Biggest plot holes in games

[J Tyran]

you're just imagining up what happened to fill in an unanswered question. It still doesn't account for why they even needed ground based vehicles in the first place when airborne shuttles are far more useful in every way.

it was an answer to a question you cooked up, you decided they had to have been dropped off by a starship or they had no way of being on Mars before the attack on the base. Sure my answer was conjecture but it doesn't take a lot of imagination to realize that because they had land vehicles that they obviously drove there. If they did have a spaceship you would think "oh they flew there" so the same applies to the land vehicles. The attack was in the planning for a while with Dr Eva being planted as an insider, so being prepared for the attack and waiting nearby within driving distance is no great leap either.

Your question was conjecture but my answer was based on observation.

Edit: as for your third point, I never said they HAD to use the stairs, just have a scene where Anderson goes to the door tries to open it and it jams or breaks. That simple. It just needed to be explained or shown why the simplest solution wasn't taken first. I never said you had to pick between awesome set pieces and making sense. Had the writing staff been competent they could have accomplished both.

Edit Edit: come to think of it, having Shepard running through the interior as it shakes and lights flicker and doors explode with fire, people shouting and panicking as cielings and floors collapse and people die would have probably been way more intense and personal. Sure the dreadnought exploding was neat, but it was far from what i'd call dramatic. Watching officers struggle to survive the invasion maybe a few of them break down and huddle in corners, crying to themselves as husks crawl in through holes blasted into the building close in around them. THAT would have been awesome.

So what you really meant to say was "I didn't like the intro sequence and think it should have been different instead of saying "they didn't use the stairs, what a terrible plot hole!"

Btw I went back and checked, the door was actually destroyed not just blocked or jammed. The entire back wall is tangled metal and rubble.

 

[J Tyran]

I never said once that they HAD to come off starships, I asked an "If then" question that branched off from my first question "How did they get here and why?" So no it's not invented.

The answer to the question "how did Cerberus get there" is answered, the vehicles got them there.

As for the entire intro? No I don't care for it as a whole, I find it rather ham fisted, but that's a matter of opinion.

Nothing wrong with not liking it at all, like you say its a matter of opinion. Where you went wrong is trying to pass something subjective off as objective by saying its a plot hole.

As for the door being completely broken, do you know when we see this? I would like to go and check this myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jrACow5jnfE#t=584s*

As you can clearly see the back wall behind Shepard is completely covered in metal and rubble.

Edit
*My god what have I done? Here it comes....... "why is Ashleys armour blue? Why where there three members of the Alliance on the council? Why was a Marine yelling in into the transmission?............"

 

[Mikeyfell]

See, that's just not true. The ending itself is dependent on two factors: your color choice and how much grinding you did in multiplayer.

cute, but both of those things are contained in ME3

Events up until that moment are influenced by hundreds of factors from the previous games; right off the top of my head there's treatment of Conrad Verner,

Who is only present in one scene of the game.
And simply doesn't appear if you didn't treat him well enough.
D-

conversations with Tali and Legion,

All very questionable, the only time I failed to get peace was the one time I gave Legion to Cerberus AND let Tali die on the Suicide mission.

But hardly any of the plot points changed for that run of missions. The Legion VI was the most frustrating part of that game.

saving or abandoning the original Council

Absolutely incorrect.
And I'm ashamed of you for even trying to defend this one.
The new Council was a literal Carbon Copy of the first Council.
Except the Turian and the Asari switched motivations and the Salarian was a girl now

But it didn't effect any of their interactions with themselves or Udina or Shepard. It doesn't effect the Content of the missions they send you on, It doesn't effect the FUCKING ORDER of the missions they send you on.

The Old Council doesn't seem to remember you saved their lives 3 years ago until you save them again.
The New Council doesn't divert to Udina's opinion because he's the most senior councilor.

It's always the Turian who comes to you first
It's always the Salarian who Cerberus tries to assassinate
and it's always the Asari who asks for your help after it's too late

The old Council's Truian should never have come to you first because he hated humanity (As evidenced by every comm chat you had with him in ME1)
and the old Asari would have never withheld support for so long because she's more supportive of humanity and understands that the Asari aren't a militaristic people.

protecting Kirrahe on Virmire

Fair enough. That only comes up if Thane died, but fair enough.

dealing with Wrex's tantrum at the cloning facility

I suppose, but ultimately it only effects your likeliness of convincing Mordin not to kill himself.
And even if you do convince Mordin not to die on Tuchanka you never speak to him again so... there's that.
But true enough.

sparing the Rachni queen,

Ha...Ha hahahahaha.
You think that mattered?! HAHAHA
Oh, great.
I spared the Rachnai Queen. Oh no they got indoctrinated again!
I killed the Rachnai Queen. Oh no! They magically came back to life (Cloned...Cloned from what? Magic!) and the Reapers Indoctrinated them again!

That makes SUCH a big difference to the plot.
And yes I know that if you killed her in ME1 and saved her in ME3 your numbers go down instead of up. But the only thing the numbers effect are a 3 second breath scene. (Which is another plot hole if the Citadel blew up and crashed back to Earth Shepard's corpse would have dissolved on reentry. But that's not important)

how many of the Asari Matriarch's writings you gathered while chasing Saren...

