BioWare Did Right By Us

[Ziame]

eh, i just hoped for a twist. IT or something else, but oh well. Refusal is half assed but it's the best ending. grim.

 

[Solracziad]

....But Harbinger wasn't there until they did their whole lets charge everything we got towards the beam blah blah blah, he was in space....battling the Fleets. So what I am to assume here is that if they had just dropped Shepard and Co. at the beam before any of the Sovereign-class reapers realized it they could have prevented the deaths of....like a shit-ton of people and saved me having to wade through waves upon waves on Reaper trash. I'm sorry it just doesn't work and if they didn't have that endlessly slow limping part, the player wouldn't have a crap ton of time to be pondering all the shit writing.

Wrong, Harbinger have already begun the rapid descent down to Earth after the Destroyer was knocked out.

Oh and did you forget about that Destroyer? The big Reaper that was shooting down everything in front of the beam, deflecting every shot? You can't exactly fly past it and stop long enough for a drop-off.

As for shit writing, the fact that we're arguing about this is kinda proving otherwise. Shit writing would be the original ME3 ending in where it was utterly non-nonsensical in every fashion and form.

Oh? So the Destroyer can see the Normandy...? Is it not a Reaper? If it cannot then the Normandy would not have had to be worried about being shot down. If it can, then Harbinger could have seen it and would have shot it down. Also, Harbinger started coming down when things were getting intense on the ground and Organic forces began to make a push for the beam. This is said by Anderson.

No. Just because people are having a discussion about it does not mean the writing is not shit. If that was true then Twilight is not shit since people discuss that online as well.

 

[major_chaos]

I would have preferred Karpyshyn's ending to be honest, it just sounds so much better than what we have now.

The Dark Energy was a force that was going to consume everything. According to Karpyshyn, "The Reapers as a whole were 'nations' of people who had fused together in the most horrific way possible to help find a way to stop the spread of the Dark Energy. The real reason for the Human Reaper was supposed to be the Reapers saving throw because they had run out of time. Humanity in Mass Effect is supposedly unique because of its genetic diversity and represented the universe's best chance at stopping Dark Energy's spread."

The original choice was between killing the Reapers and trying to find a way to stop the Dark Energy threat with what little time was left before it consumed the galaxy, or, "Sacrifice humanity, allowing them to be horrifically processed in hopes that the end result will justify the means."

So you can roll over and die, admitting that the whole series was a pointless futile struggle, or you can gamble all of creation on the slim to none chance that you can somehow quickly come up with a solution to problem you most likely don't even fully understand? somehow that actually sounds worse then the magic pick-a-color endings.

OT: I actually like the EC while it still has the big problem of the core stupidity of the catalyst, it actually makes everything after that fairly decent. is it a literary masterpiece? no, but it does mange to provide closure and satisfaction, especially compared to the awful original endings.

 

[Whispering Cynic]

No, sorry, the Star Child still totally wipes out the premise of the first game. Sovereign was just unnecessary.

You don't deal a deathblow to a significant portion of your own law and retain your artistic integrity, but I guess I appreciate the effort. That's the most I can say for the DLC.

Yep, that pretty much sums up all of my biggest complaints about ME2 and 3. Bioware took the time and effort to craft a complex universe from ground up, with a lot of underlying lore to provide solid foundation for it, then they started consistently shitting all over it. From things like lore contradictions and idiotic retcons in ME2 to glaring fuck ups like the endings of ME3. Artistic integrity, suuuure, just not the integrity of people who actually created the universe, but only of those who took the time and effort to fuck it all up.

It's over Bioware, either you entirely lost your touch, or some scum that slithered in from EA has destroyed all that made you what you used to be. You will be mourned.

 

[JayDeth]

"And the Refusal ending is downright chilling."

Insulting is how I would describe it.

I got to say, I clicked on this article expecting lots of BioWare nob gobbling as I'm in the camp that despises everything about the endings and thinks the EC was just polishing a turd, but there wasn't. Kudos, sir. However, I think your title is a little misleading. Better, perhaps. Right? Ha. That's a good one.

