How Should Game Choices Matter? (ME3)

[IOwnTheSpire]

I'm going to bring up Mass Effect 3 and the ending, sorry, I know it's been a long time since this was actually relevant, but I need to get some feedback on this, so...

Anyways, many of the complaints I have heard (and still hear) is the feeling that the choices they made didn't matter in the end. A valid complaint, but I can't help but wonder: what does it really mean when a choice "matters"?

Really, there aren't too many ways ME3 could've ended besides either a) stopping the Reapers somehow or b) not stopping them. To me, there was always a limit as to how much each choice could affect the actual outcome of the story. I just assumed that the choices would affect what happened to each character/race in an epilogue, like in Dragon Age: Origins, but I don't think whether you recruited krogans or salarians would matter too much in the fight against the Reapers, other than showing up as reinforcements and maybe preventing a character from getting killed.

So what exactly is the extent that choices should matter?

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Choices should matter if that is what has been pushed as the main selling point of a game. The Mass Effect series was constantly sold as you shaping the galaxy. Yes, the ultimate choice was never really a choice--stop the Reapers or die--but it's the little things that I, and so many others, wanted to see.
Preventing a character from getting killed? That's a HUGE deal, especially if the choice involves saving that person and sacrificing something else that is important.

A lot of people were upset that, despite choosing Anderson to be on the Council, Udina still ends up on the Council. I remember reading a post that summed up this problem perfectly: If Anderson was still on the Council like I said he was, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!
Recruiting the Salarians or Korgrans should have had a huge difference, not in how the game ended, but in how Shepard approached the Reapers. Korgrans are front line fighters, whereas Salarians are small tactical strikes. The choices should have mattered in the same way they mattered at the end of Mass Effect 2. If you don't chose the right choice, you can still succeed, but you're going to bleed for it.

Instead, everything that didn't fit BioWare's primary story got steamrolled so that it did, like Anderson and Udina. I know that the main story was never really going to change, but I wanted to see my own touches in it. I wanted it to be my Shepard, with her problem-solving skills, that beat the Reapers because of what she chose to do or not do.

 

[Dalisclock]

Since I finished ME3 for the first time about a month and a half ago(late to the party, I know), first of all I'm going to say I thought the ending was okay(as opposed to, say LOST). The writers pretty much wrote themselves into a corner from day one when they decided "So, a race of Mecha Cthulhus are going to be here soon and kill us all(or enslave us). They've done this every 50,000 years since the beginning of time. But we're going to try to stop them". It's basically a lovecraft story in space, but with more sci-fi and a little less cosmic horror. However, being a lovecraft story, the logical conclusion is pretty much: No matter what we do, the reapers show up and everyone dies. None of your choices really mattered. Cue the next cycles, none of whose chocies would matter either.

That's the problem with ME in a nutshell. It's why ME2 choose to go the more personal route with you building your team and getting to know your crew of badasses, in a context where your choices do matter. They built this up into it kind of affecting things that happen in ME3, mostly the Krogan and the finale on Rannoch.

However, considering Deus ex machina device ending they pretty much felt they had to go with, with the three choices, the biggest problem with that, other then the fact that "We have a black box which will stop the reapers", was basically the DEUS EX ending issue. It doesn't really matter what you did through the game or how you played, you get to choose from three(actually four) options, all of which involve pushing a button of some sort. It feels unsatisfying, especially for a series where pretty much all your choices carried over from the first moment of the first game(much more so then say, FABLE). If, OTOH, the ending you got would have been dependent on certain key choices you made throughout the series(or, more broadly, you played paragon, renegade or were somewhere in the middle), then it would feel more organic.

Few games, however, manage to pull anything close to this off. Alpha Protocol came the closest, where most/all of your decisions affected things throughout the game as well as the ending.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

First reply basically got it.
I never played ME3, I lost interest after the second one.

