Mass Effect 3 Priority: Earth

[lord Claincy Ffnord]

Yep, it's another me3 topic. But please this time: this topic is NOT about the ending of the game good or bad. What I found was that the final mission of me3 was what really disappointed me and I'm wondering if others found the same. Because of the huge amount of ending discussion very few people have even mentioned the final mission.

Here's my view of it: It was a decent ending. But it doesn't come anywhere near to being as good as the suicide mission. The only character who may/may not die in the mission is Cortez, and that has nothing to do with what you do in the mission and just whether you were nice to him earlier. As opposed to me2 where it mattered what you had done before AND more importantly your choices during the suicide mission determined who lived and who died. It just really disappointed me that we had no opportunities to choose which characters went for different objectives and see the impact of these decisions.

Going into the game recently after completing me2 the final mission was one of the things I was looking forward to the most, but it played out just like any other mission except with a little extra helping of importance 9admittedly when your fleet comes through the relay was an amazing moment). So what do you guys think?

 

[Hawkeye 131]

You bring up a good point. I just started to think about this issue about a month ago. The ending was not the only problem. ME3 as a whole felt rushed. Yes, there were some really good moments (Salarian/Krogan & Geth/Quarian conflicts), amongst others.

Through various mediums and avenues (early press reviews, PR statements, trailers etc...), BioWare setup ME3 as "Take Earth Back", which had it's effectiveness but ultimately it should have been "Break the cycle". Why?, because ending the Reaper threat and saving the ENTIRE galaxy not just Earth was the entire point of ME3.

I expected an ME2 Suicide Mission style objective for Priority: Earth just on a bigger scale with greater CHOICE and CONSEQUENCE, yet another big selling point of ME3. Instead it was land, fight some Reaper forces, blow up an entire Reaper gun with a Cain, talk to Anderson, out-of-place turret section, rally your squadmates. Then the final push to some missile batteries???!!!!..... Cue Marauder Shields... Bad endings...

Mass Effect 3 as a whole is a failure in my mind.

 

[lord Claincy Ffnord]

I can't say I hate the game or anything because of it, I still love the game and its still my favourite for this year thus far, but if they'd delayed the game even by three months just to make the ending mission more like the suicide mission and maybe have shots scattered through it showing some of the war assets you collected at work, that would have been great and I would have fully supported that.

 

[jensenthejman]

You bring up a good point. I just started to think about this issue about a month ago. The ending was not the only problem. ME3 as a whole felt rushed. Yes, there were some really good moments (Salarian/Krogan & Geth/Quarian conflicts), amongst others.

Through various mediums and avenues (early press reviews, PR statements, trailers etc...), BioWare setup ME3 as "Take Earth Back", which had it's effectiveness but ultimately it should have been "Break the cycle". Why?, because ending the Reaper threat and saving the ENTIRE galaxy not just Earth was the entire point of ME3.

I expected an ME2 Suicide Mission style objective for Priority: Earth just on a bigger scale with greater CHOICE and CONSEQUENCE, yet another big selling point of ME3. Instead it was land, fight some Reaper forces, blow up an entire Reaper gun with a Cain, talk to Anderson, out-of-place turret section, rally your squadmates. Then the final push to some missile batteries???!!!!..... Cue Marauder Shields... Bad endings...

Mass Effect 3 as a whole is a failure in my mind.

Yeah, I agree with you. ME 3 was pretty disappointing overall. Terrible final mission, abysmal side-quests. Lackluster squad roster. Choices not mattering in the WHOLE game (not just the ending). OT: Priority Earth was pretty meh. As Bioware writer Patrick Weekes (if I spelled that right) put it: It's pretty much a "nothing happens here" mission after all of the shooting.

 

[CityofTreez]

Why would I want to be on earth anyway?

It's a game in space. I want space not earth!

 

[phoenix352]

a lot of things are are worse than previous ME games, less squad mates , terrible side missions , lots of previously made decisions changed to fit into the me3 story like Anderson not being in the council.

Spoiler: has some slightly spoilerific stuff

that combined with a lack of creativity on the final mission nor explanation as to why the reapers even gather on earth or why they brought the citadel with them there or why they used a teleporter beam and other questionable things and the "omfg what did they do to my franchise" endings really leave a sour taste when you get to really think about it.


the game itself tho was pretty great , lots of inside jokes here and there , good dialogue , finally finish some old story arcs like the genophage and quarian/geth war' it headed to a good climax to the series.

 

[darlarosa]

Why would I want to be on earth anyway?

It's a game in space. I want space not earth!

Well considering the mission is about saving the planet, and in previous games you've been on planets....it's not much of a leap. It's like going to Illium. The idea is "This is our home, these our our children, and we have to take a stand or we die". It's the homeworld that keeps you from being refugees and supports many of the colonies.


I enjoyed the game I thought it was great for the most part.

In my eyes the fact that choices did not matter and the ending made no sense was the issue. (Vega was in my squad...how did he end up back on the Normandy with Joker after they ran from the explosion?)

