Did ME3 ruin Mass Effect for you?

[Mikeyfell]

I don't like the way this question is framed, when I look at it I think it's asking "Did the end of ME3 dissuade you from buying future Mass Effect games."

Which is sort of moot because you can hardly have a Mass Effect game no matter which ending you picked.

My problem with ME3 is that it ruined the first two games, and I loved those games. But they are pointless because they don't effect ME3. Basically if all 3 ME games were packaged together as one game, that would be a bad game. The damage was done before you even went back to Earth.

 

[MANIFESTER]

ME3 did not ruin the series for me. I am intrigued by the universe it is set in. Though, they did try their damnedest to kill off any mystery the universe had after ME1. Anyway, I still love the games I came to love most of the characters, and I enjoyed the choices. Would I still buy another ME game? Depends on what it is, both story and gameplay-wise. Personally I would rather have them backpedal from imbalance of RPG to Shooter.

 

[The Heik]

snip

I've got to disagree with the need to analyse the plot holes.

This statement right here undermines your original post. You say nothing is wrong with the game and now you say that you don't think that it should be held accountable for its flaws. That's insane. That's a salesman selling you a broken car then then being insulted when you ask why it won't turn on. Things must be critiqued in order for society to learn what was done right and wrong and improve on later products.

Your statement also raises the question as to why you'd consider that analysis should not be done on the subject when you made the post on a forum, a format that is ostensibly designed for analysis and discussion. Seems a bit counter-intuitive

BTW the cycle is every 50,000 years. Just so you know

All the story offers is an excuse to fight your way through various situations and should be judged as such. It worked, i was interested all the way to the end and when it all finished i sat back and thought i had enjoyed the experience. If there hadn't been good gameplay i wouldn't have got past the first game and the story would have been irrelevant. I think it boils down to what people wanted. For some, they didn't want the story to end at all and that colours their opinion on the ending. People like me realised it had to end and as long as it wasn't totally stupid it would be fine...which it was.

2 things with this:

1)Gameplay is not the ME series greatest strengths. ME1 I could beat on the higher difficulties with just one gun and one ability (excluding the occasional medi-gel). Me2, while more tactical, was still an middle of the class graduate of the Sir Wally McChesthigh school of shooters. Me3, while certainly the best combat of the 3 games, was still average in quality when compared to other shooters. While none of the games were bad in terms of combat, the characters and story were what most people got hooked on, and simply dismissing it as a secondary facet seems silly given the context.

2)Generally people are fine with something ending, so long as it's done well (LOTR and Star Wars original trilogy being two examples that spring to mind as being generally considered good endings). I knew that the Mass Effect galaxy as I knew it was going to end with ME3, and I was even expecting that Shepard wouldn't make it out of the final conflict alive. I was fine with that. My issue (and the issues of many other gamers) is that it was done so poorly. And a lot of the problems with the ending aren't just from the "it didn't happen the way I wanted it" way of thinking. There are a lot of fundamental and technical issues that exist with the ending that lessen the quality of the product. Considering that Me3 was the end of the story arc, ending it badly was a stupid move as it (justifiably) colours peoples' opinions of it ,and the final impression of something is what ultimately sticks

Flame war? Really? For having an opinion that flies in the face of what the sheep bleat?

This is a prime example of what I meant by flame war inspiring stuff. You have to learn a little bit of discretion when it comes to posting stuff, otherwise you'll just piss people off. With your original post you could have started with "I personally think" which makes it a subjective view and will be considered as such, but you decided to portray that opinion of yours as set-in-stone fact, which pretty much gives every person from here to the moon permission to dis-abuse you of such notions if they disagree. That's what starts a flame war.

 

[Danial]

No, I still enjoyed the games, a 6/10 ending did not ruin a otherwise 10/10 game. Wha it did do was make me hate the the a large portion of the gaming community, people who disliked the game and people who liked the game on large reacted like it was a holy war and everyone for some reason needed to die of aids. Seeing someone say they hoped someone got raped because they wrote a complimentary post on the game kinda killed off any want i ever had to join a gaming "community" too deeply.

 

[TK421]

For me it did, but not because of the crappy ending. It was because your choices up until that point didn't matter, and the entire premise of the series was "your choices will actually affect the outcome of the game."

 

[Harb]

Yes, absolutely, without question. I have no desire whatsoever to play anything placed in Mass Effect universe and will approach with extreme caution anything released by Bioware.

 

[RanD00M]

No, ME was never that great in my eyes that it could be ruined. Also ME2 was bad in most aspects so if anything ME3 would only be able to make it better, that is to say if I ever play ME3, which I won't.

 

[SpectacularWebHead]

It didn't ruin it for me and Mass Effect is the only thing I'm willing to blindly defend (Except the ending) so yeah, I would buy another.

Although how can you raise the stakes higher than killing everything in the Galaxy? Killing everything in the universe?

 

[aivalera]

No, Mass Effect is not ruined for me. And it's think it's better if EA isn't running it anymore.

 

[TheCaptain]

Nah, one bad entry in a series - or, in this case, a tiny piece of one entry - couldn't turn me away from a franchise that awesome. I still trust in Bioware. So many great people seem to work there...

 

[JediMB]

Originally, Mass Effect 3 did ruin the franchise for me.

After the Extended Cut, I'd be fine with playing the games again, as long as I block out the terrible logical fallacies still present.

That said, I've had no real desire to buy or play the ME3 DLC, no matter how interesting the stories may be. Perhaps next year.

Oh, and I'd probably have more incentive to play a future Mass Effect game if I could play as a non-human character. The aliens in that galaxy are really interesting, so it'd be fun to see the world from their perspective(s).