But as an example:
In ME1 I think I chose to save the Rachni. As far as I'm aware, this was never mentioned again. Why could it have played a role in ME3? Choose not to kill it and the Queen helps you against the Reapers with, I dunno, pheremones to control the Rachni. Gameplay wise it could juat call in rachni to swoop in and distract enemies. But at the same time, races might disagree with the desicion and decide not to help you. Kill her and you never get the option. Maybe a line about it and how it was a short-sighted decision given the threat you were facing.

I know the lead writer of ME1 left Bioware before ME2 was made, which is probably why the series took such a hard left turn (and in my opinion was worse off for it), but honestly, even a LITTLE forward planning on the writers part would have gone a long way.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

But as an example:
In ME1 I think I chose to save the Rachni. As far as I'm aware, this was never mentioned again. Why could it have played a role in ME3? Choose not to kill it and the Queen helps you against the Reapers with, I dunno, pheremones to control the Rachni. Gameplay wise it could juat call in rachni to swoop in and distract enemies. But at the same time, races might disagree with the desicion and decide not to help you. Kill her and you never get the option. Maybe a line about it and how it was a short-sighted decision given the threat you were facing.

The Rachni get a mention in 2 and show up in 3.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I tend to be more interested in seeing the way my choices cause characters to interact with each other, particularly as it relates to my character, and I enjoy seeing my character's development (well, I guess my own development) as I see the effects of those choices, however small they are. Games like Mass Effect and The Walking Dead nailed that feeling for me. Sure, I didn't really see a lot of change in the world around me, but seeing an old friend who managed to survive a previous struggle or watching the ways character interactions changed as they agreed and disagreed with me were what made those games' choices feel so powerful.

Conversely, I don't care much for world-changing or story-changing choices, at least not unless I can see its effects on the characters I care about. To me, choosing whether or not to side with Iorveth or Roche in The Witcher 2 was far more meaningful on the character level than for the massive changes it made to Chapter 2, and the fact that the one I went against cared little for me backstabbing him completely ruined the power the choice had, despite how I knew I was experiencing a different story than if I sided with the other one. Overall, though, in retrospect, I cared very little for any choice in The Witcher 2. Yes, they made a bigger difference on the world, but it often changed little of how the characters interacted with each other, provided I was even choosing between two characters I actually cared about (which only happened at the Roche/Iorveth decision). Now, this isn't to say I don't like story-changing choices, but I'd rather see them change things as much at the character and relationship level that they do on the world and quest level.

But as for Mass Effect 3 specifically, I'm sort of iffy. I would have loved to see them show more of what happened after I sacrificed Shepard. At the same time, though, most of what I cared about was already touched on throughout the story, so I could guess with decent accuracy how those would turn out after the events. I wouldn't say the ending was perfect, but I'd at least say that the comments throughout the rest of the game made up for at least a few of its flaws, specifically in how I wanted to see how my choices affected things like the Krogan future, the Geth/Quarian relationship, etc.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

First reply basically got it.

Why thank you.

But as an example:
In ME1 I think I chose to save the Rachni. As far as I'm aware, this was never mentioned again. Why could it have played a role in ME3? Choose not to kill it and the Queen helps you against the Reapers with, I dunno, pheremones to control the Rachni. Gameplay wise it could juat call in rachni to swoop in and distract enemies. But at the same time, races might disagree with the desicion and decide not to help you. Kill her and you never get the option. Maybe a line about it and how it was a short-sighted decision given the threat you were facing.

Another good point about choices not really ending up with the weight they should have had. That choice does come back around in Mass Effect 3, but it gets steamrolled too. If you chose not to save the Rachni, you still meet the queen, only she is a clone. If you saved her, it's the same one. How this matters is that if you save her again, she will aid you, but if you save the clone, she will say she will help, but then run away once she's freed.
So while your choice from the first game sort of matters, it still gets forced in because even if you didn't save the queen, you still go through the events.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It all comes down to the Mass Effect games being wish fulfillment, and the ending to Mass Effect 3 not fulfilling anyone's wish.

