth are the worst pragmatic option. I’d also argue in terms of moral judgement but that’s another topic.
The Geth are a gestalt AI, so it is at least possible that they could just “choose” to be better. That’s not nearly as inexcusable as what BioWare did with the krogan and genophage. They took a species that is extremely violent and biologically inclined towards population explosion and said that everything could be fixed with one good leader and feminism.
@@mushyroom9569 it’s not about their free will, it’s about who they join. Their choice to be better already stems to them surviving and evolving, which the Reapers offer, hence why they willingly joined them, making themselves an enemy to all life in the galaxy. Why wouldn’t they join the Reapers when they realise they’re with the losing side and will most likely die.
At least with the Krogan, even tho you are absolutely correct, we know they won’t join the Reapers, they’re a necessary muscle. It is implied that anyone who doesn’t follow Wrex is cut down by him and his clan, he’s basically a tyrant, but at least he’s with us? Despite the fact he held an entire galaxy hostage for a sickness that is not actively destroying everybody… and you can’t call him out on that.
Started watching with your "Life as a Skyrim Mage" and finally finished all three of your Mass Effect videos. You do an excellent job at diving into these games and their stories to find out what makes them tick, and I really appreciated listening through each of them. I look forward to seeing more from you, I'm very curious to find what is to come.
Like you mentioned at the end of the video, for all of my excitement and interest in Mass Effect's world... I just do not have any confidence for the series' return. I want them to give it a proper revival, but sadly I just do not see either BioWare or EA as companies that can or are willing to produce games that do the world of the series justice. I hope I'm proven wrong, but hope is all it is.
Regarding ME3 itself, an issue with ME3's Rannoch conflict is that the history of the conflict presented to Shepard leaves out that the Geth only spared 1% of the total Quarian population according to previous information established in the universe, rather than a clear-cut everyone who retreated that the Geth history implies. That isn't as well known because, unfortunately, that information is locked in the codex, thus most players only see the history as shown by the Geth without numbers like that to sour them. When 99% of their population was wiped out in retaliation by Geth, I think it is wholly understandable for the Quarians to be hesitant to believe Geth interest in peace and it keeps the conflict between the two from being a clear cut "Geth are the victims" situation as the Quarians would have been removed as a threat far before their population percentage dropped to single digits.
I think one option for dealing with the Rachni Queen would be to replace the Rachni with Keepers.
From what we know, the Keepers are an ancient genetically modified species similar to the Collectors. They are also buglike, and minor changes to the Ravager's design could facilitate a Keeper origin rather than Rachni as they have vaguely similar body plans, and so, you could keep the AI exactly the same.
You could either encounter the Rachni Queen if you saved her, or possibly a Reaper machine acting as a controller for Keeper forces for if she was dead.
Perhaps the machine disguises itself as simply built by the Reapers to control the Keepers, having its own free will and such. We could talk to it and learn more about the Keepers, what the Reaper plan is for the Keepers (being replaced by Geth), and convince it to join us and use its Keeper forces against the Reapers, only for it to betray us exactly like the Reaper Rachni Queen does.
We could even still have Wrex assume the Rachni are back, and have all the dialogue associated with the Rachni still happen, only for the big reveal to be the Keepers were the ones the Reapers were cloning, since of course they were, the Reapers heavily genetically modified the Keepers into a servant race, of course they can clone them.
This could even raise the question of if the Collectors were still out there, as another genetically modified servant race, maybe the Collectors were still threats being rebuilt by the Reapers somewhere, and indeed, in Multiplayer we see the Collectors still are a threat to the galaxy. Okay so now I have to do a rewrite of the game to make this fun. Skip to Blood Pack for just Collector stuff.
Let's say that we fix Aria's quest involving uniting the merc groups under her. Rather than weird Citadel quests, we have something more befitting of Mercs, and have some more violence. Treat each of the merc groups with full mission respect.
**Blue Suns**
We could have Zaeed on a Blue Suns mission rather than his weird cameo, reminiscent of his loyalty but he's now a changed man. There are five ways this mission could go.
1. Zaeed, having killed Vido in the last game, now hunts down Solem Dal'serah (the new Blue Suns leader) to take back the Blue Suns and use his forces against Cerberus after they attempted to assassinate him. He readily accepts the support from Aria to accomplish this.
