Mass Effect 3: War Asset DLCs

[Soviet Heavy]

This just came into my mind, so bear with me. What if there was a MAss Effect 3 DLC that expanded on Priority: Earth? Namely, one that would add a system similar to Dragon Age: Origin's Denerium battle, where you could allocate your assets to critical moments of the battle?

Like this: Priority Earth gets an expansion, to make it seem like more of a major ground battle, with new areas, Shepard helping out on multiple fronts, and chances to split up your party members ala Suicide Mission in ME2. You then get to choose certain types of war assets to help you out in combat. Use a strafing run War Asset and see Volus Bombers swoop by. Use an infantry charge War Asset and watch a squad of Krogan deploy to your combat zone.

Wouldn't that be neat? It would not only expand the lackluster Priority Earth mission, but also allow you to see your forces in combat firsthand.


I had a second idea. Despite the Leviathan DLC not affecting much of the ending apart from a few Catalyst lines, what if, in the future, more Singleplayer DLCs came out, and their assets could be pooled as well? Sounds normal enough, right? But what if, with all those DLC assets, you are able to top a theoretical threshold that opens a new ending?

Spoiler: Leviathan Spoilers

In Leviathan, they mention using Indoctrination Spheres to take control of enemy reapers and make them fight each other. If this was featured as a War Asset, it could be one of the deadliest weapons in your arsenal. Highjack a Destroyer and turn it on the Husk ground forces.

If more weapons like that, that beat the Reapers in unconventional ways were gathered by playing through more DLC, what would happen if you chose to Refuse? Right now all it does is show that you failed.

But if you had these unconventional weapons, and sufficiently powerful allies gathered from DLCs, and then you refused, what if it opened up the possibility of beating the Reapers through strength of arms?

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

You'd think that by now even the most stalwart Mass Effect fan would have given up on getting the ME3 ending they want.

It's a nice idea and all, but it's just not going to happen. BioWare seems dead set on doing it their way. Hoping out for something more is starting to look masochistic.

 

[Zhukov]

...

Anyway, while that would be undeniably cool, it (a) still wouldn't excise some of the more retarded elements of the ending and (b) wouldn't it amount to having to buy DLC to get the best ending? Can't see that going down well considering that some people were already pitching a fit over having to pay for Javik.

I suppose they could release it for free. Also while they're at it they could include a free magic lamp that allows me to snap my fingers and magically summon a troop of sleek, swarthy concubines, each and every one pre-dipped in magically non-fattening chocolate.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

It would be cool yes, but if I'm honest I'd rather any more DLC was focused on taking us to new places with new challenges (I'm still holding out for a Take Back Omega DLC). The EC improved the ending quite a bit, so I'm happy with them just leaving it at that, rather than having to see the whole debacle get dragged through the mud again. Just leave the ending alone and focus on giving us more of the cool stuff.

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

This idea just came to you?

I just came into the game expecting that sort of thing to be implemented into the ending from the get-go.
They did it in ME2 as you mentioned. THEY EVEN DID IT IN DA:ORIGINS AS YOU F- MENTIONED.

Sorry about the caps and swearing. There have been a lot of ME3 threads lately and they're all basically like "Hey guys....how about that ME3 right...? It was okayyyyyy.............wasn't it....?"

It's like f- Bioware hired people to go on this forum to simultaneously try and subconsciously convince the general public (that visit this forum, which would be a strangely specific audience so don't take this joke seriously) that ME3 wasn't as bad as it was perceived.

I'll just say that that idea you had was something that should have been included into the game. They probably won't do it as DLC though. I have no reasoning behind that sentence.
Even AngryJoe comments on his disappointment that your war assets don't amount to jack shit. I was disappointed too. They put in a bunch of side-quests where basically the reward is more war assets to raise your score. I don't think it was crazy of me to expect all those goddamn side-quests to mean something at the end. BUT NO, F- THANKS FOR THE TEXT DESCRIPTIONS BIOWARE. YOU WORKED REAL F- HARD ON THOSE. PLEASE HAVE MORE OF MY MONEY IN THE FUTURE.

I'm just being bitter at this point. Whatever, overall ME3 was a bad and disappointing game for me. Your idea, mister or miss OP, seems like a GOOD F- IDEA CAUSE IT'S A THING THEY DID IN THE F- PAST, BACK WHEN THEY MADE QUALITY F- GAMES.