Huh, Explain this one to me.

Granted, many of these things have outcomes that seem roughly equivalent on the face, since it's just not feasible to make an entirely different game for every possible combination of factors

Really? Because After I finished Mass Effect 3 I sat down in a fit of rage and wrote one.
I'm not programing gameplay or designing levels or anything but I wrote a script that takes into account every combination of choices you can make in the first 2 games.
When it comes right down to it there aren't that many factors you have to take into account.

As far as broad strokes go there's
Did you save the Rachnai Queen
Did you save Wrex
Did you save Kerrhie
Kaiden/Ashley
Did you give Tali the Data
Did you let Garrus kill Hart
Did you find Wrex's armor
Did you save Shiala on Ferros/or destroy the colony
Did Anderson punch Udina/ or hack the terminal
Save/kill the Council
Anderson/Udina

Were you Paragon or Renegade with the Illusive Man
Did you keep or destroy the Collector base
Did you promote or undermine Aria on Omega
How did you deal with Malen and his data
Did you get Tali Exiled
Did you take Legion on the Flotilla
Did you out Tali's father's experiments
Did you let Garrus shoot Sodonis
Did you save Samara or Morinth
Did you give Legion to Cerberus
Did you rewrite or destroy the Heretics
Did you cheat on your love interest
DLC: Did you destroy Kasumi's data. (That is unbelievably important considering what it turned out to be.)
Did you shut down Overlord
Who survived the suicide mission.
Tier 1: Tali, Legion, Mordin, Garrus
Tier 2: Miranda, Samara/Morinth, Kasumi, Thane, Jack
Tier 3: Everyone else.

Outside of who died on the suicide mission there are only 50 possible outcomes you have to consider.
Bioware has a team of writers who do nothing but write. You'd think they could handle taking into account 50 plot points.

you get husk'd rachni as enemies whether or not you spared the queen because that's a big part of the game design that they can't work around in every single encounter, and so the mission looks awfully similar whether you're revisiting the queen you let loose earlier or meeting the clone of her that the Reapers whipped up. But when you look at the actual results? A genuine queen that you free twice and introduce to the Council races becomes a valuable part of the war effort, and is well on her way to reestablishing her once-extinct race in the galaxy but on peaceful terms. The clone, if allowed to live, just fucks shit up and murders people.

That would be the case if any of the scenes you mentioned existed. You save the queen, your numbers go up.
You save the clone, your numbers go down and you get a strongly worded letter from Hackett.
The Queen never meets with the Council, and the Council never acknowledges the existence of the Queen

And that's the problem. They shifted focus from emotions and morals to numbers. So believe it or not there is a proper way to play the game and that's all about which path gets your numbers higher

"As much as I complain I have an important job to do here."
That's not something you say before you quit.
And running away from obligation doesn't suit Anderson's character.

No. It's something that you say before you get down to your important business and get shit done, rather than something you say before you sit on your ass trading empty pleasantries with politicals and watch the world burn around you. He didn't quit being a Councilor because it was hard, or because he hated it, he quit so he could actually do his damn job as an Admiral.

Important job to do HERE
HERE
As in on the Citadel.
In ME2 Anderson gave no inclination that he was gearing up to quit his position.

Bioware thought their story about the Cerberus coup was SO FUCKING COOL that they sooner retcon the most important decision you made in the series than allow some people the possibility to miss it.

Throughout Mass Effect 2 you were allowed to decide whether you agreed with Cerberus or not.
If as you think is, was, and forever will be "evil" that effectively makes anyone who played Renegade in ME2 canonically incorrect. Basically rewriting the Renegade personality into the "Stupid Shepard"

Not stupid. Cynical. Pragmatic. Willing to accept collateral damage as long as the greater good is served. And willing to work with people who are clearly evil because he can't accomplish what he needs alone and the proper authorities are ignoring the problem. In short, how Renegade Shepard always has been. A good man can work with an evil one without being an idiot so long as their goals align, but it doesn't make the evil man good.

Think about what you just said.
If Shepard knew that TIM and by extension Cerberus is was and forever will be evil, why in the hell did s/he give TIM the Collector base?
At that point there's no reason to keep up the fecad of partnership. You're literally one button push away from ending the conflict there and now, EVERYONE of your squad is urging you not to give the base to Cerberus. But Shepard does it anyway.

If, as you suggest, Shepard knew Cerberus was evil the whole time and was just going to turn around and stab him/her in the back it's pretty god damn stupid to give the most advanced technology humans have ever seen to that guy.

If, as I suggest, during the writing process of Mass Effect 2 Cerberus was intended to be a morally grey organization, the morally grey Renegade Shepard could trust the Illusive Man with out being stupid. Then during the writing process of ME3 Bioware decides to shit all over that idea because they ran out of ink in their printers or what ever.