2. Zaeed, having let Vido go, is contacted by Vido to hunt down Solem Dal'serah and to dedicate the Blue Suns to protecting terminus system worlds. Zaeed concerned if this is another trap requests Shepard's help. Upon genuine completion of this quest, Zaeed can either kill Vido or be prevented through dialogue/an interrupt. The Blue Suns new leader(s) will now swear loyalty to Aria.
3. Zaeed, having never been recruited, or died in the suicide mission without completing his loyalty, will not be present. Your mission will be through Vido, who will tell you that he is loyal to Aria but the guy running the Blue Suns isn't, and that he needs to take back the faction. He will also mention if only he listened to Zaeed, then Solem never would have been in charge.
4. Zaeed, having died in the Suicide Mission but having completed his Loyalty Mission, will not be present. Instead, Aria will inform you to meet up with someone who can help. Upon reaching the meeting place, Ka'hairal Balak will point a gun at Shepard, not knowing Aria had sent you. Had the player killed him in ME1, instead it will be Charn. Charn would be skeptical, and Balak would threaten Shepard. Eitherway, the plan is the same, take over the Blue Suns and integrate it into the remaining Batarian army. If Balak is in charge, the Blue Suns will defect and stop being a war asset, which won't happen if Charn is in charge.
5. If Zaeed, Vido, Balak, and Charn are dead, we will meet with Anto, who will be friendly to Shepard and will simply try and pull Solem in line rather than replace him. This mission could actually be done with no fighting, though having Solem in charge of the Blue Suns will not yield as much warscore.
In all but the last route in this quest, Solem is replaced with someone else and the Blue Suns are under new management, and the quest is completed.
**Eclipse**
This could be a fun reference quest of helping the Eclipse finish a contract involving assassination, which could involve more of the Dantius family. Perhaps Nassana Dantius was assassinated by a sister of hers (Sister A), and either another sister (Sister B) or perhaps Nassana's daughter has hired Eclipse to assassinate the person who hired Sister A. Eclipse has gone overbudget on this request, but would rather not drop the contract as the client owns Armali Council and is a big supplier of Eclipse tech. There are many ways such a quest could go, maybe it'd be party-stealth similar to the Casino in Citadel DLC or Kasumi's Loyalty in ME2, or maybe it'd be like Thane's recruitment and fighting up a big tower to get to someone rich and powerful, or hell, it could even be the reverse with protecting the Dantius that hired Eclipse to protect them rather than assassinate.
Eitherway, complete the quest for Eclipse and easy war asset.
**Blood Pack**
Now this is the one that had me wanting to rewrite Aria specifically.
Perhaps there is a Blood Pack headquarters-outpost under threat from the Collectors. How do we know when normally they are silent? Perhaps the Vorcha. Vorcha could possibly resist the stasis tricks just enough to get a message out, or possibly leave the planet, after all this isn't a full strength Collector force, they're attacking a mercenary outpost. The Collectors are struggling to take the Vorcha and Krogan, but that's exactly why they're there. The Reapers are struggling with these two specific groups. They need to collect them for study. The leader of the Blood Pack of course has been a bit busy to respond to Aria, but happily joins Aria's side once more once the threat is dealt with. The quest would involve a similar Reaper contraption as the Keepers, controlling and organising the Collectors.
After all this, Aria would finally have the three main merc groups under her control, and the Omega DLC can begin.
It took me 6 hours of video (the last one, plus part of this one) to realize that when you were calling The Illusive Man "Tim", that was an acronym and not just his first name... Boy do I feel dumb. But honestly, now I'm just sad the devs didn't sneak a normal-sounding first name for him in as an easter egg 😂
Me 1 is easily the best of the franchise for me, I never was as huge a fan of ME2 as most people are, it always felt inconsequential and barely connected to the overarcing story, it wasnt bad but ME 1 was just absolutely stunning experience for me when I first played it, I never had such a feeling from any of the other ME games despite liking them a lot.
Tbh I always had issues replaying the third game, not that I didnt enjoy it but at points I was excited to get into it but quickly found myself bored or annoyed and was never really sure quite how to explain it aside for some of the major issues, this neatly lays out some of the issues I had felt in the backround a very cool video, thanks :)
Maybe lower the music in the backround tho, it gets really annoying after a while.