Obviously Bioware couldn't cover every choice you made throughout the series and make them culminate in the ending, but they could've atleast covered the big ones and given them some relevance toward the end. Now all your choices throughout the entire series just add up to getting a big enough fleet to make a push to get to some big laser or whatever. Everytime you start a new playthrough of the trilogy, that's what's going to be in the back of your mind; I'm making all these choices just so I can die in the end regardless.

I remember Susan Arendt claiming people just can't handle a bad/sad ending... In a game series where I've consistantly been given the oppertunity to make my choices count, only to be told at the very end 'Fuck your choices, you're getting a 3 colour-coded ending'? Then no, I can't handle that.

 

[Avalanche91]

Choices should matter if that is what has been pushed as the main selling point of a game. The Mass Effect series was constantly sold as you shaping the galaxy. Yes, the ultimate choice was never really a choice--stop the Reapers or die--but it's the little things that I, and so many others, wanted to see.
Preventing a character from getting killed? That's a HUGE deal, especially if the choice involves saving that person and sacrificing something else that is important.

A lot of people were upset that, despite choosing Anderson to be on the Council, Udina still ends up on the Council. I remember reading a post that summed up this problem perfectly: If Anderson was still on the Council like I said he was, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!
Recruiting the Salarians or Korgrans should have had a huge difference, not in how the game ended, but in how Shepard approached the Reapers. Korgrans are front line fighters, whereas Salarians are small tactical strikes. The choices should have mattered in the same way they mattered at the end of Mass Effect 2. If you don't chose the right choice, you can still succeed, but you're going to bleed for it.

Instead, everything that didn't fit BioWare's primary story got steamrolled so that it did, like Anderson and Udina. I know that the main story was never really going to change, but I wanted to see my own touches in it. I wanted it to be my Shepard, with her problem-solving skills, that beat the Reapers because of what she chose to do or not do.

Pretty much this. One of the biggest hooks of Mass Effect was being able to import your saves and by extension your choices. Who died on your suicide mission, Did you choose to save the council, etc. Bioware specifically promised NOT to deliver a A, B, C ending but that's what we got.

So yeah, if you break the promise you've made with your audience from ME1 ánd deliver a highly underwhelming deus ex machina ending you're going to have some pissed off customers.

 

[Kingjackl]

It occurred to me recently that there are very few choices in Mass Effect that didn't matter in terms of story. There were a couple of cop-outs, such as there being a false rachni queen in ME3 in the event you killed the real one in ME1, but it still made a difference, since only the real one would help you if you freed it. And of course, there were a fair few variable outcomes to the big plot events like the genophage, the geth-quarian war and the post-Extended Cut ending. The thing is, the games did a poor job of showing it. No matter what you did, at the end of the day, you'd just jet off to the stars and never see or hear from the people you helped out/fucked over again, apart from an occasional email and that memorable encounter with Wrex on the Citadel in ME3.

When that happens, it's easy to feel like they didn't matter, even if they technically did. The Walking Dead game and (so I'm told) the Witcher 2 did a better job of showing the outcomes and how they affected people, largely because they told a more intimate story. The funny thing is that very few choices actually did matter in the Walking Dead, since most of them had the same outcome (i.e. someone dies)

 

[Joccaren]

Ok, its actually pretty easy to make choices feel like they mattered, though that was only one of many problems with Mass Effect 3.

