Okay I've finished my playthrough of Mass Effect 3 and have been mulling things over, and I wanted to give my thoughts and see what people think. There are SPOILERS below so be warned. It's also not entirely negative, so if your reading this to hear someone rip into the game like Yahtzee, I'm not going to be doing so (or at least not entirely). There is plenty of that going on already.
Final SPOILER warning (hopefully not in vain, since I took the time to write this as long as it is)
I guess what I'll say first is that while I didn't like this game as well as the first game, I do think it was a better GAME than the second one because they at least refined their shooter gameplay a bit, and that's a good thing if they insist on going in that direction. I do however think that this game had the weakest writing of any of the games in the series, and that's beyond the ending.
The way how Mass Effect 3 seems to me is that it was a rushed product, with changing priorities (going from a trilogy to a franchise as I've commented before) with Bioware's team divided on multiple fronts. I think this showed. A lot of the story largely seemed to be based around giving oppertunities for the characters from ME1 and ME2 to all potentially come out and take a bow, and some of those scenes really shined, as did some of the unrelated side events (like an Asari Commando with PTSD whose story is paticularly... dark, if you talk to Joker about his home later and put 2 and 2 together and know his sister's name). On the other hand the specifics of the plotline were weak to say the least.
At the end of Mass Effect 2, I had one major unresolved confrontation I was looking forward to: finishing Harbinger. The whole "assuming direct control" thing was one of the more distinctive aspects of Mass Effect 2, and for obvious reasons he was the one who got away. Promoted as the oldest and strongest Reaper, and mentioned in the Codex and Lore, and even mentioned as "knowing Shepard" by a dying Reaper, I waited the entire bloody game to face
down my Arch Nemesis, and that moment never really came. At the end with the major Reapers diverting to the Citadel to stop the Conduit and the mention that it was believed Harbinger was one of them, I was thinking "here it comes" getting ready for my epic battle in front of the Cruicible's activation device as Harbinger possessed something nasty inside to stop me... instead we got something else.
In Mass Effect 3 your major opponent is some previously unknown "trying too hard" chinese guy who thinks he's a techno-ninja. A guy who has so little involvement in the plotline that I just couldn't get invested in the character. As far as an opponent goes, he doesn't even get points for respect because his apperances are largely lame cinematic affairs where he only gets away because the Script writer says so. The fights with Harbinger were kind of cool and the concept explained why he kept jumping from body to body and the places where he was involved tending to be genuinely tough fights. In comparison Leng's "coolest" moment (notice the quotes) was in getting the Prothean VI away from me, but that whole sequence was pretty much due to the Boss Fight (which was bloody easy) ending with a cinematic where improbable scripted bullshit has him magically defeating me and running off. I didn't think in terms of "wow, what an epic enemy" it was more "F@ck bioware, that is bloody stupid". It's like they took one of the absolute worst and most annoying aspects of JRPGs and decided that it was a great idea for their newst game.... they liked it so much that they effectively did it twice. When I finally get to actually kill the guy, it's a bloody joke with him running around randomly with a sword, stopping periodically to recharge shields, while endless hordes of minions (which are the real problem as far as such things go due to limited cover in the room) attack you... it's just plain bad... great RPGs are known for their epic enemies, I mean Final Fantasy VII which committed a lot of these writing sins (and more) at least got away with it because Sepiroth was cool (especially for the time when he was new), Leng isn't cool, he just sucks. I had no feelings about him at all other than annoying scripting. They should have arranged for a more personal rivalry with Harbinger somehow, with him stalking you through your efforts to rally the galaxy, recognizing the threat presented after ME2.... or something like that.
Then we get to the ending... I will go so far as to say flat out it's NOT as bad as a lot of people say. In fact I rip on Leng and a lot of the main plot writing up until the ending more than the ending.