I think ME2 feels inconsequential because ME3 didnt use any assets that ME2 brought to the table or very little because of lack of time and resources.
Thanks for your work here. Good job
Been watching your work. Excellent job! Kudos!
Nice touch with a lot of these music choices. Wasnt expecting the Fable music towards the end. Gwyns theme amongst the ruins of Tachanka. CP2077 for the reapers.
Nice vocabulary of music you have there.
I loathe all three ending choices; arguably destroy is the closest one to an ideal finale, but still misses the mark. I've had something like the better part of a decade to ponder this, and the best course, assuming minimal changes with regards to the mass effect plot before star child, is that the crucible is a giant systems hack for reapers; a huge electronic black box back-end working off mass relay/citadel reapertech to figure out how to adequately kill these bastards and bypass their shields, etcetera. Then we contrive a war victory condition based on the war readiness meter- which is hopefullly divorced from mandatory multiplayer, and we enjoy a conventional military victory over the reaper threat. Bonus points if we can make a few hard calls along the way. Double bonus points for a penultimate renegade option that has us desolate earth herself to cripple the reaper Over-fleet; they are so densely massed in/around it after all.
Jingoistic? A llttle trite and hard-scifi? Forced after we just watched anderson bleed out? Yes, all of those. It sucks, but narrative holes are all over this ever since they did that hard-rewrite in response to the ME3 script leak.
This entire franchise is the death knell of old good bioware. Its the exact sort of thing you expect from the authors of dragon-age 2.
I loved you like a brother, mass effect. You were supposed to bring order to action RPGs, not bring the genre all into darkness.
It's so exhausting, getting to that ridiculous cosmic space bridge with three stupid color coded paths. It's almost as insulting as deus ex human revolution "press button for desired end"
The illusion of choice made me wish there was just a linear path that did us right all along. Player agency means nothing if we are made the agents of our own demise.
Also synthesis is the most laughable, forced, cosmic body horror imaginable backed up by zero technobabble. Its such insurmountable tripe- especially for a setting and universe that was in no way working with transhumanism beyond light gene-therapy. I will never not laugh at the schlock glowing green overlay glow on everybody. I love how despite 'choice' being apparently paramount for organics and indeed all life, every option is us exercising unimaginable dominion over an entire galaxy. We erase civilizations with a sweep of the hand, or become an allmighty fascist reaper control mechanism, or overrule an entire galaxy of wildly different religions, cultures, and civilizations that yes, they must glow with a stupid green overlay for the good of... the geth, I guess? What a god damn mess. Mass effect 3 killed the franchise. ME4 needs to course correct a whole bunch if it wants to be anything but the funeral bell for a once great studio.
Control is a fun ending choice by the way, if you roleplay shepard as having been slowly indoctrinated this entire time. Have him embody and form the cyber core of the new human reaper. Bring forth ruin and death as the herald of the very thing he sought to prevent. Dark and bitter and gritty. Still a better ending than space ghost fascist reaper-police.
One more thing could be done right as progressing the dialog with the Star Child. Put simply the Star Child keeps trying to tell Sheppard that they fucked up, that this war is already bringing about the end of everything, and queue rupture in space on both sides, on the reaper side it would mostly be harmless, but on the Alliance side it would be devastating, ripping apart ships, and swallowing fights whole.
See... The Star Child would say, and Sheppard, distraught would freak out, trying to swat at the Star Child, not understanding what is going on.
The kid would respond that Eezo was always a bad thing, but a necessary evil, that the reapers are exactly that, harvesters of civilizations to a greater goal, coming to safeguard the remains of civilisations before they destroy themselves fighting their creations (AI) or before the Eezo masses start erupting from overuse, aka the massive war outside. And that the only way to do this is to harvest the species into Reapers, because there are no resources where they are going... And the alternative, destruction of the Mass Relays would do nothing, as it simply slows down the process. They are harvesting to come up with a solution, but even in the eons they haven't found one.
Great retrospective as always, your take on the ending was very thought provoking. Nicely done!
Congrats!!! I just turned off another creators pt 2 retrospective and this is already better 🙌
The mystery is always more fun than the answer.
Need to play through these games again. I loved the first game but my love for the series slowly evaporated each sequel.