 

[I.Muir]

They were not required to do anything to their ending but they decided to do so anyway
However they made the mistake of thinking that the problem with the ending was that it was sad or something
The only real issue here that is still here is that bloody star child catalyst which just messes up that story
So yeah they didn't have to but it will be a better ending after I get that mod that erases the little piece of shit
I imagine somebody would have gone ballistic if they removed that stupid catalyst so it's the team that's broken

 

[jamesbrown]

One thing I hadn't thought of before... With the new changes to the Catalyst's dialogue, it may be possible to save the Geth and EDI in the destroy ending. He specifically says that the technology they rely on will be damaged, but that the survivors will have no problem repairing it. This should mean that they could "reboot" EDI and the Geth if so inclined. I mean, the entire reason that the synthetics are getting wiped out in the first place is because the energy doesn't discriminate, so by the same token, reactivating synthetics should be only slightly more difficult than repairing starships and the like. That might explain why EDI isn't listed among the people that died at the end(as would typical Bioware carelessness).

Just a thought that occurred to me.

When I did destory I did see EDI on the memorial

 

[Dreadjaws]

Well, I've always disagreed with the notion that Mass Effect 3 is a great game up until the last five minutes. I think it's a mediocre game spiced with spectacular parts. Everything pertaining to the main plot is rubbish at best and insulting at worst, but the side-stories? Those are wonderful.

So yeah, I played the Extended Cut, and while I'm glad to have seen some plot holes being filled (though some of them half-assedly), some other plot holes were actually created, and I knew some of the main problems were never going to go away because they were part of the game since the beginning (such as the Crucible) and some others because then they'd have to come up with new endings instead of ripping them off from Deus Ex. And let's face it, most of the story problems were there because the Bioware who made ME 2 and 3 is not the same that made ME 1, and there's no fixing that.

And while the EC did make me feel a little better (specially since they removed that "buy our DLC" sign at the end), I still don't feel very good. We all know this is nothing but damage control. No one could have possibly believed most people would have been satisfied by the original endings. They simply, in their huge egos, thought people would just buy anything they were sold, and that they'd even pay to get longer endings. Of course, all the backlash forced their hands into actually put a little work into the ending.

The worst part is, had they put some effort into it in the beginning, none of this would have happened. People wouldn't be regretting purchasing their games and swearing never to do it again. People wouldn't have backlashed. And the'd be loved right now instead of despised.

Also, what's up with the scene of Shepard breathing in the rubble showing up in what appears to be at least weeks or maybe even months after the Reapers' destruction? Am I supposed to believe Shepard was unconscious under all that rubble for that long? OK, let's not dwell in the new plot holes right now.

 

[jamesbrown]

BioWare Did Right By Us

You don?t lose artistic integrity if you?re just trying to get your point across.

Read Full Article

...
First is the fact that the singularity premise is a paradox. Had it occurred, then it is reasonable to think that the Reapers would never have been created seeing as the Synthetics are supposedly so superior to organics, and as such would have won before the Reapers could have been created to stop them. But the Reapers do exist, so the Singularity never truly occurred. This means that the Reaper cycle, the mass genocide that the eons have wrought, was done over an academic notion. Do you have any idea how much that trivializes this whole sordid affair? Billions upon billions of sentient lives have fought and died over effectively nothing, all because some twits a few million years ago could keep their damn AI in check.

Second is the fact that the Reapers shouldn't have been able to defeat their creators. Reapers are not easy to build. They require a lot of time of resources (people) to create (as was shown in ME2's main plot), and I am damn sure the these precursors would have noticed if millions of their people were being kidnapped and enslaved long before the Reaper force was large or mature enough to face them. And unfortunately the Reapers wouldn't be able to use their usual technological advantage in this case as their opponents would have the very same technological prowess, with the added advantage of being far more numerous from the onset of the confrontation. The Reapers simply would not have won under those conditions.