The basic ending is a matter of facing off with an indoctrinated Illusive Man, who isn't even serving a paticular Reaper, who is trying to use mind control powers he pulled deeply out of his Anus on you... Saren who was in a similar position (including not realizing what had happened to him) would have luvved that trick for the final battle. The whole bit with The Illusive Man is pretty much a question as to whether you have enough rep points to convince him to blow his own brains out before he ices Anderson. That would have been interesting... if we hadn't had the same thing happen with Saren in ME1, so we're talking "retread" here within the same series. I didn't even feel like it was symbolic of things coming full circle, just like them re-using the same bloody idea for an excuse to check your "alignment rating" in the finale to "reward" someone who had played all one way or the other in order to fill the bar.
Unlike ME1 where you have a fight against Saren's fully Reaper-Possesed body after the last moment of redemption of his actual mind, we're treated to a cinematic where you basically meet god or at least some basic equivilent. It's sort of like someone at Bioware sat there and decide "oh hey, let's do what Battlestar Galactica did when they had trouble wrapping things up! Everyone loved that!"... obviously trapped in some delusional state.
Okay well, the thing is that God isn't really God. "God" in this case being the uber-force that created the Reapers (which is mentioned when your learning more about them...), in some ridiculous belief that periodically killing everyone helped ensure universal peace and order. Honestly, with all of the rambling about synthetics and non-synthetics and the need for order, and all of this other garbage I'll just say that the central logic doesn't hold up for anything supposedly wise and powerful enough to set something like this in motion. It's just totally bloody insane, and seems like a weak justification for trying to tie things up given the new plans for the franchise.... which is pretty much what it is.
But see, here is the thing, where I'm not going to knock the ending, after playing the thing through a few times I think it was more subtle than it first seemed. The way how the thing goes from saying "I'm The Crucible, and the one who set all of this up" in the conversation it starts answering like it's the Reapers and even refers to "us" a few times. In other words I don't think the force you run into is actually supposed to be what it claims to be.
In the final equasion the ending is that you have a gun to the Reaper's head, the Reapers know you have a gun to their head. They also know your 90% dead and half insane from fighting indoctrination. I think most of the desicians ultimatly come down to them trying to preserve themselves. Sythesis lets them live on in some form, and joining them kind of just means that they walk away and get to rebuild and prepare and presumably once your mind is indoctrinated in side them they will just come back to munch everything (that ending doesn't really go there though). The ending where you destroy the Reapers allegedly comes at the price of "destroying all inorganics" but you'll remember Shepard is a massive Cyborg at this point (as they say, it will kill Him/Her) but if you have the full ending... well you know Shepard lives. Shepard couldn't survive, especially that badly injured, if the very implants keeping him/her alive were just wiped out.... in other words Shepard's survival shows that this was a lie, the being Shepard was talking to was not telling the truth. What's more, despite all apperances, the Citadel, or at least parts of it, seem to have survived (for Shepard to be there and still consuming oxygen) which lends some doubts as to the totality of the destruction of the Mass Gates (which while badly damaged and in pieces can probably be rebuilt). In all endings The Reapers have a motivation for wanting to slow things down given what happened, or doubtlessly want to destroy the Mass Gates out of spite for their own deaths (ie a last act of defiance, or slowing down humanity's plans while they regroup and prepare, or work on building the hybrid civilization of borg people).
The point here is that there is nothing fundementally wrong with the "Destroy All Reapers" ending if you think about it. That basically means Shepard resisted the tempration to control the Reapers (like the Illusive man) or to compromise and let the Reapers effectively absorb/merge with everyone to create the hybrid unity. The whole scene might be seen as a sort of focused indoctrination attempt. This makes a 4000-5000+ destroy ending the actual best possible ending, and probably the official one.