I went back to the first one and how stellar. Honestly I was not hyped to move on to the second or third, but I may give them another shot sometime.
Thank you for this series. I never finished the first one due to the gameplay loop just being boring but it’s nice to hear where the story went even with the little I knew of it from my time with ME 1
Great content. Never played more than 2ish hours of ME1, and none of ME2&3, may have to give them a look after watching these videos.
Gray job kid. I watched all 3 videos and appreciate the work you put in
‘Great’. I hate autocorrect
Is the implication that the VI on Thessia confirms Kai Leng/TIM is indoctrinated? I just figured it detected reaper influence on Leng since Cerberus has been using Reaper tech on their troops, not that they were literally indoctrinated.
Their normal soldiers are at the very least indoctrinated, a few of which show up with Leng, which would have thrown the flag regardless of whether he himself is indoctrinated. My personal speculation for how Cerberus was able to build up an elite fighting force so quickly was that they were trying to use Reaper indoctrination tech to massively speed up training time. Though, this does little to explain their sudden explosion in available materiel. The fleet in the Omega DLC is a particular head-scratcher. Like, warships usually take years to build, so a significant portion of that fleet had to have been already built during the events of ME2. Did no one in Cerberus think that maybe it'd be a good idea to send at the very least an extra frigate or two as support once we discovered that the collectors were operating out of the Omega-4 relay?
As for TIM in ME3, I thought the game had pretty clearly set up his indoctrination from the fact that he is covered in reaper cybernetics.
Indoctrination works on different levels, just like how Saren counted on keeping his mental estate to an extent as it was a useful tool, too much control would limit the subject's capacity.
Would love to see multiplayer again but with settings where you can set up the number of waves from 10 to 100 AND maybe some sort of Coop missions like a miniature 2 or 4 player story mode.
3:16:13 lmfao I love how this part always sounded like it came out of GTA or something. "Let's kick them in the balls first for a change!" "I'm with James. Anyone know where they're hiding? Anyone?" Like it's CJ and the gang about to go do a drive-by on some Ballas
This, along with your videos about ME and ME2, got to be ones of my favorite longform videos about Mass Effect franchise. You gave a very insightful and unbiased perspective on this project that underwent quite a way from its inception to a tragic finale. I played whole 3 games when I was a teenager and was blissfully unaware of all story inconsistencies, plot holes, voice acting issues, only praising the game for a player story and characters. After a while the problems of the second and third game became more evident to me and I think I made my mind about them, but did not understand that until this very day, when I watched your video. Even though all three games conflict with each other stylistically, the criticism that you provided did not make me hate those games more, but weirdly I started to appreciate them in another form. Not as a canvas that is on the wall in your bedroom, but as a painting in the art gallery, with its flaws and imperfections. Sort of like a lesson from a history. The lesson that you very professionally illustrated. I just hope that there will be story-driven RPG games, that will learn from this lesson that Mass Effect trilogy left.
Your analysis made me wonder how Mass Effect would look like if Bioware were not purchased by EA. Is it strange that ME2 became oriented for broader audiences with corporate acquisition? It's quite sad that companies with their own unique formulas for games are forced to compromise this vision to sell better and be more popular.
I will be looking forward to supercut about whole trilogy. Also I want to wish you luck and a lot of patience if you are going to analyze such controversial topic as Mass Effect Andromeda. Even though it is universally hated, I personally think it's an interesting, if only raw installment of the series. Even with much more flaws than the original trilogy, I think time will recontextualize it and fit it in the broader universe with the ME4 release. Looking forward to your analysis, it definitely will be fascinating.
So yeah, a lot of thoughts from just watching your video. But I want to say that watching this video left me inspired. And I appreciate it. Thank you!
I was 36 when ME1 came out & was a Calloused & Jaded veteran by that point, so I saw pretty much everything from the get-go.
Yet, ME1 still impressed me, as I saw Bioware take everything they had learned in earlier games & smooth the rough edges, while dramatically improving their cinematic presentation. Though I enjoyed playing ME2, it was clear the introduction (Normandy destroyed, Shepard Killed) told us everything that had happened- What you know is dead. Something that LOOKS like it has been brought to life to replace it. I had a little bit of hope for ME3, as even 3 days before release, one of the big devs said that there was no bespoke ending of A, B, or C.