One of the games is poorly written, I choose to believe it's the one with more plot holes than actual plot, and the narrative that revolves around the mother of all Dues Ex Machnias.

everything they're doing in ME3 disagrees with their MO (Which is to help humanity)
Setting up a fake refugee camp so they can experiment on the very humans they're trying to protect is off...
Attacking Alliance bases for... reasons?
They must be indoctrinated... but they aren't because they were investing all their resources into trying to figure out how indoctrination works so they could use it against the Reapers. And if the Reapers were controlling their brains why would they let them do that? So one of those things is a plot hole

When the Reapers want an intelligent, creative minion instead of a mindless pawn they can't just take direct control of his brain. Sovereign never puppetted Saren until he was already dead. Until then he made subtler changes, whispering and tweaking until Saren was just as brilliant as he always was, but unable to conceive of the Reapers being unsuccessful and totally convinced that by serving the Reapers he was saving his race, allowing the Turians to live as slaves instead of being wiped out. And all along, Saren was doing his own research into Indoctrination and convincing himself that he was safe, himself, in control. It would be the same with TIM; Harbinger wouldn't just yell 'kill all humans' when he could whisper about gaining the power to make humanity the rulers of the galaxy, as long as he was willing to take a few acceptable losses along the way. It's not much of a stretch, Cerberus was already killing humans by the dozens if not hundreds in their experiments you interrupted in the first game, because they believed that the gains from those experiments would save millions or give them power over aliens.

Another thing that always bugged me about TIM's indoctrination is how it happened. It would make sense if you gave him the collector base, but if you didn't? He came across as smart in ME2. I doubt he would give himself the opportunity to get indoctrinated. (Don't talk about the terminal on Cronos Station) What you said has merit, but TIM getting indoctrinated doesn't float on principle for me.

What doesn't really make sense is using Earth for the ending, or trying to rally the galaxy to take back your planet specifically instead of generally beating back Reaper forces, but nothing in the ending and little in the core plot makes sense.

Respectfully, I would like to disagree. It's been established that Harbinger seems to be the one whom is pulling the strings in the battle, so to then have the catalyst moved to Earth to be watched under his supervision makes sense when Shepard had done the unimaginable and truly rallied the majority of the galaxy. While the initial 'lets rally the galaxy to save Earth' definately doesn't make sense, as there are the same amount of Reaper's on other planets (That is until the ending), so I agree with you there. There is a spectacular line in the mission where you go to the Asari homeworld and fight with the comandos. During the battle, when you convince the commanding officer to hold the line she yells out "Let the galaxy know that the war was won on *insert Asari homeworld name here*". This shows how each species feels as though the attack is very personal, and that because Shepard, the guy who has been kicking ass before they realised there really was an ass that needed kicking, told them that their planet may hold the key to the destruction of the Reapers, it is clear that that just bolstered their belief that something about them made them more important than other species. I feel that it shows that during an intense moment of impossible odds, people can become closed minded and believe that the problem is only effecting them and no one else. Then, when Shepard reveals the key to winning, and that it's on Earth, everyone whom pledged their alliance (after being saved from the impossible odds) are fully prepared to go to this one planet.

Valid point.

Wouldn't that make more of a case against why the whole war came down to the battle for Earth?
If every species is operating on closed minded nationalism why would any of them give a toss and a half about what happens to Earth?

If your planet is dying wouldn't you pull all foreign support before pulling domestic support? Even if you weren't a nationalist.
It all just seems like a bad plot device to me. The whole galaxy is rallying behind Earth! You should feel inspired because you live on Earth!

Which brings to mind another plot hole (For me anyway) Shepard's never been to Earth before.
(My Shepard) She was born on a colony that got attacked by Batarians, then she joined the navy and almost got eaten by a Thresher Maw. Nowhere in her back story has she ever been on Earth. Every time she referred to Earth as "Home" I got more and more turned off by the fact that Bioware refused to take into account one of 3 possible backgrounds.

Even If you're an Earth-born Shepard, your parents abandoned you and you joined a gang, why do you want to save Earth so bad? I understand needing to stop the Reapers but all the "Earth" stuff got on my nerves.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

how is me killing people increasing rats significantly?i'm just one man and the city is full of crime and authorities killing casually. Does my killing make that much of a difference?
Increased guards and rats (if we must keep the rats) should be 2 different mechanics..especially since i can kill someone and make them explode into dust. or kill weepers that rats don't feed on and authorities wouldn't care about.
Weird mechanic

I think it's because you kill guards, who can't get rid of corpses of the dead, which draws in more rats, because they, too, are dead.
Plus, I think it was established in Tales from Dunwall that the rats are caused by powers given to someone by the Outsider. It's possible that death and chaos simply create more of them (in a similar way to Corvo summoning them; ie the Chaos literally creates new rats).

OT: On the subject of Dishonored; the actual premise of the plot. How can the guards be so far away that none of them see the teleporting assassins, but so near by that the arrive in the time it takes Corvo to crawl over to Jessamine?
How did all of them know to run over to Jessamine with their swords drawn, yet not hear the sounds of swordfighting? And if they did hear the fighting, why did none of them question the fact that Corvo is the only armed person there?
What was their explanation for the fact that Emily literally vanished into thin air?
And who did send the guards away? The Spymaster? Why isn't he the primary suspect? I think 'sending the guards away right before the Empress is killed' makes you more of a suspect than 'being near the Empress' body'.