Third and finally is the simple fact that the Reapers may have actually become the very thing they supposedly are protecting organics against. Think about it. The Reapers are an advanced synthetic-based organization led by artificial intelligence that seeks to (effectively) kill all sentient organic species. That makes their whole endeavor a self-fulfilling prophecy, making the Catalyst's efforts a complete and utter failure. At that point the Reapers stop being a threat and become a tragic joke. And if the primary antagonist in a serious narrative is seen as a joke, then something has gone horrendously wrong and the developer NEEDS to fix it, not simply try and hide it behind some pretty pictures.
...

your first point is proving the reapers, the starkid and subsentuently the reapers were the AI that civilization created and it did wipe them out; and it is quite believable that if an group created the starchild AI for solving the sythetics and orgainics problem became rogue in a faciticty advanced and remote enough, it could cause quite a lot of damage; as we saw in the "overlord" DLC

for your second point: just like the alliance (humanity's representive government in space) in ME2 sent so many people to help the colonies who were being harvested (they didn't send anyone, cerberus was the one who sent people; and very few people actually believed the harvested story who weren't on shepard's crew)

third point: from the starchild AI standpoint they aren't killing, they are making the civilizations into an advanced life form (an reaper), and that is the conclusion the AI made; kind of an "protecting them from themsleves, even to go as far as they did; they are still protecting them" a f***ed conclusion, but still an conclusion; what shepard proved to the AI is that the conclusion in question needs to be ratified; which is why in the converstation with the AI he says " new varibles have been introduced " or something of the sort

 

[RJ Dalton]

Commander Shepherd totally shot first. It's what makes his character bad-ass.

 

[Tumedus]

It's sort of nice that BW tried to fix some of the glaringly stupid plotholes the original ending created in the game. Not sure I would go so far as to say they "did right by us". There was so much backlash, even with 90% of the video game sites defending them, that I am not sure they really had much of a choice.

The game is still an ABC ending affair, now with a hidden refusal ending that feels more like a big middle finger to everyone who complained about the stupid star child scenario in the first place. Further, as much as they have the ending stills, the endings are completely independent from your decsions up to that point.

The existance of Star Child still invalidates pretty much the entire first game. Its still a stupid character, doesn't fit the lore, comes out of nowhere, and doesn't explain why it would manifest in that form.

The synthesis ending still doesn't survive even cursory fridge logic, not that the other two are much better.

It opens up entire new plotholes: one example is the crash landing. Now apparently they just fix the ship up and leave in spite of the clear "starting over" type of implication that existed before. So what was the point of the crash landing in the first place? If the damage was serious, how could they possibly fix it, if it was so minor that on ship supplies were enough to do a patch up job, then why did they even crash.

I could go on, but the ending failed in so many ways that adding a bit extra to the existing ones cannot really "fix" it. To give an idea, I played the first game many many times. Well into double digits full playthroughs. I played part 3 once and even with thid DLC couldn't muster the strength to even load the final battle to see the endings. I just watched them on youtube.

 

[The Human Torch]

I disagree with your article Mr. Scimeca.

The Extended Cut DLC was not Bioware doing right by the fans. If this was the case, then Bioware would have put out a formal apology from the get go. This did not happen. They acted all defensive, saying that we missed the point (though we very clearly didn't) and that they had artistic right (which I can and have called bullshit on).

No the EC was made to appease the fans. It's damage control. They really don't care about what we think, they just want to ensure that their company isn't run into the ground by this most inglorious of screw ups. If they had cared about us, then the ending would have been redone from the ground up. It hasn't. All they've done is elaborate on the things that they've already established in the original version, doing as little effort to make the fans stop complaining. And while it is appreciable to finally see the effects of our character's actions, those effects are still based upon the same fundamentally flawed premise of the singularity.

Now that the EC is out my issue with this idea is threefold. It used to be only twofold, but the EC actually managed to add another whole problem to the Singularity premise (see point #2 for that one).

