I have recently been thinking about the issues with ME3 and how a lot of people sounding off about it who have never played the game seem to miss the entire point about the problems due to not being familiar with the game. I thought about it and I figured an easy way to summarize the problem is simply to post links to some videos made by The Escapist's own "Miracle Of Sound" which were well received because they captured the essence of the series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiRDJLcYua0&feature=relmfu
The Best One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMrHgQhrEDU&feature=related
and most recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9feUxKIqKmg&feature=related
All of which can be also found on this site (I believe) along with a few other ME3 videos.
To summarize the essence of the series, Mass Effect is a series of games intended and declared to be spiritually similar to Star Wars. The protaganist of this game is a hero called "Commander Shepard" whose class, exact skills, and appearance is selected by the player. Out of the entirety of humanity Shepard is chosen to be humanity's first and only representitive in the special police force/enforcement branch of the council (galactic goverment body) called the Spectres. They do the job that The Jedi did for the Republic in Star Wars for all intents and purposes.
Without going into spoilers (though I am talking about older games) the first game is about how the greatest Spectre in the galaxy has gone rogue and ransacked a human colony and only Shepard and a few others know it. This Spectre unknown to everyone has fallen under the control of a race of apocolyptic planet munching robotic space ships called the Reapers who appear every 50,000 years to kill all the advanced species. After an investigation nobody believes the threat that this rogue Spectre presents except for Shepard and his crew, and the Spectre in alliance with one of the Reapers makes a move on the Citadel (center of Galactic goverment, which is also an ancient artifact... and created by the Reapers unknown to just about everone) to summon the rest of that species. This ends with an epic final showdown where Shepard saves the entire galaxy. In the course of this adventure Shepard kills perhaps two of the most powerful beings in council space, Saren (the rogue spectre), and Matriarch Benezia who is one of the most powerful Biotics (think telekinetic space magic like The Force) to ever exist who was also under control.
The sequel picks up with the remaining Reapers in space who still want to summon the rest arranging for the assination of the man who stopped them. He is however resurrected (as in literally resurrected with super science) by a ruthless organization of anti-heroes once human colonies start disappearing and the galactic goverment refuses to do anything. Nobody believes in The Reapers and figure the whole bit with Sovreign was an isolated incident. Without much in the way of support other than the organization backing him and it's dubious motives he goes on a quest similar to "The Seven Samurai" to collect a "Dirty Dozen" type force of the Galaxies most powerful and ruthless individuals for a suicide mission into the area of space the raids are believed to be coordinated from. While possible to fail the mission, the bottom line is in the end Shepard and like a dozen other guys lay siege to space station from an advanced alien race, prevent another invasion of The Reapers, and even wind up taking down a partially completed reaper inside the station with hand weapons.
I won't focus/say much on Mass Effect 3 (to avoid spoilers) other than to say even after 2 nobody in authority seems to take the Reapers seriously (still) and the galaxy winds up paying the price, but as the uber-hero from the previous games, and the only guy who saw it coming and has been fighting them successfully, Shepard is sent to single handedly unite the galaxy against this invasion.
At this point you should get the idea of what kind of series this is, whether it's to your tastes or not. Needless to say a surrealistic ending that doesn't nessicarly resolve anything as it could all potentially be happening in the protaganist's mind, and focuses on less than ideal solutions does not fit with the theme of this game. See, Shepard is the guy who shows up to win no-win scenarios, and take those situations where there is no ideal solution and create one anyway. He is bigger than life, and while bad things happen (there are very bad things for him to fight and be challenged by), the point is supposed to be upbeat, with the good guys always winning in the end.... even if the good guy happens to be a bastard (the Renegade option isn't really "evil" per se, and is still always doing the right thing in the big picture and trying to save the galaxy, they just care less about who gets hurt in the process and tend to be more human-centric as opposed to trying to find peace with all the aliens, a valid point of view given that the leadership of the major races DOES treat humanity like crap and keeps ignoring warnings).