 

[IronMit]

I think it's because you kill guards, who can't get rid of corpses of the dead, which draws in more rats, because they, too, are dead.
Plus, I think it was established in Tales from Dunwall that the rats are caused by powers given to someone by the Outsider. It's possible that death and chaos simply create more of them (in a similar way to Corvo summoning them; ie the Chaos literally creates new rats).

OT: On the subject of Dishonored; the actual premise of the plot. How can the guards be so far away that none of them see the teleporting assassins, but so near by that the arrive in the time it takes Corvo to crawl over to Jessamine?
How did all of them know to run over to Jessamine with their swords drawn, yet not hear the sounds of swordfighting? And if they did hear the fighting, why did none of them question the fact that Corvo is the only armed person there?
What was their explanation for the fact that Emily literally vanished into thin air?
And who did send the guards away? The Spymaster? Why isn't he the primary suspect? I think 'sending the guards away right before the Empress is killed' makes you more of a suspect than 'being near the Empress' body'.

I did change my mind and figured it could make sense. Someone also mentioned that killing civilians and guards allows the weepers and rats to creep into parts of the city as they are not there to contain them.
However killing weepers also increases chaos? surely it should reduce chaos. Rat's don't even eat weepers. So this leads me back to my first conclusion that chaos is an overly simplistic mechanic.

However gameplay actually affecting the world is much needed innovation - even if it's been done before. Making an actual dialogue decision that affects stuff is cool in rpg's but nothing can beat unscripted gameplay decisions. Hopefully they will build on this

 

[Jack Rascal]

OT: On the subject of Dishonored; the actual premise of the plot. How can the guards be so far away that none of them see the teleporting assassins, but so near by that the arrive in the time it takes Corvo to crawl over to Jessamine?
How did all of them know to run over to Jessamine with their swords drawn, yet not hear the sounds of swordfighting? And if they did hear the fighting, why did none of them question the fact that Corvo is the only armed person there?
What was their explanation for the fact that Emily literally vanished into thin air?
And who did send the guards away? The Spymaster? Why isn't he the primary suspect? I think 'sending the guards away right before the Empress is killed' makes you more of a suspect than 'being near the Empress' body'.

The same way you get past guards while teleporting? Guards do not see the teleporting. When you teleport, you're only seen where you were and where you stop.

The assassins were on the roof, the same roof you can walk unseen when you infiltrate the place, and (I assume) are only heard when the fighting starts. You hack off the ones before you and after a few kills an assassin arrives who "paralyzes" (Tethers) you and Daud or another assassin stops time. Guards may be running towards the Empress, but since time is stopped, they are not getting there particularly fast. The Spymaster ordered the guards away to allow Corvo some private time with the Empress, it is established that Corvo is her personal bodyguard and close to her. There would be no reason to believe, when Corvo returns from a long journey with an important message, that he would hurt the Empress.

As to why guards do not question where Emily is or why Corvo is the only one armed, because maybe it's not the guard's duty to question but to obey? The Spymaster would have outranked them easily and it is his commands that count. Also, it is not unreasonable to imprison the person who is holding the dead Empress. There is nobody else there to blame. Corvo is naturally "questioned" later but that didn't do him much good.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Dragon Age 2.

All the way through it you get drummed with "Mages are good .... Templars are bad".

Yet all the way through it the Templars are helpful and polite and the Mages are trying to eat my face.....

Kind of hard to follow a plot and take it seriously when it doesn't know what the fuck it's doing itself. In fact, the Templars don't turn "bad" until the very end and even then it's only 1 person .... who turns bad because of a corrupt sword .... made from metal Hawke found.

WHO WRITES THIS SHIT.

That is inaccurate. The game attempts to say "Some mages are good, some are bad and the same goes with templars". Not every mage in the game tries to kill you or someone else or just genreally be a jerk. For example Feynriel is an unfortunate apostate who will only do something bad if you indulged in some really horrible Video Game Cruelty Potential. For the templars there are a quite a few templars who are unabigiously evil. Take Ser Alrik, the templar who wanted to make all mages tranquil, which is considered by many of them a fate worse than death.

I can see what he means though, you are pushed this idea that mages are unfairly downtrodden and yet if I remember rightly the majority of them DO resort to blood magic and demons when cornered. Hell, you can even use blood magic as Hawke.

I certainly remember fighting more blood mages than evil templars in that game.

It's a very strange juxtoposition to the story you are offered and you end up rolling your eyes at it at least, I did. How can you defend your actions moving against the templars when all the mages that you try and help do exactly what the templars said they would do and put everyone in danger. Good and evil really isn't the issue in the end. It's like trying to argue against putting down a dog the authorities say will savage everyone and then you try and save it and it indeed goes and savages everyone.

It makes you feel really stupid and naive.

 

[Suncatcher]

-snop-

Okay, skipping past the parts that are just ignoring what I said or making emotional outbursts...

how many of the Asari Matriarch's writings you gathered while chasing Saren...

Huh, Explain this one to me.