 

[Marcus Kehoe]

The reason I got mad of mass effect 3 is that it gave me no closure on the character and world I had been affecting(pun) through the over 200 hours I put in the game. If they make a game to maybe elaborate that for me I'd be very happy. Even if not I still love the Mass Effect universe so I'd still play it.

 

[HellbirdIV]

Did ME3 ruin Mass Effect for you?

Yes. Sort of.

While it has forever tainted my faith in the storytellers behind the franchise and no amount of "clarification" will ever make the ending to ME3 good from a narrative, dramatic or thematic standpoints, I will always love Mass Effect. And that's why the ending to ME3 was so bad.

I love the setting. I love the species, the quirks of the people and how they range all across the spectrum without leaving behind what defines them as members of their species. I love the technology balancing the line between the fantastical and the real to not be too over the top nor too dull and boring.

I love the characters. I love how Liara and Tali can maintain femeninity and a sort of approachable vulnerability while still being competent, intelligent and when necessary, independent. I love how Garrus is equal parts funny, awesome and really charming, making me enjoy his company more than you'd ever expect. I love how even Meathead Vega, who I started out hating completley and utterly, had enough moments of real humanity to make him tolerable.

And the ending to Mass Effect 3 was the complete opposite of everything the series had been up until that point. It was just shit.

You know another game that had an awful ending? Homefront. But I didn't care about that game having a bad ending, because I didn't love the setting and characters. I didn't care about Dumbass McAsstard sacrificing himself, I didn't care about Team America winning the day against the Chinese- I mean "Korean" Commienazies.

But I do care about Shepard. So I can't exactly let it go.

 

[Joriss]

Never really got into the series, but now with the whole drama I couldn't care less about missing out on it.

 

[Something Amyss]

Oh, I am not saying the ending wasn't dissapointing. I was just pissed at how the community took a hold of the issue:

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH THE ENDING SUCKED! WE DEMAND A NEW ENDING! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH WAH WAH WAAAAAAAAAAH".

Seriously, nearly everyone sounded like a bunch of spoiled little children.

Yeah, if that had actually happened they would have looked like spoiled little children.

What do you mean "if"? It did happen, just not as bluntly as I put it.

Or as dishonestly, which is kind of the problem in the first place. Not to mention the reason I put "if" as a conditional.

 

[LOLITRON]

*Spoilers*

I wouldn't say the ending ruined it for me, but I was disappointed. First of all, the battle assets didn't matter at all. It's kind of dumb that you can be a complete dick and hardly get any allies, yet the outcome is the same as someone who went through the effort of rallying almost everyone. I was so pumped to see all the allies I collected to kick some Reaper ass, but it never happened.

Secondly, I just found the ending to be pretty underwhelming. Not because it didn't bring closure, but merely because it wasn't very climactic. Here you have Shepard on the verge of death fighting to hold onto his last bit of strength, and then all the excitement just gets brought to halt when he runs into some magical child that pretty much just says "Congratulations, you won, now pick your result." I guess I was expecting Shepard to go out in a blaze of glory. I think they tried too hard and just couldn't resist adding one more plot twist, which ultimately backfired (to me, anyway).

 

[aivalera]

Mass Effect 3, DLC is a fucking Prothean, a VERY important member of the progenitor species who has dialogue choices and obvious plot relevance. Adding the Prothean to game literally literally takes the simple editing of one line of code.

first off there's two 'literally's in you sentence and second is that adding a new a character does not take just "one line of code." It takes script rewrites so that the crew actually acknowledges the guy is a Prothean to add depth, as well as needing more voice acting, and then they gave him unique skills, you get a laser gun, plus they needed to make a new level where Shepard finds the Prothean, they needed to give him a room on the ship, plus there's his personality, cutscenes specific to the character, not to mention artwork that is needed to get everything right. That right there is a ton of work for the devolopers.

If you mean that it wasn't on the game when they released it, then it depends how much of that content was already on the disc. Since I'm sort of on a teaching frenzy here, they can't just edit one code on the day before it's released because they have already given the publishers the finished game which needs to be published and checked for issues before the game is actually sold. This takes roughly the same amount of time as making the new DLC so I could say it is reasonable to give players the option to buy it then because somebody needs to get paid for the extra work.

Anyway, think about what you are going to type and check it before you press post plz.

 

[Hyperone]

Not at all. While slightly underwhelming and having a mediocre tacked on multiplayer aspect, it was still a solid and engaging experience overall.

 

[bificommander]

It hasn't ruined it, but it was certainly a disappointment. After seeing the resolution of the Quarian-Geth conflict, they've shown they can write good dramatic scenes. And after the ME2 ending they've shown they can program fun and inventive ways to create multiple endings. So why they went with a poor-man's version of the Deus Ex ending from a good decade ago, while riddeling it with plot holes is beyond me**. I looks like one of Obsidian's rush-job endings.

Still, I had fun for most of the game. I would consider buying a product set in the same universe.

** Spoiler warning: Seriously, they were so afraid that someone might develop a race of machines that would wipe out all life, so they made an unstoppable fleet of killer machines that could evolve depending on what organic race they last absorbed and would run for millions of year unattended, while being forced to go into hibernation for most of that time for no benefit to themselves? If they were so confident that that could never backfire, why were they so sure any other synthetic race would be a threat to all life?

 

[Flight]

Unfortunately, Mass Effect 3 took away all the enjoyment I had in the series. I recently went back in an attempt to replay ME1, but I didn't even get through the introduction sequence before I remembered that no matter what I did, it would all end in a cluster of nonsense, and even the Extended Cut didn't help at all. It's a shame, because I really loved this series beforehand.