BioWare Says Farewell With Mass Effect 3: Citadel and Reckoning

[shrekfan246]

You know what I love about comments like this? If we were all singing the ending's praises, saying how great it was and how much we enjoyed it, and thanked Bioware a million times for this great end to a great trilogy, no one would be saying things like "Are people still celebrating over this fucking ending? Holy Shit, you'd think Bioware just ended world hunger or something."

Actually, on this website, people would be saying "Are people still celebrating over this fucking thing?" Then Mass Effect would go down in history as the most overrated game ever created, according to The Escapist community. You see it all the time with Half-Life 2 or Halo.

OT: I'm wondering if the squad-mates will be added for the entire game, or just mission-specific events like the Shadow Broker from ME2? Probably the latter, which is a tad disappointing but still something to look forward to.

 

[Josh123914]

I never, ever got the feeling that I defeated the Reapers, I never got the feeling of victory, because in the end, the Reapers let you defeat them. And don´t get me started on the EC, I got very excited when I saw the option to reject the Spacekid´s choices, only to be greeted with Casey´s giant middle finger to anyone who dared criticize the epic conclusion he wrote on his own on a piece of napkin!

Of course, this stance revolves around complete ignorance of what the Catalyst is (hint: it's not a Reaper, it makes it perfectly clear that it's not a Reaper, and it makes it perfectly clear that nothing would have been possible if not for the work you did in constructing the Crucible) and not caring that the series made it perfectly clear that the Reapers couldn't be defeated in conventional warfare.

Refusal is the "I don't like the choices, so screw everybody!" choice - so it's a perfect choice for ending-bashers.

Here's something though, if the Catalyst is willing to do this all why did he even have the Reapers in the first place? Synthesis is supposedly the final evolution of life, but then why don't the Reapers do that and just forget about killing? Control is basically putting whoever's the first lifeform to wake up the Catalyst in charge of the most powerful armada in the cosmos and Destroy is the option to wipe out the species that this whole time the Catalyst was trying to preserve.
Even if it was working with us then why have Control or Destroy at all? In fact why even have the Reapers in the first place if Synthesis is the same thing, but the entire species retains it's free will by not being ground up into a giant living milkshake?

Also (my personal opinion though but still) regardless of whether the ending can be considered 'good' or 'bad' or 'lore-breaking' it was still a huge letdown and even with the Extended Cut it has killed the franchise for me because, really what's the point in any of it if that's the end result?

 

[lord's voken]

one cant help but wonder if the base game at launch included with it the from ashes dcl, Leviathan and EC that it would viewed as a great game even today. and that in such a world, gamers would be giddy at the citadel dcl and not using its announcement as a time to continue to air old grievances.

OT: citadel seems like its going to be well meh. maybe a project more the dev team than the fans i suppose

 

[Josh123914]

one cant help but wonder if the base game at launch included with it the from ashes dcl, Leviathan and EC that it would viewed as a great game even today. and that in such a world, gamers would be giddy at the citadel dcl and not using its announcement as a time to continue to air old grievances.

OT: citadel seems like its going to be well meh. maybe a project more the dev team than the fans i suppose

Yeah all the DLCs have been sort of a way to appease the fanbase in one way or another.

I mean Leviathan was basically fleshing out what the Extended Cut didn't in a concerted effort to salvage the ending, and Omega was something everyone knew was gonna happen and was meant to be a bit of a nostalgia kick for series fans. This one seems to be running on all cylinders to try and pull the fans back that they lost over the course of the series, be it the loss of RPG features or the From Ashes DLC or... the ending (say what you will about it being good or bad, you have to admit people were pissed about it and there was a big PR shitstorm surrounding how Bioware handled it)

 

[Emiscary]

Wow. So Bioware's last ditch effort to make people give a shit again is to offer them resolution (meaning: a few padded cuddling scenes) to their romantic plotline as part of a paid DLC package.

It's exactly what you'd expect from Bioware at this point. Meaning: too little too late and/or patronizing.

And whenever Casey Hudson talks about ANYTHING I just think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmZ3Cvekt14

(Just substitute "Barry" with "Casey")

Oh, one last thing:

Describing a 15$ DLC pack that promises to do what the base game should've fucking done (IE: give you a satisfactory ending) as a "blow-out" is... well, it's being a tad generous. To say the least.