It's a tiny thing, in that same scene with Verner. Hardly worth mentioning, but it does change the story.

Granted, many of these things have outcomes that seem roughly equivalent on the face, since it's just not feasible to make an entirely different game for every possible combination of factors

Really? Because After I finished Mass Effect 3 I sat down in a fit of rage and wrote one.
I'm not programing gameplay or designing levels or anything but I wrote a script that takes into account every combination of choices you can make in the first 2 games.

Yeah, a script is easy. But just as a simple example, if the Ravagers were removed from the game by killing the Rachni queen in the first game? Every single level that included them needs to be reworked and rebalanced. The quest in the tunnels no longer exists for half of the pcs, so suddenly you have to allow for a wide range of levels of Shepard in every mission after that because of lost exp, and half your your players are going to be bitching about the game being too long or too short unless you make some equivalent mission that only happens if there aren't rachni around for some reason. Which would increase production costs by a significant amount and make the story even more nonsensical.

When it comes right down to it there aren't that many factors you have to take into account... there are only 50 possible outcomes you have to consider.

And if you make the basic structure of the game different for each one, that's 50 different full length AAA games you need to make. With all the rage over day 1 DLC, do you really think anyone would be willing to pay the several hundreds of dollars per copy required to recoup those costs?

That would be the case if any of the scenes you mentioned existed. You save the queen, your numbers go up.
You save the clone, your numbers go down and you get a strongly worded letter from Hackett.

Did you actually read any of the text in the game? Because everything in the game is a part of the story, and if you don't pay attention to anything without a big shiny cutscene you're missing much of the plot and can't really contribute to a story discussion.

If Shepard knew that TIM and by extension Cerberus is was and forever will be evil, why in the hell did s/he give TIM the Collector base?

That base was full of tech which could be used against the Reapers. For all you knew, it was the only way to catch up the crippling technological disadvantage in time to save the galaxy. That wasn't a question of whether or not you liked Cerberus, it was a question of whether you were willing to take the risk of giving that resource to someone you knew was evil but currently working on the right side, or if you would destroy that threat at the cost of being less prepared for the real invasion.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

The same way you get past guards while teleporting? Guards do not see the teleporting. When you teleport, you're only seen where you were and where you stop.

I meant them seeing the assassins when they stop, but I could have made that clearer, because as I remember it, the place where at least one assassin stops is in decent view of at least one guard. May be mis-remembering.

Daud or another assassin stops time. Guards may be running towards the Empress, but since time is stopped, they are not getting there particularly fast.

Did he? I must not have realised that. Guess that explains that.

The Spymaster ordered the guards away to allow Corvo some private time with the Empress, it is established that Corvo is her personal bodyguard and close to her.

I still don't see why he would need to send away the guards for that reason. Only one of them seems to be in a position to actually see Corvo and the Empress, and he isn't within earshot (you can't hear the Empress and the Spymaster until you get fairly close to them). Not really going to be intruding on a private conversation.

As to why guards do not question where Emily is or why Corvo is the only one armed, because maybe it's not the guard's duty to question but to obey? The Spymaster would have outranked them easily and it is his commands that count.

I guess so. Still, you'd expect one of them to point out that they heard a sword fight, and there's nobody else there. Just because they need to follow the Spymaster's orders, doesn't mean they aren't going to mention their suspicions to other guards, or people like Curnow.

Also, it is not unreasonable to imprison the person who is holding the dead Empress. There is nobody else there to blame. Corvo is naturally "questioned" later but that didn't do him much good.

I feel that it's a bit unreasonable to immediately blame him before any sort of investigation when
1) You heard swordfighting, and probably gunshots, and there's nobody else there,
2) you're also accusing this person of kidnapping (it's hard to lead a small child off somewhere when you're holding a dying woman in your arms) and,
3) said person is a good friend and bodyguard to the victim, therefore is obviously going to run to her side in her dying moments.

Maybe I'm just overthinking some parts, and not thinking about others.

 

[Denamic]

Some things are never explained. Some things seem to go against common sense. Why don't they turn off the New You things in Borderlands? I dunno. Reasons.

Those are not plot holes. Plot holes are logical impossibilities. Like a character being somewhere when they're supposedly currently being elsewhere, or a gun working when it was out of ammo 4 sentences ago.

Or like characters taking a more dangerous longer path for no explained reason when there's a nice safe path readily available.

I just said things like that aren't plot holes.
Stupid, probably, but not plot holes.

Again, unexplained things and things that seem to go against common sense are not plot holes.

 

[major28]

In XCOM:EU, why the hell am I the only faction in the world that seems to actually fight the aliens? Why do I have to pay for all these things that I have to buy, who are these assholes that think gee these guys are the last hope for humanity but i still need to make a profit? Why are do countries back out of the project if I don't do a good job, I am literally the only people fighting and your just going to refuse my help?

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

ALL OF ULTIMA 9!
"What's a Paladin?"................the creators need to take a serious look at their games before they release it.

"You knowledge of the land will be great!"

You can get so many plot holes just from that one statement.