Option I, change some missions. "But its a lot of work", "They had to release on time", "blah blah blah", "Blah blah Blah". The question was how to make choices matter, not why can't we make choices matter. Additionally, other games and other studios have managed to do it. The game needed more time anyway, as shown by the lack of choosable dialogue lines which are a constant in Bioware games, and the overall lack of polish in many areas, and the half-assed original ending - ect, ect, ect. Give more time, make a good game. Would much prefer that to a quickly released shitty game, and I'm sure most would agree.
As some examples; The rachni mission. Whether you killed or saved them, they appear and give the exact same mission in ME3. Here you have two choices, 1. If you let the rachni live, the mission exists. If you don't, it doesn't. 2. Either way, the Reapers bring back the Rachni. If you saved the Rachni, your Rachni Queen is in a war with the other Rachni Queen, and you enter this war to help your Queen. If you didn't save her, the mission is as is. The atmosphere of the mission would change a lot, as would a lot of dialogue. Mission structure should also change.
Another example would be the Quarian mission. If you'd advocated peace among the Quarians, and redeemed Tali, then the Quarians wouldn't have gone to war with the Geth. This would lead to different dialogue, even if the mission was the same. If Legion had survived, and his loyalty had been gained, then the mission itself could change. Re-writing all the Geth to not follow the Reapers would have them not follow the Reapers, and thus the mission would turn into defending the Quarian homeworld from a Reaper invasion, rather than fighting the Geth again. If you had just destroyed the station, civil war could have broken out among the Geth over the Reapers, and you intervene with the Quarians. If Legion hadn't survived, or his loyalty hadn't been earned, then the mission would be as is.
This could be repeated for near any mission in the game, as most of them reference choices or characters from previous arcs to some extent, however quite often it is just a model and voice change, with nearly if not exactly the same lines, and the exact same thing happening in the mission.

Option II is more the Mass Effect 1/Dragon Age: Origins way of doing things. You see your allies and choices play out, but they don't exactly do a lot. Choose the Salarians? You see Salarian strike teams moving in on Earth. Save the Krogans? You see hordes of Krogans jump out of their ships and charge the Reaper forces. Save the Destiny Ascension? You see her fire her main gun into an enemy Reaper, and tear straight through it. This changes basically nothing in the game, but it gives you a show to say "Hey, look, you did a thing". Its satisfying to see your choices play out, at least more so than having just "+50 war readiness", which is an arbitrary amount added to an arbitrary counter which really does fuck all in the end for most people. A bit more work, but a much better way of doing things than just one shared cinematic that looks near the exact same, and contains maybe 3 lines of dialogue difference based off your previous playthroughs. A good epilogue, the type the EC gives, would help a lot with this, as opposed to the crap that was given at the start. This gives emotional payoff more than practically changing things with the choices.

Option III is to have the ME2 way of doing things. Final mission. Your assets are the choices you've made. Who's loyalty you've earned. Who you've added to your team. You have to apply them to different tasks where they are best suited, and if they're not well suited, they either fail and die, or barely succeed and die. Would require an entire rewrite of the final mission, even if it did still have the same ending, but that's something I think needs doing anyway.

Option IV is to be brutal, and to lock out certain endings based on choices. Personally, this would be done better if you properly fought the Reapers, and had varying levels of damage down to utter annihilation if you made the wrong choices, however it could even be done with the current endings. Don't advocate peace with Quarians and Geth, and bring them together, no Synthesis ending. Don't give the Reaper baby to TIM and take his research on it, no control. Rather than an arbitrary number deciding these things, actual choices deciding these things would have a much bigger impact - not everyone would almost always have all choices unlocked ['cause god damn is that easy to do, especially with multiplayer], which would make actually unlocking a choice more unique, and more personal if done right [I.E: Agreeing with TIM to control the Reapers is what leads to the control ending, not disagreeing, disagreeing, disagreeing, oh look, I can control] - and also changes things based on your choices. This would be slightly unpopular, as people who made poor choices previously would have to play the whole series again to fix them, but personally I think that was part of what people wanted, and why people had a lot of saves with different play styles prepared to play 3 with. Plus, replayability is never a bad thing.

Another thing that could be done, but doesn't directly reference the main choices, is extending the intro on Earth. Giving you some free roaming and pre-trial time, rather than trying to control the story and just get you off Earth ASAP because we want to start the space kid stuff. Allow you to roam around Earth, and meet some of the people you'd interacted with previously. Find out what Giana parassini is up to [How do you spell her name again?], meet Commander Kirahe if you saved him, and here how he'll vouch for you in your trial. Speak to Anderson and Udina, and see how your choice of councillor changes their attitudes. Talk to that Asari who was saved by the Rachni, and hear how they're doing. It works as good foreshadowing for the rest of the game, gives you a quick reminder on which choices you made, and also gives you a bit of recognition for your choices, which always feels good.