Yes, a blatant lie. Par for the course. I was glad to see our reviewer catch on that James Vega represents the demographic that EA wanted to appeal to. When I started up the game & saw that you could *Turn Off* Roleplaying (in a ROLEplaying game), it was clear that the ME I had been pleasantly surprised by in 1, was dead and gone.
The real tragedy is that Bioware COULD have gone on independently, except for financial mismanagement. Their games sold well enough, but sadly the stereotype of Artists not being Financially-Minded was totally accurate. Nothing malicious, just bad choices. Joining EA sadly only compounded the problem, because though Bioware the Corporation was saved, 'Bioware' one of the last big developers that made money to make games (instead of making games to make money.) had still died.
I doubt we will ever see their like again. I had a little hope for Archetype Entertainment, which was formed in 2018 by a number of Ex-Bioware developers, but I saw they were recently purchased by Wizards of the Coast (Owned by Hasbro), so my hope has again been crushed. They will not be allowed to make any games that go against the E.S.G.- BIg Corpo messaging.
Yeah make Anderson a Councilor just so he becomes some kind of a fleet admiral back again.
If we ever get a ME spin off, it would be dope to play as javik. The brief glimpses you get into his past through convo would be awesome to see play out.
The geth are 'portrayed' as little innocent puppies in this game BUT, the geth still killed 99% of the quarians, which would include children and other non-combatants, i dont remember any implication that the geth 'let the quarians go', to me it always read as the geth didn't want to pursue the quarians into council space, fearing retaliation
Your intro perfectly describes my feelings towards the game, which I still hold to this day, and why I have only played ME3 single player once, compared to many playthroughs of ME and ME2. If I were to keep this short, to me, the good parts of the game shined the brightest (Tuchanka Rannoch), but those were not enough to cover for the rest of mediocrity, questionable design and story choices and the ending.
Big yes to the improved combat. Once of the reasons I've played so much of ME3 multiplayer mode. The scanning mini-game never really bothered me, not in ME2, nor in ME3, so I am indifferent here.
Do you think ME3 would've benefitted with a slower start, have a build up towards the invasion of Earth, to get us a bit up to speed between ME2 and ME3, because as it is now, the start of the game felt jarring. With that said, I think the story leaned too heavily into the "Save Earth" narrative, and Earth itself played too much of a role in a story where the ENTIRE civilizations of the Milky Way are to be exterminated.
I've replayed 3 a lot but I've only done the ending once. The choices in 3 are very important until all of a sudden they're not. I play until the Asari mission then stop.
So I’ve finally watched your entire trilogy and I have greatly enjoyed your insight on the entire Mass Effect series. They have all been fantastic watches and I’m looking forward to the day when you cover other Bioware games like Dragon Age or Star Wars or their even older RPGs under Black Isles.
Something kinda funny is this game had a bug where if you romanced Tali in 2, then didn't romance anyone else in 3, Tali could die on Ranoch and she would still show up for the romance scene at the end of the game.
Also you missed an ending.
You can turn around and shoot the star child and get a bad ending where the crucible just shuts down and the harvest continues.
The fun thing though is if you have high enough galactic readiness, this turns into what could be interpreted as a good ending where despite not using the crucible, the Reapers are defeated and the heroic story of Shephard is told for years to come.
I really like your conclusions in the "The End" section
awesome video keep up the good work
Fable music in the child's endchamber, nice touch.
4:24:33 what track is this? I wasn't able to guess while looking over the music spreadsheet.
anyway: as someone who has played ME 1 and 2 to death in the past, this series has been a brilliant listen. you bring a lot to the table as far as discussion goes and I'm lucky to have seen these. I'm looking forward to listening to more of your stuff!
They tried way too hard to make Wrex the "fun violent uncle"
Your best video yet
If you try to fight the brutes during the tuchunka endgame, the game spawns another one immediately, you basically end up having 3 brutes at all times and its a clustertruck of stupidity
amazing set if videos fr bro
I hate that you cannot save Lieutenant Victus I mean no throw, pull, singularity, hell a combat drone! I like the mission itself, I mean the Turians might not be all sold on the Genophage to stick, a big bomb sounds very Turian. But the fact he dies for no reason except to make amends is just stupid.