Incidently the above ending allows the universe to be ravaged so they can choose which parts of the lore to continue with and decide what survived. Shepard being alive means the Citadel could be rebuilt (and be differant for whatever game they do next). The loss of the Mass Gates means we have a sort of "long night" type situation where worlds and colonies are out of contact and no longer bound economically, which is unusually bad given the damage inflicted. The races of Mass Effect *DO* explore deep space (I mean they had to get to the gates to begin with) but it's fairly limited, so we're looking at a situation where a trip that was easy with a gate now could take ten, twenty, or a hundred times as long. A new game could easily involve elements based around defending salvage teams and engineers trying to reconstruct mass technology, malfunctions of the same technology bringing things in from elsewhere as it's rebuilt, and of course desperate criminals terrorizing space due to the devestation and with the militaries depleted. What's more it's always possible a Reaper or two was outside the range of the Cruicible somehow and is still out there plotting. Not to mention the mystery of what actually created the Reapers and what it might do now that they are gone.... in other words perfect franchise material.
I know many people will disagree with my analysis, but that's what I think the "best" ending meant, though I think it was written badly and kind of needed to spell things out more. I also think it's the best we could expect given the plans for this to become a franchise.
The big thing I will say however is that while I am willing to defend the ending on the merits above (assuming I have it right), I do think Bioware's behavior in response to fan criticism have been ridiculous. Bioware has been getting worse, and worse, with slotting people off and then taking a "holier than thou" attitude about it, the whole "Hawke Incident" with them asking for fan input about limiting genration/backround options, getting a negative reception, and then pretending it was a positive one, arguably marking the start. Some analysis I've read has shown that polls are presenting like an 86% dissatisfaction with the ending, and this whole "Child's Play" thing to turn a protest into a donation drive of sorts that I've been reading about shows an almost unprecedented amount of action. Whether I think the ending is fine or not (and really I think that ending is basically okay if I have it down right) Bioware needs to understand it's fans are the boss, especially if it really does have plans to not end this series after 3. Bioware seems to be convinced that it's customers will buy things from them no matter what, so can be safely ignored. I think there is a point at which the fans will turn on them and stop spending money, they haven't reached it yet, but if they keep going they might very well be the company that actually runs full tilt into that breaking point. The games themselves aside, Bioware's attitude of late has just not been cool, when you see that level of documented dissatisfaction that's the point where you need to sit back and evaluate things instead of telling the majority of the customers who paid for your product that they are wrong (which is what it amounts to).
... and hey, I'll be honest, if Bioware was to ever re-do this ending while keeping the essence of the best ending (resisting the temptations to do the job you came there for) intact, at least as I understand it, that would be a truely epic gesture on the part of a company.
If they do it, I'd say they should keep things largely as they are except have Shepard enter the Citadel for the last time wearing armor (making the slow motion scene to the beam with whatever weapon Shepard has handy, or perhaps with a sidearm picked up temporarly). Have everything turn out the same up until the Illusive man thing, then instead of the trippy child of light garbage, have Shepard scavenge some Medi-Gel off of The Illusive Man's corpse and engage in battle against Harbinger (yes, this game needs a final dust up with Harbinger) perhaps with Anderson as support if he survived. Then let Shepard make the same basic desician based off of what Harbinger says with it's dying words, or off of the VI interface at a console or whatever to make it straightforward.
To me, that's how it should have ended. Harbinger... the oldest and most ancient reaper, should have been the final battle (at as an Avatar). I'd also say that he should have been Shepard's recurring arch-enemy, not this Leng Dweeb... but there would be too much alteration to the game to really de-Leng the thing.
Oh and on the off chance anyone has read this far... one word of advice. If you start a New Game+ do not use a Scorpian Pistol on mars. The Scorpian (fires contact grenades) was my favorite pistol, but during that final scene where EVA charges you it bugs and that weapon results in you dying. I stuck three grenades to her face and even had them detonate but for some reason it doesn't register as a gunshot so she just closes and kills you... no health bar or anything.
I found that an amusing bit of bad game design (well, an oversight to be more fair, I guess the desighers didn't think of it). Ironically that gun by it's very nature should be more effective against a robot than say regular bullets. I mean that's exactly the kind of weapon I'd espect people to want to have handy for robots like that.