Its not hard to make choices matter. Its more that Bioware didn't want to, or didn't have the time to.

 

[laggyteabag]

Basically, I just wanted my choices to have an actual impact on the last mission.

You spend the entire game running around the galaxy recruiting armies and companions, but when it comes down to it at the end, aside from a cutscene (that was pre-rendered), it never really felt like you did any of that stuff. Hell, when you get down on the ground, aside from the odd Turian that appears, it is pretty much exclusively alliance soldiers. Where are the Geth? Where are the Krogan? Where are the Asari? Where are all of the mercenary groups that you recruited? Why are all of the companions from the previous games gated off and away?

What the ending needed was to be mixed with the Citadel DLC and the Dragon Age: Origins/2 finales. If I spent my time saving Samara, she should appear at some point during the final battle, and if I went out of my way to save the Geth and Quarians, there should be some kind of option to call in some form of reinforcements on the battlefield. Not just a bit of exposition saying "Oh well they should help." and "You can go and speak to your companions in this holo-screen. And that's all you get bub.".

It is just the way that it was handled that ended up being disappointing. No matter who you saved or who you chose over someone else, it never really mattered aside from adding a number to another number that let you decide what colour you could pick. And even that stopped mattering if you promoted a few multiplayer characters.

 

[Joccaren]

Since I finished ME3 for the first time about a month and a half ago(late to the party, I know), first of all I'm going to say I thought the ending was okay(as opposed to, say LOST). The writers pretty much wrote themselves into a corner from day one when they decided "So, a race of Mecha Cthulhus are going to be here soon and kill us all(or enslave us). They've done this every 50,000 years since the beginning of time. But we're going to try to stop them". It's basically a lovecraft story in space, but with more sci-fi and a little less cosmic horror. However, being a lovecraft story, the logical conclusion is pretty much: No matter what we do, the reapers show up and everyone dies. None of your choices really mattered. Cue the next cycles, none of whose chocies would matter either.

That's the problem with ME in a nutshell. It's why ME2 choose to go the more personal route with you building your team and getting to know your crew of badasses, in a context where your choices do matter. They built this up into it kind of affecting things that happen in ME3, mostly the Krogan and the finale on Rannoch.

However, considering Deus ex machina device ending they pretty much felt they had to go with, with the three choices, the biggest problem with that, other then the fact that "We have a black box which will stop the reapers", was basically the DEUS EX ending issue. It doesn't really matter what you did through the game or how you played, you get to choose from three(actually four) options, all of which involve pushing a button of some sort. It feels unsatisfying, especially for a series where pretty much all your choices carried over from the first moment of the first game(much more so then say, FABLE). If, OTOH, the ending you got would have been dependent on certain key choices you made throughout the series(or, more broadly, you played paragon, renegade or were somewhere in the middle), then it would feel more organic.

Few games, however, manage to pull anything close to this off. Alpha Protocol came the closest, where most/all of your decisions affected things throughout the game as well as the ending.

Haha, you're lucky. You played recently with the extended cut. Originally, there was no fourth option, and literally the endings were the exact same, but with a different colour overlay [Red, Green or Blue] with minimal, if any, epilogue. I think there's a comparison on Youtube somewhere. Its really pretty pathetic.