First is the fact that the singularity premise is a paradox. Had it occurred, then it is reasonable to think that the Reapers would never have been created seeing as the Synthetics are supposedly so superior to organics, and as such would have won before the Reapers could have been created to stop them. But the Reapers do exist, so the Singularity never truly occurred. This means that the Reaper cycle, the mass genocide that the eons have wrought, was done over an academic notion. Do you have any idea how much that trivializes this whole sordid affair? Billions upon billions of sentient lives have fought and died over effectively nothing, all because some twits a few million years ago could keep their damn AI in check.

Second is the fact that the Reapers shouldn't have been able to defeat their creators. Reapers are not easy to build. They require a lot of time of resources (people) to create (as was shown in ME2's main plot), and I am damn sure the these precursors would have noticed if millions of their people were being kidnapped and enslaved long before the Reaper force was large or mature enough to face them. And unfortunately the Reapers wouldn't be able to use their usual technological advantage in this case as their opponents would have the very same technological prowess, with the added advantage of being far more numerous from the onset of the confrontation. The Reapers simply would not have won under those conditions.

Third and finally is the simple fact that the Reapers may have actually become the very thing they supposedly are protecting organics against. Think about it. The Reapers are an advanced synthetic-based organization led by artificial intelligence that seeks to (effectively) kill all sentient organic species. That makes their whole endeavor a self-fulfilling prophecy, making the Catalyst's efforts a complete and utter failure. At that point the Reapers stop being a threat and become a tragic joke. And if the primary antagonist in a serious narrative is seen as a joke, then something has gone horrendously wrong and the developer NEEDS to fix it, not simply try and hide it behind some pretty pictures.

So yes, the Extended Cut DLC may have rectified some of the more minor issues with Mass Effect 3's ending, but the underlying problem is still there. This ending does not work within it's own core ideals, and that makes the whole Mass Effect series a failure, even just as a simple idea. And that is really the biggest disappointment with this series. They had almost succeed in reaching the stars with their creation, only to fail because they couldn't see the flaws in their own foundation.

I agree completely with this statement, and will add something to it myself:

Adding those stills feels like BioWare surrendering a little artistic vision and pandering to the audience. That's the Pandora's Box opened by post-release narrative changes. The last thing we need is a George Lucas of videogames inspiring debates about whether Commander Shepard shot first or not.

Stop being such a Bioware apologist by throwing out the 'artistic vision' defense. It's not some shield that a writer can use to validate his/her crappy writing.
Games are art, yes, but they are not art like books, movies and paintings. Games are an interactive, fully adapative narrative, that adjusts itself to the players style and choices. Even with that being said, if a series (whatever series), has many plotholes and nonsensical magical McGuffins, than it deserves to be put on a pedestal and have rotten tomatoes thrown at it.

The difference between Mass Effect and Star Wars, is that the first trilogy of Star Wars was a perfectly functional and highly praised series, there was no rage whatsoever about these movies. And then George Lucas started changing random things left and right, and people were like: "Why? Why would you do that? It serves no purpose!" That what sparked the debate.

Mass Effect's ending was doomed from the start, when the developers decided to allow the game to go gold with this kind of crappy ending. I don't get it, really. Was there NO ONE in Bioware's development team or the EA management that said: "wait, this is really bad, we can't release this".

Changing a succesfull series of books/movies/games for no other reason than 'personal preference', that can deserve you the ire of it's fans, depending on how poorly the changes are executed. Refusing to change a horrible ending, that has been proven to be full of plotholes, unexplainable actions and generally something that was shat out of a typewriter, and even defending it...that takes a whole new level of stubborn asshole. And definitely not 'artistic vision'.

 

[Kennian]

i'd kill to see where they went with the original ending, they'd have had to add 5 or 6 hours to deal with the twist... it would have been awesome!

the EC helps, but it's still sugar on a dollop of horse poo

 

[chiefohara]

You know what? I'll admit to being angry at bioware enough that I won't even give the extended cut a glance. They wanted to end an epic trilogy with a piss poor ending that was so bad it not only dissapointed me it downright disgusted me. If thats the way they want to end trilogies then let them, I will never pay any attention to their shit ever again. Why even PLAY their games anymore if they don't respect not only their fans but their own franchises?