I was able to go back to a previous save and change weapons by altering my loadout from the last gun pickup (the assault rifle) and get past it, but it's still bloody annoying.
Final SPOILER warning (hopefully not in vain, since I took the time to write this as long as it is)
I guess what I'll say first is that while I didn't like this game as well as the first game, I do think it was a better GAME than the second one because they at least refined their shooter gameplay a bit, and that's a good thing if they insist on going in that direction. I do however think that this game had the weakest writing of any of the games in the series, and that's beyond the ending.
The way how Mass Effect 3 seems to me is that it was a rushed product, with changing priorities (going from a trilogy to a franchise as I've commented before) with Bioware's team divided on multiple fronts. I think this showed. A lot of the story largely seemed to be based around giving oppertunities for the characters from ME1 and ME2 to all potentially come out and take a bow, and some of those scenes really shined, as did some of the unrelated side events (like an Asari Commando with PTSD whose story is paticularly... dark, if you talk to Joker about his home later and put 2 and 2 together and know his sister's name). On the other hand the specifics of the plotline were weak to say the least.
At the end of Mass Effect 2, I had one major unresolved confrontation I was looking forward to: finishing Harbinger. The whole "assuming direct control" thing was one of the more distinctive aspects of Mass Effect 2, and for obvious reasons he was the one who got away. Promoted as the oldest and strongest Reaper, and mentioned in the Codex and Lore, and even mentioned as "knowing Shepard" by a dying Reaper, I waited the entire bloody game to face
down my Arch Nemesis, and that moment never really came. At the end with the major Reapers diverting to the Citadel to stop the Conduit and the mention that it was believed Harbinger was one of them, I was thinking "here it comes" getting ready for my epic battle in front of the Cruicible's activation device as Harbinger possessed something nasty inside to stop me... instead we got something else.
In Mass Effect 3 your major opponent is some previously unknown "trying too hard" chinese guy who thinks he's a techno-ninja. A guy who has so little involvement in the plotline that I just couldn't get invested in the character. As far as an opponent goes, he doesn't even get points for respect because his apperances are largely lame cinematic affairs where he only gets away because the Script writer says so. The fights with Harbinger were kind of cool and the concept explained why he kept jumping from body to body and the places where he was involved tending to be genuinely tough fights. In comparison Leng's "coolest" moment (notice the quotes) was in getting the Prothean VI away from me, but that whole sequence was pretty much due to the Boss Fight (which was bloody easy) ending with a cinematic where improbable scripted bullshit has him magically defeating me and running off. I didn't think in terms of "wow, what an epic enemy" it was more "F@ck bioware, that is bloody stupid". It's like they took one of the absolute worst and most annoying aspects of JRPGs and decided that it was a great idea for their newst game.... they liked it so much that they effectively did it twice. When I finally get to actually kill the guy, it's a bloody joke with him running around randomly with a sword, stopping periodically to recharge shields, while endless hordes of minions (which are the real problem as far as such things go due to limited cover in the room) attack you... it's just plain bad... great RPGs are known for their epic enemies, I mean Final Fantasy VII which committed a lot of these writing sins (and more) at least got away with it because Sepiroth was cool (especially for the time when he was new), Leng isn't cool, he just sucks. I had no feelings about him at all other than annoying scripting. They should have arranged for a more personal rivalry with Harbinger somehow, with him stalking you through your efforts to rally the galaxy, recognizing the threat presented after ME2.... or something like that.
Then we get to the ending... I will go so far as to say flat out it's NOT as bad as a lot of people say. In fact I rip on Leng and a lot of the main plot writing up until the ending more than the ending.