I was going to end the post here, but I saw your second idea. Yeah, but no because Bioware said so.
It's resoundingly clear that at this point Bioware's response to the fan idea of refusing to choose an option is an erect, mega-sized, middle finger. That's honestly what the ending felt like. ESPECIALLY if you "choose" that ending by shooting the kid.

It's just like *have convo with kid*.
*Kid waits for you to choose*
So like I turned and shot the kid as a like a "I don't want to do any of these stupid choices."
The kid goes all evil voice.
*BAM*
F- you, you little prick. You think you're better than red, blue, or green? Well F- YOU EVERYONE'S DEAD THERE'S YOU GODDAMN ENDING. -Sincerely Bioware

This is probably just me being crazy, but I felt that they dropped the phrase "We can't win this through conventional means." like it was f- "Nanomachines" from MGS4. It was just like "Wait, but why?" "CAUSE I SAID SO SHEPARD! WE CAN'T WIN IT THROUGH ANY KIND OF CONVENTIONAL MEANS. WE GOTTA RELY ON A MAGIC SPACE MACGUFFIN WE FOUND."
That part just felt poorly explained to me.

*deep breath*
So, yeah. That was me ranting about Bioware and ME3 and whatever. I got way off-topic from the original post, but yeah. The idea of being able to influence the ending through the command of your war assets is a thing that was to be expected based on the past history of Bioware's games. It's just another thing to add to list of disappointments that game had.

P.S
Edit:By the way, I went back and censored all the F bombs I dropped because I don't know. What if kids read this post. I wouldn't want to hurt their sensitive eyes. I mean you can say the F word all you want, I just felt that it would be a bad thing to leave the post riddled with F bombs for the world to see.

 

[Raesvelg]

They've been explaining the "we can't win this through conventional means" for the previous two games. It's not like they've not been dropping hints constantly that no conventional force of arms would be sufficient to defeat the Reapers, up to and including weapons capable of nearly shattering planets.

Sure, you can kill the occasional Reaper that way, but even taking down Sovereign involved several fleets and a bit of nasty feedback when you killed Saren.

 

[NickBrahz]

Oh hey look a thread about Mass Effect 3, it's not like theres 20 threads posted a day, man Bioware must love all these free advertising they are getting, all i see is ME3 thread here, ME3 thread there.

 

[Ravinoff]

They've been explaining the "we can't win this through conventional means" for the previous two games. It's not like they've not been dropping hints constantly that no conventional force of arms would be sufficient to defeat the Reapers, up to and including weapons capable of nearly shattering planets.

Sure, you can kill the occasional Reaper that way, but even taking down Sovereign involved several fleets and a bit of nasty feedback when you killed Saren.

Right, except the description in the Codex entry for the Thanix Cannon specifically says that concentrated fire can down a Reaper. Given that the pair on the Normandy slagged the Collector ship with one good shot, I'd say upscale them for a dreadnought and you could probably beat the shit out of the Reapers with 'em.

It also completely disregards something that could've been an excellent Chekov's Gun moment, the numerous ruins of other civilizations that presumably encountered the Reapers. If you're like me and spent hours going from planet to planet in ME1 and 2 looking at the descriptions, you notice three or four interesting anomalies that might be worth researching. Most of them are much, much older than the Protheans and at least one was advanced enough to build the mass driver that produced the Derelict Reaper.

 

[WaywardHaymaker]

The Leviathan thing you mentioned does show up as a 400 point War Asset. Also, the whole DA:O style final battle would've been sweet.

I've been mulling the idea over in my head that, once BioWare finished making Singleplayer DLC for the game that a new War Asset threshold would come up (through a patch, even for people who didn't buy any DLC), like an insanely high number of them, where you could refuse the star child and have just beat the Reapers in a straight-up fight, but I don't really want that to happen because it just cheapens the Reaper threat.

The Galaxy hadn't prepared and only even recognized the need for action once the Reapers had attacked Earth, and this is after they'd already crippled the Batarians. The only way Sovereign was defeated was because it was assuming direct control over Saren's remains, and the shock of 'dying' dropped its shields and stunned it enough for multiple fleets to focus fire on it. After, mind you, causing enough damage to the Citadel and Council forces to make humanity a much more present member of C-Sec and Citadel space defense, even two years after the fact.