Too late to save face bioware, especially after feeding us DA2. Bioware, your so bad now its laughable. You have no respectable franchises anymore and I hope you lose millions upon millions now that you realize ending your ip's like this leaves you with NO IP'S! they reap what they sow, and its a massive harvest of feces. Bioware and their garbage 800 ms hour long dc's are boycotted. Forever. And they deserve it for kicking their fans in the balls for the last damn time. #$%#% bioware. 12 dollar hour long dlc's? 4 of them is only equal to 4 hours. Your better off buying cod full price and only playing the single player then you are with bioware dlc and that goes beyond bad to just downright wretched and pathetic. How's KOTOR treating you bioware? I'm laughing at you for losing so much money because its what you deserve!

Seriously buddy, Watch the EC endings. It doesn't fix everything, but it will take a fair chunk of that bitter taste out of your mouth and hugely alleviates the sense of betrayal you feel. Its still got its share of mistakes, but it also has a more proper sense of closure to it. If anything its a better way to say goodbye to your Shepard.

 

[chiefohara]

Personally im happy.

I got endings with better closure, and i got them for free. Sure they still have flaws, but I got to say goodbye to my Shep and i got closure from the characters if not the universe. They delayed paid DLC, paid wages to staff, called back voice actors and spent a 40,000 dollar download fee to give us this EC ending because of the backlash, if you add the two free multiplayer patches/maps since then to smooth things over while we waited for the EC DLC that's a 120,000 dollars, they've spent on just facilitating patches with XBOX Live alone. This wasn't painless for them, Getting a corporate entity to give out things for free, much less invest money back into customers who declared publicly and loudly that they wouldn't dare shop with them again would not have been an easy job for Bioware to do. This entire thing has cost them a fortune in Man hours, lost revenue, and direct investment back into the customers happiness when all the 'bobby Kotick types' in EA would have been screaming 'screw the consumer, we've got their money'. Quite Frankly im amazed its happened at all.

At the risk of being flamed, im damn grateful. It wasn't easy for them, and they did it anyway. So Kudos to Bioware, and Kudos to EA Execs for letting them do this.

I Loved DA:Origins, was disappointed with DA2, ME3 had me wavering about Bioware a little, but the EC endings have brought me back into the fold. Bioware and EA learned a damn good lesson here, and i'm sure they will treat their products and IP's with a bit more care now. Particularly the endings of them.

I see the EC endings as a genuine investment back into the fanbase, so the least i can do is be open minded enough to give Bioware another chance.

 

[Mirrorknight]

If Bioware did right by us, they shouldn't have had to edit the ending in the first place.

The BioWare name used to mean I could go out and buy a game with their name on it without knowing anything about the game, and know that it would, at the worst, be merely a good game.

Now. Well, I'm not going be like some people and be B0YCOT!!!11!!!, but after Dragon Age 2 and the ME ending fiasco, I'm sure not buying any more of their games day one anymore. Even if they're from trusted IP's. (Sorry, Jade Empire 2)

 

[The Heik]

BioWare Did Right By Us

You don?t lose artistic integrity if you?re just trying to get your point across.

Read Full Article

...
First is the fact that the singularity premise is a paradox. Had it occurred, then it is reasonable to think that the Reapers would never have been created seeing as the Synthetics are supposedly so superior to organics, and as such would have won before the Reapers could have been created to stop them. But the Reapers do exist, so the Singularity never truly occurred. This means that the Reaper cycle, the mass genocide that the eons have wrought, was done over an academic notion. Do you have any idea how much that trivializes this whole sordid affair? Billions upon billions of sentient lives have fought and died over effectively nothing, all because some twits a few million years ago could keep their damn AI in check.