The basic ending is a matter of facing off with an indoctrinated Illusive Man, who isn't even serving a paticular Reaper, who is trying to use mind control powers he pulled deeply out of his Anus on you... Saren who was in a similar position (including not realizing what had happened to him) would have luvved that trick for the final battle. The whole bit with The Illusive Man is pretty much a question as to whether you have enough rep points to convince him to blow his own brains out before he ices Anderson. That would have been interesting... if we hadn't had the same thing happen with Saren in ME1, so we're talking "retread" here within the same series. I didn't even feel like it was symbolic of things coming full circle, just like them re-using the same bloody idea for an excuse to check your "alignment rating" in the finale to "reward" someone who had played all one way or the other in order to fill the bar.
Unlike ME1 where you have a fight against Saren's fully Reaper-Possesed body after the last moment of redemption of his actual mind, we're treated to a cinematic where you basically meet god or at least some basic equivilent. It's sort of like someone at Bioware sat there and decide "oh hey, let's do what Battlestar Galactica did when they had trouble wrapping things up! Everyone loved that!"... obviously trapped in some delusional state.
Okay well, the thing is that God isn't really God. "God" in this case being the uber-force that created the Reapers (which is mentioned when your learning more about them...), in some ridiculous belief that periodically killing everyone helped ensure universal peace and order. Honestly, with all of the rambling about synthetics and non-synthetics and the need for order, and all of this other garbage I'll just say that the central logic doesn't hold up for anything supposedly wise and powerful enough to set something like this in motion. It's just totally bloody insane, and seems like a weak justification for trying to tie things up given the new plans for the franchise.... which is pretty much what it is.
But see, here is the thing, where I'm not going to knock the ending, after playing the thing through a few times I think it was more subtle than it first seemed. The way how the thing goes from saying "I'm The Crucible, and the one who set all of this up" in the conversation it starts answering like it's the Reapers and even refers to "us" a few times. In other words I don't think the force you run into is actually supposed to be what it claims to be.
In the final equasion the ending is that you have a gun to the Reaper's head, the Reapers know you have a gun to their head. They also know your 90% dead and half insane from fighting indoctrination. I think most of the desicians ultimatly come down to them trying to preserve themselves. Sythesis lets them live on in some form, and joining them kind of just means that they walk away and get to rebuild and prepare and presumably once your mind is indoctrinated in side them they will just come back to munch everything (that ending doesn't really go there though). The ending where you destroy the Reapers allegedly comes at the price of "destroying all inorganics" but you'll remember Shepard is a massive Cyborg at this point (as they say, it will kill Him/Her) but if you have the full ending... well you know Shepard lives. Shepard couldn't survive, especially that badly injured, if the very implants keeping him/her alive were just wiped out.... in other words Shepard's survival shows that this was a lie, the being Shepard was talking to was not telling the truth. What's more, despite all apperances, the Citadel, or at least parts of it, seem to have survived (for Shepard to be there and still consuming oxygen) which lends some doubts as to the totality of the destruction of the Mass Gates (which while badly damaged and in pieces can probably be rebuilt). In all endings The Reapers have a motivation for wanting to slow things down given what happened, or doubtlessly want to destroy the Mass Gates out of spite for their own deaths (ie a last act of defiance, or slowing down humanity's plans while they regroup and prepare, or work on building the hybrid civilization of borg people).
The point here is that there is nothing fundementally wrong with the "Destroy All Reapers" ending if you think about it. That basically means Shepard resisted the tempration to control the Reapers (like the Illusive man) or to compromise and let the Reapers effectively absorb/merge with everyone to create the hybrid unity. The whole scene might be seen as a sort of focused indoctrination attempt. This makes a 4000-5000+ destroy ending the actual best possible ending, and probably the official one.