That said, a few Reapers in ME3 went down easier than Sovereign (I'm thinking of the battle over Earth where an Alliance ship gets a kill shot almost right away), but it was the one they left behind to ensure their return; I bet Sovereign was more bad-ass than the average Reaper.

EDIT: Dude above me mentioned the Thanix Cannon. That's probably what they were using, then, not ME1 weapons tech. That explains the above little thing I had.

Aaaand now I'm almost completely off-topic. I'm going to stop myself here before I start talking about the implications of the Leviathan DLC...

 

[NickBrahz]

Right, except the description in the Codex entry for the Thanix Cannon specifically says that concentrated fire can down a Reaper. Given that the pair on the Normandy slagged the Collector ship with one good shot, I'd say upscale them for a dreadnought and you could probably beat the shit out of the Reapers with 'em.

The collector base is not a Reaper, just because it got a lucky shot on the Collector base does not mean it could shred a Reaper,

Look at the first game, they could barely take down 1 reaper with combined forces, there is no way they could take down the reapers with conventional weapons/strategy as there is just far to many of them and most of the fleets are decimated, they would need to find i don't know some sort of ancient advanced weaponry/shielding/strategy from either the protheans or previous civilizations to give them a boost in that department (Not the dang Crucible)

 

[Lunar Templar]

Also while they're at it they could include a free magic lamp that allows me to snap my fingers and magically summon a troop of sleek, swarthy concubines, each and every one pre-dipped in magically non-fattening chocolate.

/thread

best idea i've seen in ages on this site.

 

[Ravinoff]

Right, except the description in the Codex entry for the Thanix Cannon specifically says that concentrated fire can down a Reaper. Given that the pair on the Normandy slagged the Collector ship with one good shot, I'd say upscale them for a dreadnought and you could probably beat the shit out of the Reapers with 'em.

The collector base is not a Reaper, just because it got a lucky shot on the Collector base does not mean it could shred a Reaper,

Look at the first game, they could barely take down 1 reaper with combined forces, there is no way they could take down the reapers with conventional weapons/strategy as there is just far to many of them and most of the fleets are decimated, they would need to find i don't know some sort of ancient advanced weaponry/shielding/strategy from either the protheans or previous civilizations to give them a boost in that department (Not the dang Crucible)

Right, but again you're ignoring the Thanix Cannon. Sovereign was taken down using standard mass accelerators firing solid slugs. The Thanix system was reverse-engineered from Sovereign's main gun and fires a continuous stream of molten metal at the target (similar in principle to a modern shaped charge). The missile versions gutted the Reaper guarding the Conduit as well.

 

[Raesvelg]

Right, except the description in the Codex entry for the Thanix Cannon specifically says that concentrated fire can down a Reaper.

Quote please.

Given that the pair on the Normandy slagged the Collector ship with one good shot, I'd say upscale them for a dreadnought and you could probably beat the shit out of the Reapers with 'em.

And I'd say you're being rather optimistic, since the cannon that killed the Derelict Reaper managed to leave a scar on the planet it struck that lasted millions of years.

The Thanix Cannon is nice, but it's not nearly on that scale. The description effectively classifies it as a weapon that allows a ship to fight one class up from its technical class (frigate that hits as hard as a cruiser, etc). A dreadnought, then, would fight like... say... the Destiny Ascension.

Which got destroyed in the Battle of the Citadel in ME1 if you didn't sacrifice human ships to defend it, oddly enough.

Couple that with the fact that there are many times more Reapers than dreadnought-class starships in the galaxy, and it's rather a moot point.

It also completely disregards something that could've been an excellent Chekov's Gun moment, the numerous ruins of other civilizations that presumably encountered the Reapers. If you're like me and spent hours going from planet to planet in ME1 and 2 looking at the descriptions, you notice three or four interesting anomalies that might be worth researching. Most of them are much, much older than the Protheans and at least one was advanced enough to build the mass driver that produced the Derelict Reaper.