Mass Effect 3 revealed that we had been lied to throughout 1 & 2. As we were given the illusion tat we had a choice. As choice between Paragon and Renegade. Renegade was more fun but then we get to 3 we discover that unless you have been 100% Paragon throughout you don't have the forces you could've had and don't have access to every side mission. You will go into the final battle under prepared and under powered compared to what you will have if you go 100% Paragon from the start.
Plus, by playing Renegade you actually have less content and lore options to go with in ME 3 (and worse options for the entire game), which is why most people just play Goody shoes Paragons, with some possibility of Renegade flare with the inconsequential renegade interrupts and dialogue options. The series after ME1 was heavily scewed towards Paragon playthroughs, with ME 3 making Renegade flat out the "evil" playthrough, which is insane since Paragon and Renegade should not have been good/evil alignment charts, but they somehow screwed up what little the series had different compared to other RPGs.
Video was a good ride 👍🏼
at 2:28:55 Tali is my favorite ME character and that scene is exactly how it played out for me the first time i played ME3 and it genuinely hurt my feelings. i felt really conflicted on what the right decision would have been cuz i liked both tali and legion so when it died too i was really sad lol.
your take on the mass effect 3 ending is the best ive ever heard
its a good sci fi ending in theory, the question on how to handle ai is not something we figured out yet.
the crucible plans not being found and destroyed does not bother me since it means humanity didnt make this happen on its own, and thats fitting to mass effects story overall
also, no other sci fi universe did aliens better
About 0:08:00 : there's a very limited "free weapon upgrade" available from time to time. If you find a weapon the second time as a pickup, you'll get the Lv 2 weapon. But it's so infrequent (and to my recollection doesn't happen beyond L2 like ever) that your criticism is still valid. :-) The one I think of most quickly is at Grissom Academy. You can find a Mattock assault rifle lying about. If you've completed Project Overlord in ME2, David Archer unlocks the security office, where there is another Mattock--picking this up will lvl your mattock to 2.
ME’s main problem is that it couldn’t commit to its premise. On one hand, it wanted to tell a story about our relationship to technology. On the other, it wanted to tell a cosmic horror story. These two premises are at war with each other. Either the Reapers are incomprehensible abominations, or they are instruments of a completely intelligible cycle of conflict between organic and machines.
The series’ inability to reconcile these two premises undermined its villains, and consequently, its core themes. The way Shepard beats the Reapers makes no sense because the conflict makes no sense.
Also if you played Renegade it makes no sense for a Renegade Shepherd just to hand himself and his ship over to the Alliance and accept his fate.
For me "any of this" meant, Bioware was off my list of blindly buying every game they release, because i have so much trust in the quality of their writing. Which honestly depresses me a little bit, but that husk is not the Bioware I loved and trusted anymore.
people can criticize the gameplay or the way the dialogue system/reputation system works in ME, but you really can't deny that bioware managed to create a world that has hooked people for years on end. (just wish that andromeda didn't sour that feeling)
This. This is what Let's Play/Streaming (and to a lesser extent, video essays) are about.
I struggled with a question that nagged me about the then-nascent Let's Play boom - why watch someone else play games? Sure, different strokes and all, but for me that type of content just never made sense. Watching someone play a game I had already completed multiple times seemed pointless: if I loved a game that much, I'd just play it myself. Watching someone play a game I hadn't played wasn't interesting either because if it was a game I was curious about then the entire game would be spoiled.
But your Mass Effect series really shows the value in the genre. Despite the fact that I've played the ME trilogy maybe 5 times (7 for ME2 and ME3 by themselves), there are so many dialogue options and story possibilities that I would never get to see otherwise. For a well-made series like ME, those gameplay possibilities are really worth seeing - the developers put a lot of time and effort into creating them.
TL;DR - Your upload provided another facet of color to a game experience that was already pretty colorful. Well done - you earned this sub.
You know after watching this whple video. I actually really like your crucible theory. Evidence is there and makes me appreciate the ending of three more. Can't wait to replay these games
MARAUDER SHIELDS!!