You do touch on something that is a big point in this whole "Choices mattering" deal; few games do it. And there's a very big reason for that: They don't dare to make choices matter, 'cause then lil Johnny who got the game from his mum for Christmas, and has never heard of the series before, can obtain the best ending no matter what he does.
Its a matter of not wanting to allow players to fuck up, not even just in a series where they have to replay the series to fix it, but even in individual games and missions. Its a part of today's 'Go easy on the player', 'Mass Appeal' sort of game making. Its had some advantages in making games more accessible to many people, rather than needlessly difficult or obtuse outside of the harder difficulty levels, however this is one of the downsides. Making a choice that would change things isn't just more work, its something that'd mean that people who want a certain ending have to make a certain choice, rather than just do whatever they want and get the ending anyway. It removes limits from how people can play in order to achieve things, but as a result removes any achievement from actually getting them. Its a shame really, but hopefully games will be made to counter to the more niche audiences. It seems things are starting to go that way a little these days.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

Now that its not 3am and I can think clearly, the making desicions thing is actually really easy to impliment.

You get to the Reaper Kid thing and it just accesses your past via brain or nanomachines or something and it decides for you. The games keeps a record of everything you decide.

For example, you go through the the game killing off races like the krogan or rachni and it decides that galactic civilization isn't worth saving and you get [BAD END]. You mix stuff up, and it can't come to a desicion so it merges. Everything you do is benevolent and good and it decides to leave you alone for another 5000 years.

Obviously it can mention all the desicions you made and takes them into account.

Hell, you could go even further and defend your reasoning for making major desicions (since they were rarely black and white) and try to change the Reapers mind, even allow Paragon/Renegade to influence the debate.

As I said, a little planning and forethought could have gone a long way.

The main problem people had was that their desicions didn't influence the ending. Theres the solution. Your desicions CHOOSE your ending.

 

[happyninja42]

I think a lot of game developers, and story writers too honestly, confuse "weighty choices" with "epic, big scale events that are global/galactic in scope"

I'm always of the opinion that smaller is better, and the more intimate you can make the events of the story/game, the more weight it will have on the player. My biggest gripe of ME 3 was how little actual tension I felt, the Big Uber Reaper Threat was so large, so vast that they literally couldn't actually code it into the game, it became background scenery. Seriously the Reaper attacks simply became a screen saver going on in the background of the smaller thing you were doing. It felt disconnected, none of my choices felt like they actually mattered on that scale. And that is where they dropped the ball I think, they made their canvas too big. If they had kept the threat to something smaller, and let you directly interact with the people who would be effected by your choices, I think they would've had more impact.

For an example of this, in inFamous 2:

Spoiler: Bad Ending

When you have to kill Zeke, it hurt me. I loved Zeke, he was the shining jewel of humanity and enjoyment in that game. He was such a lovable character, and being forced to kill him to continue was a very painful thing to force me to do. Compared to becoming The Beast, and killing the rest of humanity, it was the heavier choice. The massive body count you create as The Beast, is simply a statistic, there was no connection to it personally, so I didn't feel it. But having to zap Zeke, as he stood in front of me, vainly shooting me with his pistol, knowing it wouldn't work, that was a choice that mattered.

With ME3, the smaller choices added up, but not in the ways I think they intended. Choosing the Krogan or the Salarians didn't make any difference in the final fight, but it did make a huge difference for Morden. And holy shit was that an epic scene if you took it a certain way. Best emotional payoff of the entire series really. The multitude of choices you made in previous games, in the end did matter in that context. And that is the kind of method of choice I think they should've focused on, but messed up a bit. I didn't care about the Reaper shit going on, it was too abstract to matter to me, and it was all off-screen.

Games like The Walking Dead got it right, by having very simple choices (who I give food to), to have way more weight and meaning than (which race do I back in the Reaper fight).

 

[Nimcha]

I tend to be more interested in seeing the way my choices cause characters to interact with each other, particularly as it relates to my character, and I enjoy seeing my character's development (well, I guess my own development) as I see the effects of those choices, however small they are. Games like Mass Effect and The Walking Dead nailed that feeling for me. Sure, I didn't really see a lot of change in the world around me, but seeing an old friend who managed to survive a previous struggle or watching the ways character interactions changed as they agreed and disagreed with me were what made those games' choices feel so powerful.