The obvious flaw here is that all of those civilizations failed. They got harvested. That's kinda the point, really. Bioware throws all these things out there, to illustrate the capabilities of civilizations that were defeated by the Reapers.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

They've been explaining the "we can't win this through conventional means" for the previous two games. It's not like they've not been dropping hints constantly that no conventional force of arms would be sufficient to defeat the Reapers, up to and including weapons capable of nearly shattering planets.

Sure, you can kill the occasional Reaper that way, but even taking down Sovereign involved several fleets and a bit of nasty feedback when you killed Saren.

Right, except the description in the Codex entry for the Thanix Cannon specifically says that concentrated fire can down a Reaper. Given that the pair on the Normandy slagged the Collector ship with one good shot, I'd say upscale them for a dreadnought and you could probably beat the shit out of the Reapers with 'em.

It also completely disregards something that could've been an excellent Chekov's Gun moment, the numerous ruins of other civilizations that presumably encountered the Reapers. If you're like me and spent hours going from planet to planet in ME1 and 2 looking at the descriptions, you notice three or four interesting anomalies that might be worth researching. Most of them are much, much older than the Protheans and at least one was advanced enough to build the mass driver that produced the Derelict Reaper.

A reaper. One. At a time. You do realize that there are a whole whole lot of them - way more than you see in the sky above and around Earth, right? They have every single system on lockdown at that point. All at the same time. You have, more or less, the entire might of the collected galaxy, and you probably couldn't gun down the reapers around Earth, let alone the whole Sol System, one for one that way.

Plus, obviously, the Protheans failed, utterly, to do that in 1,000 years or something absolutely ridiculous. And - since we know virtually nothing about the pre-Protheans, even MORE advanced civilizations with better weapons and fighting may certainly have tried.

It just doesn't make any kind of sense to me that they get defeated with anything other than the deus ex machina device. Whatever we might think of it... the Reapers were built - written - conceived of - however you want to put it - as an insurmountable threat that you would defeat against all odds with something completely outside of the experience of previous attempts.

 

[NickBrahz]

Right, except the description in the Codex entry for the Thanix Cannon specifically says that concentrated fire can down a Reaper. Given that the pair on the Normandy slagged the Collector ship with one good shot, I'd say upscale them for a dreadnought and you could probably beat the shit out of the Reapers with 'em.

The collector base is not a Reaper, just because it got a lucky shot on the Collector base does not mean it could shred a Reaper,

Look at the first game, they could barely take down 1 reaper with combined forces, there is no way they could take down the reapers with conventional weapons/strategy as there is just far to many of them and most of the fleets are decimated, they would need to find i don't know some sort of ancient advanced weaponry/shielding/strategy from either the protheans or previous civilizations to give them a boost in that department (Not the dang Crucible)

Right, but again you're ignoring the Thanix Cannon. Sovereign was taken down using standard mass accelerators firing solid slugs. The Thanix system was reverse-engineered from Sovereign's main gun and fires a continuous stream of molten metal at the target (similar in principle to a modern shaped charge). The missile versions gutted the Reaper guarding the Conduit as well.

While i do not doubt that certain weapons would be able to do a fair bit of damage, and alot of ships focusing could take down a reaper(Took the entire Quarian fleet to take down just 1 Reaper and they have the biggest fleet), its just the amount of reapers there is, lets say it takes 100 cruisers to take down a reaper with concentrating fire (This is a random number so don't take out of context) by the time you killed that one reaper, you would lose a chunk of the ships, say you lost a solid 50, leaving 50, and when your fighting hundreds, or even thousands or reapers simultaneously across an entire galaxy, in which it is very difficult to get around because of the reapers, it would be impossible to take down all the reapers, a chunk of reapers sure but at the end of the day the reapers would win.

 

[Ravinoff]

A reaper. One. At a time. You do realize that there are a whole whole lot of them - way more than you see in the sky above and around Earth, right? They have every single system on lockdown at that point. All at the same time. You have, more or less, the entire might of the collected galaxy, and you probably couldn't gun down the reapers around Earth, let alone the whole Sol System, one for one that way.

Plus, obviously, the Protheans failed, utterly, to do that in 1,000 years or something absolutely ridiculous. And - since we know virtually nothing about the pre-Protheans, even MORE advanced civilizations with better weapons and fighting may certainly have tried.