 

[bossfight1]

When I first beat the game last year, I was sad. Then for the next few months, I was annoyed. Then the Extended Cut comes out, and I became angry. One year on, I'm just tired. Tired of saying that the ending sucks, that the ending pretty much makes replaying any of the games a waste of time. I just can't touch the games anymore, knowing that the Starchild waits at the end, ready to compile all my choices into three differently colored explosions and leave me sitting there, feeling drained, empty and betrayed. The Extended Cut did nothing, but Bioware remains convinced that they've given one of the best franchises in gaming history a suitable ending.

I'm done. I'm going to uninstall Mass Effect from my computer for a while. Maybe, just MAYBE they'll get their heads out of their asses at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[ClanCrusher]

And as the wheels turn and the vocal minority rush to destroy the ending, vow to boycott the franchise, make pledges that they have no intention of keeping, the majority of people smart enough to stay far away from the conflict won't go within ten feet of the forums and choose on their own whether to buy the DLC or not.

As a small reminder to anyone crazy enough to have read this far down the chain of comments, you are certainly entitled to your own personal taste, it's one of the few ways you can be an individual in your life, but if you somehow think that your taste in entertainment somehow makes you better than someone else based on the things they like, you should probably go dunk your head in a pool of acid and spare us your comments.

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

"Objective" is the word ending-bashers use when they refuse to acknowledge that they could be wrong in any way or that other people's opinions are valid.

The fact alone that the ending caused the reaction it caused, is proof that Bioware, or in this case Mac Walters and Casey Hudson, both failed as authors to communicate their ideas in a way the audience could follow, and failed as businessmen to understand what their costumers wanted.

And I can see you are still trying to push that ridiculous "silent majority" argument. Look at this and weep: http://social.bioware.com/633606/polls/28989

And before you reject it as a knee-jerk reaction, everyone with even a basic grasp on mathematics and costumer behavior knows that piece of statistics has bad news written all over it.

 

[The Ubermensch]

I always think its funny to hear about the ME fandom crying about the ending. You'd think that they've never heard of pulling a Gainax ending.

Spoiler: the way this works

Lets put it this way guys; if you have this

and then it ends like this

and you cry and eventually you convince them to expand the ending to look like this;

Just stop. I know its still kind of baffling and doesn't make sense, you could try and make your own sense out of it, I don't know. But if you keep going you'll end up with this

And no one wants Mari, even Asukafags are better than that. Just get on with your lives. trust me. You don't want this. We've been down this road before. It doesn't end well

 

[loa]

Wait a second, so interacting with your past romance was not in mass effect 3 and is now being sold as DLC?
That's something I'd expect to be in the actual game.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Well, that was timely.

Just in time for me to be completely uninterested, having sold the game long since.

 

[mutantofspring]

it looks good but it well have to add a scene to the ending to really make it worthwhile

 

[BattlePope]

Buying this now. Who's with me?

I am! But I'm thinking that's because I'm a completionist, and I want to experience it all when I play a game.

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

-snip-

Yeah, I very much agree the end of the Evangelion TV series was bad. I can sort of see what Gainax was going for with those last two episodes, but that doesn't excuse the lackluster execution and stopping the plot dead in its tracks.

But I will defend End of Evangelion, to, well, the end. It at least had the common courtesy to follow up on the series' foreshadowing, themes, and plot threads, and stuck with them to the bitter end. That is a lot more than I can say for Mass Effect.

 

[BattlePope]

And while I'm sure it's already been said: I'm not one of the people that thought the ending undid the 500 hours of my life that were spent enjoying everything leading up to it. And I am aware it's been a pretty sad point to make of how much I've "Effected Mass to the first, second, and third powers," but it's been my observation that the majority consensus is that the ending was less than ideal, which is an understandable perspective. It has, however, occurred to me that since it wasn't a twist ending like "Shepard's been indoctrinated since killing Sovereign!", I felt it was good, even if unconventional. I loved these games and the third one could have done with some of the DLC being part of the game in the first place, but other than that: it was still a great adventure up to that point.

Except the rip-off that the Jack romance was in 3. I had more qualms with that than anything, save for that boss fight at the temple. AND how it started: I wanted to be either a Paragon or a Renegade and stand trial for my actions with Cerberus and also formally meet James while detained, as opposed to the "this game takes place only about 6 months after the last one" jumping on point. For the record, that's less issues with a game than I'd had with any of the last 5 I've played.

 

[Savryc]

Huh. I didn't notice I'd accidentally signed into BSN.