 

[bug_of_war]

If we assume that the Reapers are just VIs, acting on their programming instead of their own drive, we have to assume that Sovereign was programmed not only toward bluster and condescension in conversation, but also to deliberately lie about their origins ('we have no beginning or ending' is a long way from 'we were built to kill you a few million years ago'). Sovereign alone, in the single conversation you have with him and the one battle we see, displays more personality than any other machine in the series which isn't established to have true AI, emotions and all. And it makes little sense to program him to act that way, with his attention-grabbing tactics and hammy, provocative dialogue, since his duty was to stay hidden among the younger races and stand watch for millenia at a time rather than to intimidate or subjugate. Then we look at the final battle of the first game at the Citadel, and I can't see any way to classify that other than an emotional response or monumentally shitty programming. He had won the war. There was not enough firepower in the entire system to get through his shields and most of the fleet standing against him was shredded. His only possible loss conditions when he entered that fight were if the Citadel's arms had closed before he got inside (because the thing's pretty much indestructible) or if the entirety of the galaxy had united against him, and neither of those had happened or had any real chance of happening. He wasn't desperately reacting in order to take control immediately, because it didn't matter if you had command of the Citadel for a few minutes once he was on the tower. He could have wiped out the remaining ships before engaging you, he could have irradiated you from the outside, whatever, but instead he chose to reanimate his primary servant for a second round of personal scale combat with you because if you killed his Champion, no matter who was in control at the end of the day, a human had beaten him. And that was something he could not accept or allow. And when he lost round two, the death of his avatar was enough of a distraction to lower his shields and allow a simple frigate the killing blow.
Basically, either Sovereign had emotions which affected his choices more than calm logic, his programmer wanted to simulate pride, anger, deception, and overconfidence for no good reason, or his code was so stupid as to force him to risk everything in order to avoid a ten minute delay in a 50,000 year cycle.

I probably should have been more specific. I never meant to imply that I thought the Reapers were VI's, my belief was that the Reapers were AI's, however were restricted by some base programming measures that guided them. I agree with you that he was arrogant and quite well developed, however cleverbot can be arrogant and have some depth, and that program is just a VI. Again, HUUUUUUGE stretch there, but it's just my opinion and it worked for me and caused me to see no problem with the ending.

What doesn't really make sense is using Earth for the ending, or trying to rally the galaxy to take back your planet specifically instead of generally beating back Reaper forces, but nothing in the ending and little in the core plot makes sense.

(lost the quote link, my comment down below)
Respectfully, I would like to disagree. It's been established that Harbinger seems to be the one whom is pulling the strings in the battle, so to then have the catalyst moved to Earth to be watched under his supervision makes sense when Shepard had done the unimaginable and truly rallied the majority of the galaxy. While the initial 'lets rally the galaxy to save Earth' definately doesn't make sense, as there are the same amount of Reaper's on other planets (That is until the ending), so I agree with you there. There is a spectacular line in the mission where you go to the Asari homeworld and fight with the comandos. During the battle, when you convince the commanding officer to hold the line she yells out "Let the galaxy know that the war was won on *insert Asari homeworld name here*". This shows how each species feels as though the attack is very personal, and that because Shepard, the guy who has been kicking ass before they realised there really was an ass that needed kicking, told them that their planet may hold the key to the destruction of the Reapers, it is clear that that just bolstered their belief that something about them made them more important than other species. I feel that it shows that during an intense moment of impossible odds, people can become closed minded and believe that the problem is only effecting them and no one else. Then, when Shepard reveals the key to winning, and that it's on Earth, everyone whom pledged their alliance (after being saved from the impossible odds) are fully prepared to go to this one planet. [/quote]

Valid point.

Thank you.

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have gone quite so far there. And for the record, I didn't think they rushed things, have no problem with day 1 DLC, and definitely never joined any of those stupid petitions trying to force them to change the game.

You have my full respect.

But EA is a company infamous for, among other things, executive meddling. And the ending, with all its breaks in canon and themes, looks to me like nothing but one guy at the top of a command structure taking control away from the team who had been writing the rest of the series, including 90% of the third game. And then I look at the credits, and the former lead writer, who made so many magnificent games for Bioware before they were assimilated and who built up the universe of Mass Effect from scratch, is conspicuously absent. Given that evidence, is there a more likely theory than that the publisher caused (directly or due to dissatisfaction with other company policies) a change in staff which resulted in the game being released with a small but vital portion being written by an idiot? I hadn't heard anything about Casey Hudson being behind the ending (if you could cite that I'd appreciate it), but even if true there are many cases of writers making a wonderful product under an imperfect director and many more of said directors breaking certain parts of the story when they take control away from the writers or when a particularly talented lead is no longer there to restrain them. Heck, something like that being written by the director is a red flag in the first place; there are good reasons that writers and directors are different roles in producing a game.

Yes, EA has been seen as killing some franchises/publishers, and I understand that. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the article where in which it was stated that Hudson created the ending. Really sorry about that, but I do believe it was posted either on IGN, or the Escapist threads (which could obviously mean that it was false, but I believe there was a link).