Second is the fact that the Reapers shouldn't have been able to defeat their creators. Reapers are not easy to build. They require a lot of time of resources (people) to create (as was shown in ME2's main plot), and I am damn sure the these precursors would have noticed if millions of their people were being kidnapped and enslaved long before the Reaper force was large or mature enough to face them. And unfortunately the Reapers wouldn't be able to use their usual technological advantage in this case as their opponents would have the very same technological prowess, with the added advantage of being far more numerous from the onset of the confrontation. The Reapers simply would not have won under those conditions.

Third and finally is the simple fact that the Reapers may have actually become the very thing they supposedly are protecting organics against. Think about it. The Reapers are an advanced synthetic-based organization led by artificial intelligence that seeks to (effectively) kill all sentient organic species. That makes their whole endeavor a self-fulfilling prophecy, making the Catalyst's efforts a complete and utter failure. At that point the Reapers stop being a threat and become a tragic joke. And if the primary antagonist in a serious narrative is seen as a joke, then something has gone horrendously wrong and the developer NEEDS to fix it, not simply try and hide it behind some pretty pictures.
...

Ok before we start could you please do a grammar and syntax proofread for me before you do your next post because your current one is simply a mess. Half the time I spent on my current post was trying to figure out what the heck you were saying and that's not a good thing for either side of the conversation.

your first point is proving the reapers, the starkid and subsentuently the reapers were the AI that civilization created and it did wipe them out; and it is quite believable that if an group created the starchild AI for solving the sythetics and orgainics problem became rogue in a faciticty advanced and remote enough, it could cause quite a lot of damage; as we saw in the "overlord" DLC/

No My first point was that the Reapers are a situational paradox. Either they were created for something that didn't exist or they couldn't have been created fast enough and in enough numbers to combat the supposed Synthetic threat.

Besides, have you any idea how many fail safes and kill switches exist in our current society alone? Let me put it this way: The United States of America has arguable the largest and most powerful nuclear stockpile in the world. However, it is protected by so many levels of security and protocols that the only feasible way for those nukes to be used en masse is that an actual nuclear war occurs. I cannot believe that such an advanced society as the one that made the relays came to dominate the galaxy without firmly establishing doctrine on how to cover it's ass. The minute that the Catalyst started to go rogue the precursors would have started locking down the electronic bugger or bombing it into smithereens should the former fail.

Besides, the Catalyst itself stated that they began harvesting their creators long before the Singularity had ever occurred, so the Reapers are canonically a solution to a non-existent problem.

for your second point: just like the alliance (humanity's representive government in space) in ME2 sent so many people to help the colonies who were being harvested (they didn't send anyone, cerberus was the one who sent people; and very few people actually believed the harvested story who weren't on shepard's crew)

Ok you are doing a lot of speculation in regards the state of the civilization that the Reapers came from. The Alliance only sent token help over to the Terminus colonies because the colonies were not in it's jurisdiction. They couldn't send a battle fleet to investigate without starting a war with all the pirates and mercenaries in the Terminus systems and as such tying up all the resources they sent over there to help with the missing colonists. The Alliance was Catch 22'd with a vengeance.

The Precursors though have built the mass relays all across the universe, so it's pretty safe to assume that their influence extended to the areas those relays existed in (and seeing as the relays are EVERYWHERE in the Milky Way galaxy, they pretty much owned the damn thing). As such any place where their people began missing would be within their jurisdiction, so they could send any and all necessary forces and resources to deal with said situation. And trust me, while a few thousand going missing isn't that big, the millions upon millions necessary to even start making the Reaper fleet would be noticed and as such the Catalyst and his friends would eliminated long before the Reapers made a fleet substantial enough to fight what is effectively THE galactic superpower in history.

third point: from the starchild AI standpoint they aren't killing, they are making the civilizations into an advanced life form (an reaper), and that is the conclusion the AI made; kind of an "protecting them from themsleves, even to go as far as they did; they are still protecting them" a f***ed conclusion, but still an conclusion; what shepard proved to the AI is that the conclusion in question needs to be ratified; which is why in the converstation with the AI he says " new varibles have been introduced " or something of the sort

[/quote]

Here's the thing though, just because the Catalyst and the Reapers think that they're "saving" the people they harvest doesn't mean that this what they are actually doing. Lets analyze what happens to an individual when they are harvested. As seen on the collector base in ME2, they are "digested" into a gray paste, thereby destroying their mortal coil. That would kill any living creature I know of, ME universe included, and as much as the Reapers say that they are saving the civilizations they harvest those civilizations are no less dead because of it.

