Poll: Why does everyone hate ME3 so badly?

[Lithan]

I've been gaming for 20+ years. Never disliked an ending before. Whoever wrote this ending should never find work as a writer ever again. It's that bad.


Game as a whole? I think ME2 was better. ME3 had better points (ME2 more consistant, ME3 has lulls and highs). A lot of strong moments, though you get the feeling they're killing people off pretty willy-nilly at times. Had to reload a couple times and jump through hoops to figure out that missing one conversation that had absolutely no flags other than a timid email about lets meet on the citadel (you get DOZENS of these) resulted in the death of a ME2 crewmember.

Then theres more than one crew member who just dies, nothing you can do about it.

Then, not enough Rep? Tali practices her high dive off a cliff... seriously? Had to start a new game and forget "playing my conscience" I'm powerplaying 100% Pure Paragon and doing EVERY mission. You're NOT suiciding Sheps LI on MY watch. A mix of good and bad. Legion/Geth excellently done. All in all a very worthy sequel... Till the second you kill Kai Leng. The End Mission is ridiculously underdone. It doesn't distinguish itself from any other missions in any way. Doesn't require any special strategy, or any special tactics, or any special squad makeup. You pick 2 people, any 2, shoot some bad guys and get to your ending.

Last "choices" you make are irrelevant. Final Rep options were greyed out despite having done everything (Bug or maybe related to galactic readyness/MP which I ignored). Either way everyone involved dies and I ascend to the godchild and then the ridiculous nonsense that ruins the game happens.


Suppose you just read Dostoevsky's "The Idiot". You're at the scene where he finds Natassya's body and is laying beside Rogozhin. Suddenly he levitates onto the roof. Aglaya is there but she's a 4 year old boy and she tells him that if he jumps off one side of the roof there will be ninja's, off the other and he'll gain the ability to stop time, and off the third everyone will disco dance. Then she kills the entire cast of characters and flips the reader off.

 

[MercurySteam]

It was published by EA, nuff said.

Yes, people really are that petty (just look around here).

 

[katamuro]

the thing is I loved the game, the universe and I thought ME3 was actually the best one I played so far. Sure there were some things but they were more on technical side that can be fixed. However the lack of information of what happens next after the end really made me dissapointed as I relished in the fact that I could see where my choices led. of course they could make another game or a very big dlc. But I just don't see it happening.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Derp.

Or herpderp hurrr. To be more precise.

(I haven't got it yet, was just checking to see if there are any genuinely decent problems to convince me not to buy it...)

 

[Lithan]

Buy it. Stop playing when they tell you to charge the big beam of light. Go play the final mission of ME2 again instead.

 

[Necromancer1991]

It's just general internet hate. In other words, negligible.

The game is excellent, one of the best games I've ever played.

And yes you will hear a lot of moaning about the ending, but that was always going to be the case.

If it's on the internet it MUST be true

But seriously the game is fine, most of the hate is coming from pedantic asshats and the usual "EA IS TEH HITLER!!11!" people. The game is good overall, just has a few minor problems that I personally can look past.

 

[Noble_Lance]

I just finished the game and I really enjoyed the entire thing from beginning to end. There were some manly near tear moments like Legion declaring itself in the first person, or the death of Thane and Mordin. There were some really funny moments like the Garrus bromance moment with sniper rifles with my male shep, or finding out the Elcor fight with giant cannons on their backs, or basically anything to do about the Krogan re-population moments and Ashley+Tali getting drunk, finally laughing at James Vega for being a loco.

The Tali thing didn't bother me at all because no one was gonna be happy even if they put the time into it, there would be a group of whining people complaining about how she didn't look like they envisioned for the character and demand DLC adjustments.

Also I hate the complaining about the ending and how everything didn't matter, because yes it did. I can tell you right now I know it does Conrad is alive in my Shep's world cause I saved a dancer/undercover woman in ME1, The Krogan are alive and repopulating, and the Quarian are living hand in hand with the Geth cause I screamed into a transmitter, also I killed the Ranchi and left them to never be alive again because I liked Grunt too much to sacrifice him in the tunnels, and I thought that the Krogan would be better in numbers. That's just a few of the real changes I made on that world for whatever future game will come up.
Back on topic of the ending, there is a reason the game comes with a freedom of choice, otherwise there should just be a popup in character creation that says, do you want to be paragon or renegade? If I want to play and punch out the reporter I can do that, if I want to be a douche that also loves his girlfriend with paragon tenderness, I can. The fact is that makes your character you and as a result, you can be affected by your decisions in the game. So when I saw the three endings, it made me think about who I was becoming at that moment.
The Mass Relays were going to get destroyed regardless, but I could control the reapers, and use them to move people around the world and use their power and intelligence to rebuild them and the world, I could destroy them better safe then sorry in hopes of giving the world peace by eliminating synthetic life. Or finally, and the choice I made, transform all life into bio-synethic life, so that there were no slaves, everyone was equal[at least that's how I saw it].

