Foehunter82 said:
Truthfully, I knew Cerberus would be a key player before Mass Effect 3 was even announced. Everything anyone needed to know about that could be gleaned from the Lazarus Project at the beginning of Mass Effect 2, as well as Renegade Shepard's scars and The Illusive Man's blue eyes (both are kind of Reapertech-ish). Frankly, I'm surprised that Shepard's resurrection didn't play a bigger role in Mass Effect 3. Although, I will agree with you that much of Mass Effect 3's story was an utter mess, even before factoring in the ending. I played through it earlier this year, enjoyed it (in spite of the ending), but after sitting with it a while, I've finally decided that there is entirely too much wrong with the story. The Cerberus thing wasn't a surprise (I figured The Illusive Man was partially Indoctrinated, anyway), and I kind of assumed The Illusive Man would make a power play, regardless. However, the relatively petty squabbles between the races (which is what most of the various smaller wars actually were), were totally stupid compared to the Reaper threat. The continued Council denial up to the third game was also pretty stupid. The Prothean you end up with, while interesting, also presents the Prothean race as a civilization of brutal assholes who are, quite frankly, unlikely to have developed any sort of advanced technology themselves, thus rendering the "advanced civilization" shtick irrelevant. Ultimately, though, I think the Mass Effect series, up to this point, just a knockoff of H.P. Lovecraft's work. That's how I choose to see it, anyway.
Yeah, Cerberus being a thing was obvious ever since they got their re-write in Mass Effect 2. They did also need to be dealt with. Where things got ridiculous was where they eclipsed the threat of the Reapers for 5/6ths of the story. Reapers come down, invade Earth, and everything from there onwards is Cerberus, Cerberus and more Cerberus. Reapers are attacking the Krogan Homeworld - oh, but Cerberus is too, better deal with them first, after already dealing with them and the Salarians. The council needs to help us - oh, but Cerberus. Asari homeworld is being wrecked by Reapers - oop, sorry, gotta deal with Kai Lame. Mars? Ceberus. Recruiting/meeting half your friends? Cerberus in the way. Allies are assembled? Better go do a 3 mission stint purely on Cerberus.
Just... Why. I get they're indoctrinated. They're a fucking human organisation that, whilst impressive, can only have so much manpower - certainly not enough to take on the entire galaxy everywhere all at once, especially with indoctrinated servants who lose a lot of physical and mental function as a result of the process. Reapers needed to be a much larger focus, Cerberus should have been a side plot.
I wouldn't have minded the petty squabbles... IF they'd been avoidable as they were hinted to be. Rachni. Shouldn't be there if you killed them. Find something else for grunt to do. Quarians? If you pushed them to war, sure, them and the Geth be warring. But if you took all the right precautions, told the Quarians to do the peace, brainwashed the Geth to be the good guys - that shit shouldn't go down. Fight the Reaper invasion with them, not fight them then a single Reaper. Turians, Asari and Krogan... Yeah, sure, they were fine. They were being attacked by the Reapers, not fighting each other, and the Krogan always had their goal. I can understand that at least, and Turian through Krogan was the best part of the game. The rest... a mess.
Honestly, we all knew the plot was fucked from the first few seconds of 2. It became an action flick rather than a classic Sci-Fi adventure. Mass Effect 2 was the Revenge of the Sith to Mass Effect 1's A New Hope. Hell, I could actually draw quite a few parallels between both to be quite honest. Both were good, in their own ways, even if 2 introduced a lot of nonsense plot and just made excuses as to why they wouldn't advance the main plot. Three just screwed the pooch though and turned out as The Phantom Menace, complete with a magical kid who saves the day, and a weird monster who tags along for comic relief [Seriously, there was some major uncanny valley with that reporter]. There was hope for it, it could have been another 2 sort of game, with heavy atmosphere and alright contained plot, even if in terms of the series things didn't make sense as a whole. But they faffed around with 2 for too long, opened too many plotlines to plug on their sinking ship, and then tried to follow some Christ metaphor at the end like a wannabe Matrix 3, but rushed that and fucked it royally too.
They had a sure hit if they just went with a triumphant fight if you unite all the races, saving Earth on the shoulders of the galaxy. Perfect fit? Of course not. People would still complain that it was an unwinnable fight and we should have lost, or that it was lovecraft inspired and we should have lost, but most would have enjoyed it as it followed the build up Bioware gave us, and most importantly if there were genuine victory and defeat conditions, it would give us choice in the story, and reflect our previous choices. But no. We had to change the deal at the last minute, and watch as everyone pointed out the utter bullshit BW tried to serve.
Probably one of the few games I actually hate to be honest. I just cannot enjoy it for everything that it isn't, and the statements that were made about it within a day of release by its lead designers, that were blatant lies, mean I can't even respect it as a decent game that I didn't like. It was a deceptively marketed piece of bullshit, that its really hard to not see as some sort of power play by the lead writers who wanted to write the story they wanted, rather than what their audience did, but still had to sell a product. If it had been marketed honestly, it would have been seen as a brave and bold move, that whilst disappointing and many people didn't like, was respectable by the writers. When things flew right in the face of what we were told we were buying... That's how it gained its utter infamy. It wasn't just a poorly executed mess, it was the recipe for a perfect storm.
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