So despite their intention the Reapers still are a primarily synthetic species being led by a synthetic individual in the eons long act of killing all sentient organics. Spin whichever way you want to, that sounds exactly like the very thing the Reapers wanted to prevent. So again the Reapers have become a galactic joke, so incompetent that they actually failed their goal from the get go.

 

[Zeckt]

You know what? I'll admit to being angry at bioware enough that I won't even give the extended cut a glance. They wanted to end an epic trilogy with a piss poor ending that was so bad it not only dissapointed me it downright disgusted me. If thats the way they want to end trilogies then let them, I will never pay any attention to their shit ever again. Why even PLAY their games anymore if they don't respect not only their fans but their own franchises?

Too late to save face bioware, especially after feeding us DA2. Bioware, your so bad now its laughable. You have no respectable franchises anymore and I hope you lose millions upon millions now that you realize ending your ip's like this leaves you with NO IP'S! they reap what they sow, and its a massive harvest of feces. Bioware and their garbage 800 ms hour long dc's are boycotted. Forever. And they deserve it for kicking their fans in the balls for the last damn time. #$%#% bioware. 12 dollar hour long dlc's? 4 of them is only equal to 4 hours. Your better off buying cod full price and only playing the single player then you are with bioware dlc and that goes beyond bad to just downright wretched and pathetic. How's KOTOR treating you bioware? I'm laughing at you for losing so much money because its what you deserve!

Seriously buddy, Watch the EC endings. It doesn't fix everything, but it will take a fair chunk of that bitter taste out of your mouth and hugely alleviates the sense of betrayal you feel. Its still got its share of mistakes, but it also has a more proper sense of closure to it. If anything its a better way to say goodbye to your Shepard.

I'm sorry, I am intensely bitter with Bioware. I know that the reaper's were a near impossible threat to deal with I never asked for a happy ending where Shepard takes off in a normandy that farts rainbows I could of dealt with the ending being sad sad endings are actually my favorite but the way they ended it originally was not sad or happy but downright disrespectful and BAD.

I won't ever get over the bitterness of the original mass effect 3 ending, after already being dissapointed by dragon age 1 dlc and da 2 as a whole. I would prefer to remember the ending as the way they wanted to end it. Awful and franchise ending. Thats what they wanted thats what they get from me.

 

[ryo02]

Oh, and one minor nitpick about the EC... I see that in addition to Multi-Core Shielding, we have added some serious Plot Armor to the Normandy. Or did Harbinger just decide that the ship that carries the people that have been screwing with the Reapers' plans at every turn just wasn't worth shooting at? Maybe Joker had a Red Cross painted on the hull?

I actually attributed that to the Normandy's stealth systems - they've said many times that the only way you could detect the ship would be if you were looking at it, and Reapers don't have "eyes"...

The problem with that assumption is that the Reaper-created Collector ship could detect the Normandy just fine, even in stealth mode.

It's possible that the Normandy didn't have its stealth systems up when the Collector's attacked. That's the only reason I can think of, at least.

Presley specifically says that they had stealth systems engaged.

Oh. Well I don't know, then.

Pressly also says they had been searching the area for 4 days

Joker says 3 ships had gone missing in the last month

the Collectors have used trap style tactics during ME2

my guess is the Collectors destroyed a few ships in that area deliberatly to lure the Normandy. then just hung around long enough for the Normandy to get close.
or do something to show where they are IE venting the stored heat or exiting FTL they did that just prior to being attacked by the way.
the stealth systems came online AFTER exiting FTL for a brief moment the collectors wouldve been able to see them.