It just doesn't make any kind of sense to me that they get defeated with anything other than the deus ex machina device. Whatever we might think of it... the Reapers were built - written - conceived of - however you want to put it - as an insurmountable threat that you would defeat against all odds with something completely outside of the experience of previous attempts.

I get that the Reapers are supposed to be stupidly powerful, but what I don't get is why nobody thought to even look at the cultures that were wiped out by them. The Protheans were wiped out by the Reapers, and as soon as they arrived people started looking through the Archives on Mars for a possible solution or weapon. What's to say one of these artifact worlds didn't have something designed equivalent to the Crucible? Maybe they even developed something better, you don't know until you look. The fact that they were defeated in the end doesn't really matter. Look at the Protheans, it took a thousand years or more to fully subjugate them, so even if some remote outpost had developed a weapon, they wouldn't have been able to build it or transmit the plans.

 

[NortherWolf]

They've been explaining the "we can't win this through conventional means" for the previous two games. It's not like they've not been dropping hints constantly that no conventional force of arms would be sufficient to defeat the Reapers, up to and including weapons capable of nearly shattering planets.

Sure, you can kill the occasional Reaper that way, but even taking down Sovereign involved several fleets and a bit of nasty feedback when you killed Saren.

Right, except the description in the Codex entry for the Thanix Cannon specifically says that concentrated fire can down a Reaper. Given that the pair on the Normandy slagged the Collector ship with one good shot, I'd say upscale them for a dreadnought and you could probably beat the shit out of the Reapers with 'em.

It also completely disregards something that could've been an excellent Chekov's Gun moment, the numerous ruins of other civilizations that presumably encountered the Reapers. If you're like me and spent hours going from planet to planet in ME1 and 2 looking at the descriptions, you notice three or four interesting anomalies that might be worth researching. Most of them are much, much older than the Protheans and at least one was advanced enough to build the mass driver that produced the Derelict Reaper.

A reaper. One. At a time. You do realize that there are a whole whole lot of them - way more than you see in the sky above and around Earth, right? They have every single system on lockdown at that point. All at the same time. You have, more or less, the entire might of the collected galaxy, and you probably couldn't gun down the reapers around Earth, let alone the whole Sol System, one for one that way.

Plus, obviously, the Protheans failed, utterly, to do that in 1,000 years or something absolutely ridiculous. And - since we know virtually nothing about the pre-Protheans, even MORE advanced civilizations with better weapons and fighting may certainly have tried.

It just doesn't make any kind of sense to me that they get defeated with anything other than the deus ex machina device. Whatever we might think of it... the Reapers were built - written - conceived of - however you want to put it - as an insurmountable threat that you would defeat against all odds with something completely outside of the experience of previous attempts.

Nothing should EVER get defeated with a Deus Ex Machina. It's lazy writing. Hell, it's lazy and stupid writing.
In ME's case it's also against the entire notion that Shep might just be the one to rally the galaxy and claim victory against the Reapers.
The tone of the earlier games really weren't defeatist, they had hope.(you take down a Reaper, then everyone holds the idiot ball in game two yet you manage to down the Reaper's foremost ally in the galaxy). So yeah, two games with victories and promises that it'd mean something, just to get curb-stomped in 3.
I'm starting to think that the detractors of Bioware are right and I was wrong when I used to praise them.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

A reaper. One. At a time. You do realize that there are a whole whole lot of them - way more than you see in the sky above and around Earth, right? They have every single system on lockdown at that point. All at the same time. You have, more or less, the entire might of the collected galaxy, and you probably couldn't gun down the reapers around Earth, let alone the whole Sol System, one for one that way.

Plus, obviously, the Protheans failed, utterly, to do that in 1,000 years or something absolutely ridiculous. And - since we know virtually nothing about the pre-Protheans, even MORE advanced civilizations with better weapons and fighting may certainly have tried.

It just doesn't make any kind of sense to me that they get defeated with anything other than the deus ex machina device. Whatever we might think of it... the Reapers were built - written - conceived of - however you want to put it - as an insurmountable threat that you would defeat against all odds with something completely outside of the experience of previous attempts.