But what made the "push-button" decision goes back to my probably badly created argument, people can change, and decide to change in the moments before death. At the start of the game I knew I wanted to destroy the Reapers and keep them from ever coming back for what I had seen but by the end I was questioning myself on whether or not I could. I knew that they were murderous bastards, and sure the little AI kid confused me a bit about how life would merge, or why the Reaper synthetic was perfectly acceptable to rise up and kill all life, rather than the creations of organics. But after watching and hearing about the effect the Geth were having with their creators in the Quarians, how quickly they were helping them and helping rebuild the planet for them, I thought about how could I kill or control synthetics because of actions and decisions that went farther back in time than the existence of humans.

 

[Bvenged]

ME3 is a sad case for me because it has two flaws, one is Tali's face (which to be fair I got over quickly) and the other is the ending, which completely ruined an otherwise flawless game for me.

Agreed, sort of.
I couldn't care about tali's face, I just simply shrugged that off as an external easter-egg.

The DLC was a kicker and I actually took action in not buying it. Can't say I feel like I've missed out on anything by doing so and I've still got £10 hanging about.

The entire game was the best thing I've played all year, on par with Skyrim and Battlefield 3! Then then ending, ohhh the ending...

Spoiler: not-so-spoiler: put it this way...

I aced paragon morality and owned galactic readiness and military might; and yet I was still pissed off with the game for the final 5 minutes or so. The ending is enough to make you want to punch a hole in your wall and wish you'd never started such a damn good game series in the first place, because the endgame let-down is hard. Then you look up the alternatives and realise there are 16 outcomes, but they all split up into 3 distinct scenarios all of which change an unnoticeable amount based on your decisions throughout the series. While paragon is the "nicest" ending, none of them even come close to what anyone would call a "paragon" ending in their heads. It's a horrible ending to such a sweetly emotional and entertaining game. I am dissapointed but am greatful for the game prior to the final 5 minutes.

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

Funny that the video that shows that the DLC is on the disk fails the mention that
1. voice acting
2. charater models/animations
Are both done in a early pre-production stage as they are insanely easy to do and require little time.

It is actually kinda pathetic how badly the video trys to manipulate the dev process to make it look like bioware lied when they didn't.

 

[Bvenged]

snip

snip

I am well aware of game development cycles, thank you very much. It's the same principle that concept artists, who are only needed for the pre-production and early production with background art and textures don't get fired, because their skills are used in beefing up the special editions of the games. It's the idea that it was released on day 1 is what bugs me, and that the DLC seems like such a critical part of the game at the time.

Anyway, did I not say it was a game on par with Skyrim and BF3 for being the best this year? The final 5 minutes were what killed it for me. It's just left so damn open but at the same time showing absolutely no way of rounding up the holes and plugging them in. I was all for aa bitter ending, but somehow I feel like they went off the scale to make the ending a killjoy of bitterness.

In fact, that's what it is. Mass Effect 3 is a fantastic game, filled with tough decision making, great combat and a very innovative and capturing story with a sense of diminishing hope along with fantastic accomplishment; all spread across 3 games. Then it goes and blows the consumer down to their knees in drastic change in mood - but this is good as they could've nailed the emotional epicness an ending to a trilogy needs, in a way the player has been working towards... but instead it goes and uppercuts the player with a finale that is nothing more than a total killjoy.

In a more metaphorical term, they climbed to the highest diving board in story telling to make the biggest splash possible, but instead slipped through the surface without much of a splash, crashing into the bottom of the pool. If only they had laid out flat. Sure, they'd have broken a few bones and not travelled so fast, but it would've been epic. In the words of Sheppard him/her-self: "You've sacrificed too much".

 

[Saviordd1]

The game was, up until the ending, absolutely fantastic. Gameplay was incredibly fluid and fun, and the characters had been written so well that it just made the ending even more unfair.

Spoiler: Ending spoilers

I'm okay with Shep making the ultimate sacrifice, but I'm not okay with the complete bullshit reasoning. Kid AI saying that organics must be destroyed because they'll make synthetics that destroy them? What? Plus, it makes every choice you've made completely irrelevant.
The absolute worst part of the endings, for me at least, is that there is zero closure. You don't know what happens to your team mates, your friends, your love interest, hell, the rest of the galaxy. It's just "Shepard saved the day by dying, lol the end!"

I really feel like the ending(s) singlehandedly ruined the game for me. The biggest part of the Mass Effect series was, for me, it's replayability. I have so many Shepard's that I was ecstatic to bring into ME3. Now, I don't even want to bother because I know the bleak, unsatisfying outcome.

Pretty much this.

Admittedly I'll still play through it a few times, maybe 2-5. But compared to ME2 and ME1 which I played through more times then I can count (upwards of 10) its kind of sad.

The ending is what does it, that is the killing point, that 5 minutes of utter shit makes the other 31 hours irrelevant.