Conversely, I don't care much for world-changing or story-changing choices, at least not unless I can see its effects on the characters I care about. To me, choosing whether or not to side with Iorveth or Roche in The Witcher 2 was far more meaningful on the character level than for the massive changes it made to Chapter 2, and the fact that the one I went against cared little for me backstabbing him completely ruined the power the choice had, despite how I knew I was experiencing a different story than if I sided with the other one. Overall, though, in retrospect, I cared very little for any choice in The Witcher 2. Yes, they made a bigger difference on the world, but it often changed little of how the characters interacted with each other, provided I was even choosing between two characters I actually cared about (which only happened at the Roche/Iorveth decision). Now, this isn't to say I don't like story-changing choices, but I'd rather see them change things as much at the character and relationship level that they do on the world and quest level.

Basically this! It's why I've always liked the ME games. And I think people just ask for too much. For example, I've seen people complain about the lack of choices in Dragon Age Inquisition. They have gone the opposite route there of instead of there being a lot of small choices, you get a few big ones. But those big decisions have huge impact on the world and the story.

I don't know, it's not that easy. The main problem with ME is probably not showing the consequences enough. I mean, not having the quarians or the geth anymore is a pretty huge thing for the galaxy. But because it has little impact on Shepard herself it's harder to show that.

 

[wass12]

snip

Funny thing is, the game actually brings this up. In ME2, there is a conversation with Mordin where he gives a call to his nephew. Then he talks about how a million is a statistic, but a single personal relation can give enough motivation to go onto a suicide mission willingly.

 

[happyninja42]

snip

Funny thing is, the game actually brings this up. In ME2, there is a conversation with Mordin where he gives a call to his nephew. Then he talks about how a million is a statistic, but a single personal relation can give enough motivation to go onto a suicide mission willingly.

Yeah, I was actually going to quote that "1 death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" in my original post, but I forgot due to IRL distractions. xD

And that's my point though, the scope of the events in ME3 were too large to internalize, they were so broad that they were distant, unrelated to you as the individual player. But making choices on whether or not to help your friend Wrex and Morden, or betray them for personal gain, that was a significant choice. Personally it wasn't a choice at all because fuck those back stabbing Salarians, they never helped me out in 3 entire games, and were nothing but an obstacle to my Shep, whereas Wrex/Morden had my back from Day 1, and fought tooth and nail with me through all kinds of trouble. He even made the choice to back me, instead of taking another route that would put him at odds against me. So yeah, it was no choice at all to back Wrex, xD he was too awesome to not keep on my side.

Side note: Who else thought that was a really dumb choice specifically? Given how little support the Salarian Race/Governament gave you through all 3 games, to suddenly, out of nowhere have the option to betray the Krogen and have them help you. Did any of you even consider it at all? Or consider it a moral quandry whatsoever? I mean, we never saw the Salarians really do anything to establish themselves as powerful combatants, and we were in a fight with a massive force of monsters. Having a race of basically Klingons, bred for war, and who already had a track record of defeating a massive alien threat before (The Rachni), who actually thought that the Salarians would provide any significant help in the upcoming fight? I sure as hell didn't. Yeah there was Kirahai's squad from ME 1, but even they talked about how they weren't front line soldiers, and were more strike teams. I dunno, it just felt like a really dumb choice, given how little interaction we had with the Salarians as a whole, compared to the Krogan.

 

[DrOswald]

The problem with Mass Effect 3 was that they sold it on the idea that your choices would really, really matter in the end. Personally, I don't mind a game with linearity where your choices don't really matter in the end (they just might effect some things in the moment, I actually think this is the far stronger option of the two) but that is not what Bioware promised with Mass Effect. People had every reasons and right to be as mad as they were about ME3's ending, they were sold a product on a false premise. Bioware made the promise, it was their job to follow through on that promise and they did not. Now, I know someone out there is going to say something along the lines of "how could they have made it work though? It's a logistical impossibility." And that is true. But if Bioware could not deliver then they should not have made the promise.