On the multiplayer front, I actually have to commend them though. Sure its influence on galactic readyness is annoying, but they managed to make the first plotless online shootfest that I actually enjoyed playing.

So much respect

And to contribute to the ongoing Vega debate: not everyone needs to be your childhood friend or a comrade of a hundred battles to join your squad. He was, in fact, just some dude (well, high rank marine with anti-Collector experience) who was in the same base at the time. He knew (of) Shepard because Shepard is the most famous human alive at that point. He ended up on the ship because he was alongside Ash/Kaiden when they went to the Normandy, and he stays on your ship because you can't exactly swing by to drop him off back on Earth to join the fight there because it's covered with Reapers and you'd lose the Normandy, Shepard, and the galaxy's one chance if you got caught there. There really isn't any problem with Vega's introduction except for the fact that it results in Vega being near Shepard and I really kinda hate that guy.

I was initially against Vega, because all I saw was that he was a latino jersey shore looking dude. But after playing the first 2 hours of the games, I really, REALLY liked his character. I loved that he wasn't a Jersey Shore DB, I loved that he was a soldier through and through, but knew how to chill out after missions. I feel as though he was a nice addition to the series as he was the only human on your team who was somewhat freaked out about the Reapers' raw power. I did feel annoyed that some characters didn't join my team for REALLY stupid reasons. Samara could have totally joined, but doesn't because...she doesn't. Jack states that her students are doing fine without her, but refuses to join you, kinda understand, but sill, I miss my psychotic biotic. Not entirely annoyed by it, but it's something that would have been nice (having more team mates). I also didn't like it when Tali joined my team (Not gonna lie, REALLY didn't like Tali). Seeing as how she was an admiral, she should have gone back to her fleet after the Rannoch mission. But, my opinion...others liked Tali.

 

[Suncatcher]

I probably should have been more specific. I never meant to imply that I thought the Reapers were VI's, my belief was that the Reapers were AI's, however were restricted by some base programming measures that guided them. I agree with you that he was arrogant and quite well developed, however cleverbot can be arrogant and have some depth, and that program is just a VI. Again, HUUUUUUGE stretch there, but it's just my opinion and it worked for me and caused me to see no problem with the ending.

Okay. Now I'm having an idea. One that might, if you stretch a little, actually close the plotholes in the ME3 ending. This might take a while, so

Spoiler

Indoctrination. Not of Shepard, of the Reapers. They were, as Sovereign said, eternal and without equal or superior; Eldrich Abominations beyond mortal understanding, but occasionally harvesting innovations from the young races or ascending a particularly valued one to join them or whatever timeless synthetic intelligences beyond mortal understanding do for fun. Then one race, the creators of the Crucible, comes along with their hatred of synthetic life, their dedication to Order over sense, their particular brand of idiocy, and their highly advanced technology (before the Cycle began there wasn't a hard limit to development at 50,000 years). They saw a race of synthetic lifeforms powerful enough to destroy them, and used their Indoctrination technology (probably developed as a result of their 'order at all costs' philosophy) to enslave the Reapers just as TIM was planning to. But they needed an ultimate authority to control their chained robotic gods, one which would live longer than any organic but not pose the threat of a true artificial intelligence. So they make a simple, stupid VI (the star child) to control the Reapers and the Cycle begins.

Fast forward to Sovereign. He was originally subtle, hiding within the galaxy and keeping himself a secret from the young races for millennia until the time was right to open the way again, and then figuring out how to get around any obstructions to the return of the others. By all rights, he would have been among the most quiet, patient, and clever of the Reapers, the kind who would never throw away a battle on an emotional response like he does at the end of the first game. But when Saren and the Geth invade the Citadel, star kid freaks out. This absolutely does not compute. So he orders Sovereign to remove the invaders immediately. And so instead of wiping out the fleet and possessing Saren's corpse when it was safe to do so, or just irradiating Shepard from the outside, Sovereign is forced to rush into an engagement on the personal scale and when Shepard defeats his avatar it disrupts his defenses enough for a frigate to deal the killing blow to a vessel which should have been invincible.

Enter Harbinger. At first, he's clever. Like Saren and TIM. He's too valuable an agent to fully puppet, because he would lose all creativity and drive, so he's forced to act in accordance with the Crucible's orders but free to go about them as he sees fit. This leads to all his genre-savvy scheming in the second game. But over time, he begins to admire his adversary; a mere human killed two Reapers, denied them the Citadel, and delayed the invasion by almost three years. The command VI interprets these feelings as disloyal, and between 2 and 3 completely rewrites Harbinger's mind. This explains the total lack of conversation from a villain who was so talkative in the second game, and the generally poor strategies of the Reaper forces (since the brilliant chessmaster who was to lead them got mindraped). But like Benezia and Saren before him and TIM after, Harbinger retained a tiny fragment of self and resisted control for a moment at the end; he recognized Shepard, this puny human who achieved the impossible on a daily basis, as his race's best hope for freedom. And so the shot which destroyed the rest of the ground team and carved a gash into the bedrock beneath only scorched Shepard, and the Reaper lifted off without confirming a kill. That allows Shepard to make it to the Citadel and invade the inmost sanctum of the Crucible VI, at which point its programming requires it to present the living organic in front of it with a list of allowable options.