I get that the Reapers are supposed to be stupidly powerful, but what I don't get is why nobody thought to even look at the cultures that were wiped out by them. The Protheans were wiped out by the Reapers, and as soon as they arrived people started looking through the Archives on Mars for a possible solution or weapon. What's to say one of these artifact worlds didn't have something designed equivalent to the Crucible? Maybe they even developed something better, you don't know until you look. The fact that they were defeated in the end doesn't really matter. Look at the Protheans, it took a thousand years or more to fully subjugate them, so even if some remote outpost had developed a weapon, they wouldn't have been able to build it or transmit the plans.

And that would matter, if there was sufficient time, but as we are all aware, people didn't believe the threat was real until it was far too late to undertake that kind of massive, time consuming research. Also, I'm not sure how much of those cultures was really left to research after 100,000 years, 150,000 years, 200,000 years, 250,000 years, etc. etc. etc. Cycles are 50,000 years long. It was only good stasis technology that allowed what survived of the Prothean civilization to do so - and that still required thousands more years of research to have been anywhere close to complete. Liara mentions that most of the archives haven't even been deciphered. The Asari clearly hadn't cracked more than the surface level of information from the beacon they had for thousands of years known about. It's not like you just find a copy of blueprints somewhere laying in the dust and voila!

... unless of course you're doing the "we made a problem that can't possibly be solved without a miracle" move that Bioware ended up with.

They've been explaining the "we can't win this through conventional means" for the previous two games. It's not like they've not been dropping hints constantly that no conventional force of arms would be sufficient to defeat the Reapers, up to and including weapons capable of nearly shattering planets.

Sure, you can kill the occasional Reaper that way, but even taking down Sovereign involved several fleets and a bit of nasty feedback when you killed Saren.

Right, except the description in the Codex entry for the Thanix Cannon specifically says that concentrated fire can down a Reaper. Given that the pair on the Normandy slagged the Collector ship with one good shot, I'd say upscale them for a dreadnought and you could probably beat the shit out of the Reapers with 'em.

It also completely disregards something that could've been an excellent Chekov's Gun moment, the numerous ruins of other civilizations that presumably encountered the Reapers. If you're like me and spent hours going from planet to planet in ME1 and 2 looking at the descriptions, you notice three or four interesting anomalies that might be worth researching. Most of them are much, much older than the Protheans and at least one was advanced enough to build the mass driver that produced the Derelict Reaper.

A reaper. One. At a time. You do realize that there are a whole whole lot of them - way more than you see in the sky above and around Earth, right? They have every single system on lockdown at that point. All at the same time. You have, more or less, the entire might of the collected galaxy, and you probably couldn't gun down the reapers around Earth, let alone the whole Sol System, one for one that way.

Plus, obviously, the Protheans failed, utterly, to do that in 1,000 years or something absolutely ridiculous. And - since we know virtually nothing about the pre-Protheans, even MORE advanced civilizations with better weapons and fighting may certainly have tried.

It just doesn't make any kind of sense to me that they get defeated with anything other than the deus ex machina device. Whatever we might think of it... the Reapers were built - written - conceived of - however you want to put it - as an insurmountable threat that you would defeat against all odds with something completely outside of the experience of previous attempts.

Nothing should EVER get defeated with a Deus Ex Machina. It's lazy writing. Hell, it's lazy and stupid writing.
In ME's case it's also against the entire notion that Shep might just be the one to rally the galaxy and claim victory against the Reapers.
The tone of the earlier games really weren't defeatist, they had hope.(you take down a Reaper, then everyone holds the idiot ball in game two yet you manage to down the Reaper's foremost ally in the galaxy). So yeah, two games with victories and promises that it'd mean something, just to get curb-stomped in 3.
I'm starting to think that the detractors of Bioware are right and I was wrong when I used to praise them.

It is sloppy writing. It is not something that we should generally just be Okay with - but it is something that sometimes happens and it isn't completely inexcusable in all situations. Most, the vast majority, but not all. In this case... barring a fourth and fifth installment of games where nothing happens but us at war with the Reapers and more and more systems falling and basically playing out the fall of the Protheans but with the current races until someone comes up with something (which will still be sort of the same thing) it's the only out of the story at this point. Could it have been done better? I'm not going to rehash that, I have posts around from when I felt deep feelings about the ending, you're welcome to search for them but they won't have the answers either.