Incidently if someone from Bioware reads these forums and doesn't avoid long posts (or just ones by me given some of my thoughts), hopefully spelling out the above summary, and showing the perceptions of the game through that music and it's positive reception, shows EXACTLY what the problem is... I mean assuming somehow Bioware doesn't know this. The ending of ME3 is totally out of context with the spirit of the series so far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiRDJLcYua0&feature=relmfu
The Best One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMrHgQhrEDU&feature=related
and most recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9feUxKIqKmg&feature=related
All of which can be also found on this site (I believe) along with a few other ME3 videos.
To summarize the essence of the series, Mass Effect is a series of games intended and declared to be spiritually similar to Star Wars. The protaganist of this game is a hero called "Commander Shepard" whose class, exact skills, and appearance is selected by the player. Out of the entirety of humanity Shepard is chosen to be humanity's first and only representitive in the special police force/enforcement branch of the council (galactic goverment body) called the Spectres. They do the job that The Jedi did for the Republic in Star Wars for all intents and purposes.
Without going into spoilers (though I am talking about older games) the first game is about how the greatest Spectre in the galaxy has gone rogue and ransacked a human colony and only Shepard and a few others know it. This Spectre unknown to everyone has fallen under the control of a race of apocolyptic planet munching robotic space ships called the Reapers who appear every 50,000 years to kill all the advanced species. After an investigation nobody believes the threat that this rogue Spectre presents except for Shepard and his crew, and the Spectre in alliance with one of the Reapers makes a move on the Citadel (center of Galactic goverment, which is also an ancient artifact... and created by the Reapers unknown to just about everone) to summon the rest of that species. This ends with an epic final showdown where Shepard saves the entire galaxy. In the course of this adventure Shepard kills perhaps two of the most powerful beings in council space, Saren (the rogue spectre), and Matriarch Benezia who is one of the most powerful Biotics (think telekinetic space magic like The Force) to ever exist who was also under control.
The sequel picks up with the remaining Reapers in space who still want to summon the rest arranging for the assination of the man who stopped them. He is however resurrected (as in literally resurrected with super science) by a ruthless organization of anti-heroes once human colonies start disappearing and the galactic goverment refuses to do anything. Nobody believes in The Reapers and figure the whole bit with Sovreign was an isolated incident. Without much in the way of support other than the organization backing him and it's dubious motives he goes on a quest similar to "The Seven Samurai" to collect a "Dirty Dozen" type force of the Galaxies most powerful and ruthless individuals for a suicide mission into the area of space the raids are believed to be coordinated from. While possible to fail the mission, the bottom line is in the end Shepard and like a dozen other guys lay siege to space station from an advanced alien race, prevent another invasion of The Reapers, and even wind up taking down a partially completed reaper inside the station with hand weapons.
I won't focus/say much on Mass Effect 3 (to avoid spoilers) other than to say even after 2 nobody in authority seems to take the Reapers seriously (still) and the galaxy winds up paying the price, but as the uber-hero from the previous games, and the only guy who saw it coming and has been fighting them successfully, Shepard is sent to single handedly unite the galaxy against this invasion.
At this point you should get the idea of what kind of series this is, whether it's to your tastes or not. Needless to say a surrealistic ending that doesn't nessicarly resolve anything as it could all potentially be happening in the protaganist's mind, and focuses on less than ideal solutions does not fit with the theme of this game. See, Shepard is the guy who shows up to win no-win scenarios, and take those situations where there is no ideal solution and create one anyway. He is bigger than life, and while bad things happen (there are very bad things for him to fight and be challenged by), the point is supposed to be upbeat, with the good guys always winning in the end.... even if the good guy happens to be a bastard (the Renegade option isn't really "evil" per se, and is still always doing the right thing in the big picture and trying to save the galaxy, they just care less about who gets hurt in the process and tend to be more human-centric as opposed to trying to find peace with all the aliens, a valid point of view given that the leadership of the major races DOES treat humanity like crap and keeps ignoring warnings).
Incidently if someone from Bioware reads these forums and doesn't avoid long posts (or just ones by me given some of my thoughts), hopefully spelling out the above summary, and showing the perceptions of the game through that music and it's positive reception, shows EXACTLY what the problem is... I mean assuming somehow Bioware doesn't know this. The ending of ME3 is totally out of context with the spirit of the series so far.