The Reapers aren't the villain here, they're another victim of a race of tyrants long dead.

It's stretching and there isn't much to support it over any other theory, but it seems to fit all the evidence I can think of.
Okay, now somebody help me find the holes in this.

I was initially against Vega, because all I saw was that he was a latino jersey shore looking dude. But after playing the first 2 hours of the games, I really, REALLY liked his character. I loved that he wasn't a Jersey Shore DB, I loved that he was a soldier through and through, but knew how to chill out after missions. I feel as though he was a nice addition to the series as he was the only human on your team who was somewhat freaked out about the Reapers' raw power.

My first impression of him was that he was a boring grunt, when my ship was full of deep, unique, wonderful people. Though I'll admit that because of the bad first impression I didn't talk to him much later in the game my first time through, and I haven't gotten around to a second playthough yet, so if he has awesome hidden depths I'd have missed them. Like how I didn't like Garrus at all in the first game but started to love him in the second maybe?

but sill, I miss my psychotic biotic.

Same here. But as strong as those kids were, they weren't ready for the horrors of the front line without her there as an unstoppable force of destruction and/or team mom.

 

[J Tyran]

Edit: To be perfectly honest I never understood why her armor was colored to begin with. Seems kinda silly really.

At any rate if I really wanted to nitpick the beginning to death I could take it several steps further: Why is Ashley taking orders from the earth defense committee? What exactly is she doing here? What is this building that combines military headquarters, a place for keeping people under house arrest, and courthouse all in a highrise building? Where is this building specifically? It's kinda-sorta-not-really-implied that it's New York like an hour later but I dunno.

If Shepard was being kept basically as a prisoner, why didn't they keep him in Arturus Station where the alliance is actually centered? How did the nightmare kid get from the top of one building into the ducts of this one? Why are the reapers shooting at random defenseless buildings like this is some godzilla movie? ect. The list goes on into nitpicks of varying severity, you get the idea.

Again these are easy, I am beginning to wonder if you ever actually played the game or if you just watched a lets play or something.

-Ashleys Armour is blue because its the Alliance colours, shes not in standard armour as she is on special operations
-The base is in Vancouver
-The base is there because the Alliance has bases all over Earth
-How did the kid move around the base? His legs in all likelihood
-Why didn't they keep him it Arcturus? Because in the plot Arcturus station was destroyed almost instantly as part of the Reapers typical "shock and awe"
-Which is the final point, the Reapers blew the hell out of everything because its the way they make war.

 

[sXeth]

ALL OF ULTIMA 9!
"What's a Paladin?"................the creators need to take a serious look at their games before they release it.

"You knowledge of the land will be great!"

You can get so many plot holes just from that one statement.

Eh, you can hit better ones then the Avatar ignorance (which did exist somewhat in all of the games to let newbies play)

Dupre's a spirit at least, and was last in the Void, but how did Iolo and Shamino get there from Serpent Isle? And why is Shamino suddenly a mage again when he hasn't been since Ultima 1 (if that was even still the same Shamino at this point)

Similarly, how did Blackthorn cross over from Serpent Isle? The Guardian couldv'e hypothetically brought him, but its not like he was a military genius or anything, he inherited the throne when he had it.

Why is the Codex not in the Void? Or did Samhain steal the lenses and go get it himself without anyone noticing.

The Guardians created by the Avatar's purity. So you could theoretically just do some unvirtuous stuff and weaken/reabsorb him? Back to the hookers!

 

[Olas]

One that's been bugging me since the end of Mass Effect 2 (haven't played 3, so maybe someone who has can sort this out for me), but it's established in the first game that the Citadel is the only (known) way for the Reapers to get into our Galaxy from Dark Space and yet at the end of Mass Effect 2 it's implied that a huge invasion is on it's way and that was the whole plot of Mass Effect 3 was it not? My question is how the hell did they get here? We shut down their only known way in in the first game.

The citadel was a shortcut into the galaxy, as was the Mass Relay in the Arrival DLC. Without those they were forced to get there the slow way which evidently took close to 3 years.

My question, it's said that the reapers come every 50,000 years, but then later that they come when the races of the galaxy become too advanced. Which is it? Don't tell me the races of the galaxy always take the exact same amount of time to become advanced.

 

[J Tyran]

Don't tell me the races of the galaxy always take the exact same amount of time to become advanced.

The time it takes tech to advance is pre determined by the seeding of Reaper tech, it means they advance at a roughly predictable pace and in a predictable path.

 

[J Tyran]

Again you're misunderstanding the questions.

You have shown that your observation is pretty poor, do you really want to have to go through me proving you wrong every step of the way yet again? My understanding of the questions has been spot on every time.

 

[coldfrog]

If Bowser turned a lot of the residents of Mushroom Kingdom into bricks, what happens when Mario breaks them? I certainly don't see little mushroom dudes escaping. And furthermore, why did he get REWARDED for his actions? This is just one of many thoughts in my ongoing belief that Mario is the real villain of the series, and Bowser is the misunderstood anti-hero.