I've seen youtube REMIXES that have already fixed the ending for me, with footage from the existing ending.

That's how easy it is.

Really the endings should have been the easiest part.

Ugh, whatever. We all know Bioware will release a 10 buck DLC that fixes it, and me, being a corporate whore, will buy it.

-.-

 

[ServebotFrank]

Have you seen the ending? The entire game is great until the last 15 minutes, then they proceed to invalidate all your accomplishments and shoehorn you into three variations of the same ending that are all filled with plot-holes and are completely unsatisfying.

It turns out a large majority of your choices didn't actually mean anything, and for a series that's been boasting about it's choices actually meaning something for the past 5 years it has completely failed in that department.

I don't see how this came as a surprise to anyone.

I know my choices in Mass Effect 1 were less than important when they were briefly mentioned in Mass Effect 2. Hardly game changing. I have no intention of buying Mass Effect 3, but I'm willing to bet that the carry over from 2 to 3 is just as evident, if not more transparent.

Actually I found that various choices made from ME1 have a big effect on ME3.

Spoiler

Saving the Rachni queen gives you a war asset, survivors from the suicide mission in two help you in side quest, Paragon choices from 1 come back to bite you in the ass as do Renegade options, and if you're a Renegade player then saving Wrex back on Virmire probably wasn't in your interests.

You haven't even played the game and you're slamming it. Don't criticize a game you haven't even tried yet.

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

I never said or implied you didn't understand dev cycles, I said the person who made the video did.

Nor did I imply you didnt think ME3 was good or bad in any way.

 

[Lithan]

Really though, they boil all your choices down to that one stat, the military readiness. The only SIGNIFICANT choice was making the base do/don't go boom at the end of ME2. The rest may swing your readiness a couple hundred pts one way or the other (usually less)... and since MP doubling that stat AND being necessary from what I can tell for the highest tier endings (4000 needed, I was around 7000/2 doing EVERYTHING and making very few sacs (save krogan vs the cockroaches -50, etc) those decisions really don't matter at all other than saving you having to scan one or two planets each.

 

[GigaHz]

Snip

I'm not really 'slamming it'. I was saying that I was skeptical that the carryover would be meaningful. The fact that it's more apparent than it was in 2 is good news, though a bit of a surprise considering the slap-dash effort from 1-2.

I just don't intend on purchasing it, not for any of the more apparent reasons but because I didn't like the direction ME2 took. That doesn't mean I think ME3 is a bad game.

 

[spectrenihlus]

I loved every minute of the game

except for the last five.

 

[Xpheyel]

It was published by EA, nuff said.

Yes, people really are that petty (just look around here).

Up until around when DA2 came out, I had no beef with EA. In the year or so leading up to that, I bought and quite enjoyed Dead Space, Dead Space 2 (new), Dragon Age Origins (GOTY edition), Mass Effect, and Mass Effect 2 (plus Shadowbroker, Overlord, and Kasumi). I enjoyed all of those games quite a bit. I even enjoyed the DLC, though I thought their item selling was ridiculous.

DA2 launched with a lot of changes from DAO, rumors of recycled areas, and a paid day one DLC companion. I didn't buy that one. Then they upvoted themselves on metacritic. John Ritchello started a bunch of crap with Bobby Kotick. They launched Origin and started banning linked accounts for forum violations. Then they announced paid day one DLC for ME3. At that point I decided that ME3 was not for me at launch. Now we find out that the character 'included' in the paid day 1 DLC, vigorously defended as being developed between the end of game production and testing, is available disc accessible via tweaking a configuration file. The downloadable part is the associated mission. Now I've seen screen captures of Chris Priestly is asserting that tweaking a configuration file to access content on disc is piracy.

It isn't who they are, it's what they do. And what they've done over the past year is erode any good will or faith I may have had in their brand. If you don't have issues with any of those practices or products, then enjoy your games. I, personally, do not intend to subsidize their antics, at least not at full price. Caveat Emptor, they can come back at a price point that factors in their DLC, the annoyance of installing another digital distribution platform, and the possibility that getting banned in multiplayer or a forum will lock me out of my single play games.

 

[LilithSlave]

I don't care much about it either way. It just looks like another game to me. Not super interesting, but not super annoying. The whole gay thing I hear about is pretty cool. Not that I want bara in my video games instead of yaoi. Shepard is manly, as can be expected of a Western title. So it's bara.

What I'm sick of, is how Mass Effect titles cover almost all the topics here. I'm getting really sick of hearing about Mass Effect. Almost as sick as I was getting about Skyrim.

Can we please, PLEASE, stop talking about every single wRPG ever ad nauseum? I'm not against wRPGs at all. I just want some variety, I don't want to hear about them 24/7.

How about... I dunno. A Terraria topic? Hey, Starbound is being worked on and probably released soon. Why don't we talk about that...? I'll make a topic. Even though I've made two today. Anything to combat the number of Mass Effect topics.