I think the end was kind exciting in a different way. The goal of the game was to expand it beyond the Normandy. You play a soldier, no matter what class your Shep is she/he is a military person, and I think that they were trying to convey that you are a small squad out of thousands of soldiers versus an unending tide of enemies. To me that was very successful, and forced me out of my comfort zone in order to change tactics. Usually I get in cover and shoot away, but I just had to keep moving the farther I went. For me the problem became you went from all of that fighting action to a cool down period with no climatic payoff. They couldn't just do a suicide mission again because the entire war is a suicide mission. The little side conversations the minor quests were kinda driving home that people were dying every minute. Heck it's implied that you find out something about Joker's family if you stick around the PTSD Asari.

All of that said, there was not much to do really. They were trying to focus everything in on the war effort, but ultimately that gave us nothing to do outside of that except random fetching missions. If there was a bit more of Shep helping civilians or some sort of side quest apart from the war it may have been better.

I still enjoyed the game...but I got to the last section and was just underwhelmed...mostly because of not only choices not being reflected, but the fact that the choices given to you make no sense.

 

[Texas Joker 52]

You know, I too was hoping for a similar final mission to Mass Effect 2's Suicide Mission on a grander scale.

You not only choose the right squad while you go after the Illusive Man and a key point on the battlefield, but you make certain decisions at certain points that essentially factor in to who lives or dies on your squad, while at the same time juggling decisions for the battle in space.

Now, don't get me wrong, I loved the holdout bit of the final mission since it really did feel like they were throwing everything at us and that we might have been overwhelmed. But other than that part... It just felt like another mission. Nothing else really stood out compared to the earlier missions, save a slight difference in tone.

 

[Simon Thunberg]

I was more hoping to an ending that was a merge betwen ME1 och ME2.

The epicness of ME1 with the fleets coming in and you make decisions to defend or destroy council in ME1, and the smaller scaled decision in ME2 were you chose different squadmates to some missions, if you choose wrong they die, if they arent loyal, they die.

The thing i likes the least in ME3 ending was that the ending came as a suprise. you had no idea that the fight near the missilebattery was the last one. In ME1 you knew that the fight would end when you reached Saren. In ME2 you knew that it would end when you reached the central chamber (or maybe an escape). but in ME3 it was a total suprise when it ended. that was one of my biggest disappointment.

 

[lord Claincy Ffnord]

The epicness of ME1 with the fleets coming in and you make decisions to defend or destroy council in ME1

We did kind of get that epicness, cept at the start of the mission when sword jumps through the sol relay. But yeah nothing like the council decision.

 

[Joccaren]

Yeah, Priority Earth was IMO a piece of s***.

The game had given me no reason to care about Earth, so that didn't hook me.
Earth as I could see it was just rubble that could be mistaken for anywhere, so I wasn't really that interested.
The gameplay on Earth had nothing to do with your war assets, and was just horde mode followed by horde mode followed by horde mode followed by horde mode - seriously disappointing.
There were no choices to be made, no decisions for anything, no suicide mechanics - so there was nothing hooking me in there.
There was no epic feeling. Even the Sword fight was meh due to the either extremely quiet or non-existent music, and fight scene that had little to nothing to do with my war assets, so I was lost there.

Really, there wasn't a single good thing about Priority: Earth. It was one of the laziest missions I've ever played. Even Thessia felt like it had had more work put into it than that, and it had that stupid Kai Leng fight and about 20 minutes of other content.

The whole end act of ME3 was... weak. Weaker than anything I've played in a long time TBH.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

Yeah that was pretty disappointing. In fact i think it's one of the reasons that many people hated the ending because we thought our choices would matter like in me2.

I imagined having another suicide-esque mission where i'm sending in fleets and armies and other assets left and right to deal with the reapers but it turned out that the EMS was just a number that ticked off some stuff in the background before the final mission =/

 

[Zhukov]

I shall now arrogantly quote myself from the last time this thread subject came up:

Yeah, I thought it was pretty lacking too.

Not terrible, but decidedly average. The whole time I was comparing it to the suicide mission in ME2 and, yeah... lacking.

I loved the goodbyes with the squadmates, and the big fight to defend the missile launchers but the rest was just another combat sequence with Shepard, your two squaddies of choice and a whole bunch of reaper troops between you and where you need to be. Of course, that's standard for the game, but this is supposed to be the final climatic push, it shouldn't be standard.

This is the point where they should have payed off all that alliance building. We should have seen hordes of charging Krogan infantry stomping husks into muck, Asari commando squads tearing shit up, Geth troopers with Quarian close air support (or not), bands of Blue Suns Mercenaries, Battarian suicide bombers, roving packs of Vorcha and so on. Instead we got a couple of cutscenes with glitchy sound that are the same regardless of who you brought to the fight.

 

[putowtin]

Why would I want to be on earth anyway?

It's a game in space. I want space not earth!

Because you were taking back earth?

I didn't mind the london section cause I felt it was the build up to something, I was right, it was the build up to disapointment!