Incidently the above ending allows the universe to be ravaged so they can choose which parts of the lore to continue with and decide what survived. Shepard being alive means the Citadel could be rebuilt (and be differant for whatever game they do next). The loss of the Mass Gates means we have a sort of "long night" type situation where worlds and colonies are out of contact and no longer bound economically, which is unusually bad given the damage inflicted. The races of Mass Effect *DO* explore deep space (I mean they had to get to the gates to begin with) but it's fairly limited, so we're looking at a situation where a trip that was easy with a gate now could take ten, twenty, or a hundred times as long. A new game could easily involve elements based around defending salvage teams and engineers trying to reconstruct mass technology, malfunctions of the same technology bringing things in from elsewhere as it's rebuilt, and of course desperate criminals terrorizing space due to the devestation and with the militaries depleted. What's more it's always possible a Reaper or two was outside the range of the Cruicible somehow and is still out there plotting. Not to mention the mystery of what actually created the Reapers and what it might do now that they are gone.... in other words perfect franchise material.
I know many people will disagree with my analysis, but that's what I think the "best" ending meant, though I think it was written badly and kind of needed to spell things out more. I also think it's the best we could expect given the plans for this to become a franchise.
The big thing I will say however is that while I am willing to defend the ending on the merits above (assuming I have it right), I do think Bioware's behavior in response to fan criticism have been ridiculous. Bioware has been getting worse, and worse, with slotting people off and then taking a "holier than thou" attitude about it, the whole "Hawke Incident" with them asking for fan input about limiting genration/backround options, getting a negative reception, and then pretending it was a positive one, arguably marking the start. Some analysis I've read has shown that polls are presenting like an 86% dissatisfaction with the ending, and this whole "Child's Play" thing to turn a protest into a donation drive of sorts that I've been reading about shows an almost unprecedented amount of action. Whether I think the ending is fine or not (and really I think that ending is basically okay if I have it down right) Bioware needs to understand it's fans are the boss, especially if it really does have plans to not end this series after 3. Bioware seems to be convinced that it's customers will buy things from them no matter what, so can be safely ignored. I think there is a point at which the fans will turn on them and stop spending money, they haven't reached it yet, but if they keep going they might very well be the company that actually runs full tilt into that breaking point. The games themselves aside, Bioware's attitude of late has just not been cool, when you see that level of documented dissatisfaction that's the point where you need to sit back and evaluate things instead of telling the majority of the customers who paid for your product that they are wrong (which is what it amounts to).
... and hey, I'll be honest, if Bioware was to ever re-do this ending while keeping the essence of the best ending (resisting the temptations to do the job you came there for) intact, at least as I understand it, that would be a truely epic gesture on the part of a company.
If they do it, I'd say they should keep things largely as they are except have Shepard enter the Citadel for the last time wearing armor (making the slow motion scene to the beam with whatever weapon Shepard has handy, or perhaps with a sidearm picked up temporarly). Have everything turn out the same up until the Illusive man thing, then instead of the trippy child of light garbage, have Shepard scavenge some Medi-Gel off of The Illusive Man's corpse and engage in battle against Harbinger (yes, this game needs a final dust up with Harbinger) perhaps with Anderson as support if he survived. Then let Shepard make the same basic desician based off of what Harbinger says with it's dying words, or off of the VI interface at a console or whatever to make it straightforward.
To me, that's how it should have ended. Harbinger... the oldest and most ancient reaper, should have been the final battle (at as an Avatar). I'd also say that he should have been Shepard's recurring arch-enemy, not this Leng Dweeb... but there would be too much alteration to the game to really de-Leng the thing.
Oh and on the off chance anyone has read this far... one word of advice. If you start a New Game+ do not use a Scorpian Pistol on mars. The Scorpian (fires contact grenades) was my favorite pistol, but during that final scene where EVA charges you it bugs and that weapon results in you dying. I stuck three grenades to her face and even had them detonate but for some reason it doesn't register as a gunshot so she just closes and kills you... no health bar or anything.
I found that an amusing bit of bad game design (well, an oversight to be more fair, I guess the desighers didn't think of it). Ironically that gun by it's very nature should be more effective against a robot than say regular bullets. I mean that's exactly the kind of weapon I'd espect people to want to have handy for robots like that.
I was able to go back to a previous save and change weapons by altering my loadout from the last gun pickup (the assault rifle) and get past it, but it's still bloody annoying.