About Wrex's changed behaviour in me3, I believe he acts the same as his brother Wreave in the same scenes if the former is dead. There are differences, especially toward the conclusion, and the game tells you that Wrex apparently will be different than his power-hungry brother, but I was not at all convinced by the whole immaturish display, believing I was dooming the other species to extinction just because Wrex was a bro and I just couldn't betray him. It's hard to tell, what is the true meaning of this. The obvious answer of course, the devs didn't have time or desire to actually write different dialogue/ behaviour. The Virmire survivor suffers from the same "syndrome". In their case, it's not even merging Kaidan and Ashley into one character, but rather writing the canon VS as Ashley and just letting Kaidan play the act.
Actually, Ashley was completely screwed and assassinated in ME3 where Ashley Kardashian takes over. Kaidan keeps most of his personality and appearance intact which is way better than Ashley. Ashley was pornified and used for sex appeal BUT is actually of no substance at all.
@@Dark_Voice I quite agree, but I am not touching appearences here, which deserve quite a rant for both(!) of them. I am talking behaviour, specifically in the period which starts at the Horizon in me2 and ends with the death of Udina. The two survivors are identical with some tweaks in me3. And so, like some people, I am more inclined to believe that everything that happens within this period suits Ashley the most. But here is the catch, it's still a bad and disrespecful writing. No use of biotics even when in grave danger, but just shooting at the swarm with a pistol isn't very clever either; the infamous heated argument afterwards (speaking in the heat of the moment instead of using your head, something that distinguishes the two as per me1, okay okay, but that right there is a "Conflict ball" for the sole reason of deleting the survivor from the game and from your heart (somebody on the dev team must have really hated them); going and going on about your work with Cerberus when noone else has any problem with that (wait... why doesn't ANYONE else have any problem? Is it because the survivor is stupid or is it everyone else?); finally, being tricked, played into confrontation on the Citadel by receiving a Spectre promotion (maybe that's a good one, but Udina being the bad guy all along isn't). On the other hand, the "acting out of character is serious business" trope might have worked for Kaidan, but it was forced upon a character, who is so rarely saved. After this, sure, their personality finally comes into fruition, and yes, Ashley is a mess on several levels while Kaidan feels more like a character who've had substantional development and not just a rewrite (I am thinking Liara). I am still not happy with Kaidan in me3, but it's mostly because of me3 being a nonsensical mess, and without proper worldbuilding and plot, how can a character really flourish? I blame me2, actually, it all begins there.
I'm a bit late but about the "Sovereign" class reapers.
IIRC those should be around 2 km tall
two. kilometers.
The ones that landed on Earth were building sized, or at most half the size of Sovereign.
Buuuut at the same time, Mass Effect is no stranger to fucking up the size of stuff, with some stuff having more room on the inside than the outside and whatnot
I'm gonna end up coming back to edit this as i watch more of the video.
I always took the Spectre fucking off after Kasumi blows up the computer as him going "ah, she MUST be dead, guess I better call off the investigation, WINK WINK" but I admit it's been a long time since I've seen that exact scene.
As for the groan from James going "this is loco!", I actually had a best friend growing up who had moved to America from Mexico as a toddler and he played up his being Mexican a lot. He loved being player 2 when we played the original Gears of War together because he thought he looked a lot like Dom. He loved to shout shit like "Man, I'M MEXICAN" as a somewhat tongue in cheek point of pride. It was goofy, but James always reminded me of him and it never quite bothered me THAT much.
I think Cerberus was trying to kill off the council to disrupt Citadel relations, but I have nothing to back that up other than Udina, a human, was in cahoots and would have had power for a while, and because I can't think of another reason for doing it.
I also think the "they've been sneaking weappns past security" thing was supposed to read like a bunch of agents stormed C-Sec to take over that specific dock (or perhaps several docks) in order to let in the armored goons, not that the armored goons were snuck in.
Cerberus can still be small and large in this context, however I am not disagreeing that they're stretching the scale when it's convenient for them. In a galaxy where humanity's population is, without me actually looking it up anywhere, presumably in the 2 digit billions at this point, a fraction of that could still be quite a large number. Especially in the wake of the Reaper invasion (and Shepard's warnings about it as far back as ME1), I could see recruitment being at an all time high. A private army of 20,000 or so, purely spitballing, would be tiny in the galaxy but more than enough to cause some problems. Sometimes they make it sound like Cerberus damn near took over the Citadel, but I'm gonna chalk that up to the Kai Leng writer who I've heard some humorous things about.