Why Mass Effect 2 was, and is, the superior out of the Mass Effect trilogy. [No Spoilers]

[-Dragmire-]

Spoiler

we are doing very important things but are not given all the known info to make sound decisions.

Jack Shouldn't have been a candidate, the mission(or any mission for that matter) is too sensitive to allow a biotic murderer who's history is hating Cerberus on board. I like Jack once I got to know her but she's on board for stupid reasons.

Archangel is a vigilante that specializes in hit and run tactics against corrupt mercs. No great reason to search him out as he doesn't fill a needed roll other than being another gunhand.

Samara is a powerful biotic who is more stable than Jack until her code tells her to kill things... I'm not being fair, she's not bad but her reasons for recruitment are not great. If the biotic bubble was the solution to every fight against collectors because they always had Seeker Swarms with them then I could see the need for as many powerful biotics as possible.

Thane specializes in small scale combat and taking out priority targets(from a lore standpoint anyway), this doesn't mesh well with large scale combat. He does have amazing cutscene sneak powers going for him, though this is counteracted by the biggest reason to not bring him... He's dying, his health is declining and doctors are no longer able to predict how long he'll last. He's a liability to the team and we only have his word on it that he he'll last the mission. (It was pretty funny, I skipped his loyalty mission and he died in the ship getting hit in the head with a metal beam or something. Had all ship upgrades too... )


Once we find out they have a giant ship, that stops the need for infantry. Especially when you don't know how many ships the enemy has. I would have been far more lenient with the story if we got a probe through the Omega 4 relay and had some idea of what to do before hand.

The Illusive Man holds out on information so that he is always in control, hence why decisions in hindsight seem to be more sporadic rather than carefully planned. Remember, the Illusive Man doesn't want to destroy the Reapers, he wants to control them, Shepard on the other hand is damn well determined to get rid of the threat permanently, hence why he is kept mostly in the dark.

I suppose I wanted Shepard to try to get more answers and if the Illusive Man wouldn't tell him, find it another way.

While Jack is quite unstable, it comes down to the simple fact that at the time you recruit her there was no better option. It was either get a powerful yet unstable biotic and hope that Shepard can somehow guide her or go into the unknown with relatively weak biotics such as Jacob and Miranda. Archangel is Garrus and the Illusive Man knows that and uses this to, as with Tali, someone from Shepard's past of whom he can trust. Samara is recruited to be more like back up for Jack. She's a better biotic, and more stable, and the reason they didn't recruit an army of biotics is due to the base line fact that they literally have no idea on what they're getting into. They don't know what's on the other side of the Omega Relay, they don't know what strength they'll need most and they don't have the luxury of time. Thane is recruited for similar reasons, they have little idea of what they're up for and have little time to figure out, thus it's build a very powerful, multi-talented team that is prepared for almost anything.

Yes, we find out that there's a massive space ship, but until then we're fighting many foot soldiers, hence why you recruit most of your infantry members in the first third of the game. You keep them afterwards because you still require stepping on the ground and exploring potentially dangerous terrain, hence why you still have infantry members on you side.

Where do you draw the line when getting conflicting info from codex to cutscene to gameplay?

It's too bad none of the characters ever play as they're characterized. They're pretty much on par with all the regular shooting enemies. If Jack was actually actually able to tear up the battlefield outside of cutscenes, I'd be able to see her usefulness to the mission. In game, each character is interchangeable though probably less so on the hardest difficulties. If enemies had the ability to vanguard charge you, you would have a reason to respect and fear biotic power. In game though, biotics are often less efficient than conventional weaponry. The gameplay really sells the lore and cutscene lore short. You are often told one thing and experience another which is why I see collecting infantry to be a waste of time.

I know Archangel is Garrus but it's another stupid detail to leave out. "Go get Garrus" is quite a bit better than being coy with"Go get this random vigilante, you may find someone familiar", to me anyway.

At the end of ME1, Shep could completely understand the Prothean language. It seemed logical to me for Shepard to use this ability to decipher more Prothean tech to help against the Reapers. Since Shepard is our character, it's nice to have our character have agency in getting more info rather than a constant passive listener.

Yes, that does make sense, however Shepard is a Spectre, and does what the council tell him to do. They told him to look for signs of Reaper activity, he did, he died, 2 and a bit years later he's alive again and working for a group whom tells him that humans are being taken. It's not so much as he just up and forgets about the beacon as it is he's become preoccupied with other crap.

Saren gave us a perspective that, while flawed, we could empathize with. We both struggled to reach our goals, making the triumph far more personal.
Shepard's death has no bearing on his/her character until Mass Effect 3. It's hard to care about a character's death and rebirth when they themselves don't care about it.

I agree, Saren was a very well written tragic villain, but the triumph still doesn't seem as personal as being killed by a species that then goes on to take large proportions of your own species for reasons yet unknown (at least that's how I see it). Is Harbinger 1 dimensional? Yeah, he's also a robot that was programmed to do one thing, so I'm cool with that.

For all we know, Seekers are built by the Collectors and they are apparently very careful never to leave a trace of themselves. Personal influence doesn't mean much to husks controlled by reapers.

While it's nice to know other people in the galaxy are helping, I feel out of touch when our team is given info at the last possible moment. I'm pretty sure we could get at least alliance support when showing them the derelict Reaper.

Having Shepard find things out would be a more proactive roll, as things stand we are very passive as we wait for more info from the Illusive Man rather than trying our own investigation.

Everyone is fallible, even husks controlled by giant machines. there's always a chance that a Seeker got trapped in doors, or left behind, or just plain left behind. It's stupid on the Collectors end, and it can be seen as lazy writing, or even a Deus ex Machina to a degree, but it's still a possibility that could occur and just so happened to.

As for Shepard always being the last to know things this is because knowledge is power. Illusive Man is withholding information so as that he is always in control.

The Illusive man uses Shep like a talking gun, kind of irritating how well Shep taks that. Sending Shepard in blind makes me question why the hell he brought Shepard back in the first place.

Examining the crater would at least indicate the scale of ship they use and be another reason to invest in more large scale ships and munitions rather than more infantry.

Yes, but there seems to be only one crater left behind as there is only one ship. The Alliance can't do much since the colonies are out of Council space, and Cerberus, while not lacking in resource, don't have the time to engineer multiple ships, hell as far as we've been led to know it took the 2 years to rebuild the Normandy. As for infantry, they aren't investing much resources in them, seeing as how no one on your team seems to be getting paid.

Cerberus seems to be able to do anything at any time, though it didn't reach truly stupid levels until ME3.

Payments from Cerberus come during the Mission Complete screen. Seems like a payment upon success plan, husk insurance not included.

The council, or at least the Alliance, are willing to put gigantic ship sized cannons on the planets though.

Until you saw the collector base(thankfully it wasn't a home planet or something else that would have made the team building pointless), you had no idea what to expect making the need of grunts over combat cruisers questionable to say the least.

~10 specialized foot soldiers hardly accounts for much when fighting on such a large scale.

We do establish though that the Collector home-world is past the Omega relay, a relay that destroys all ships that pass through it. The only reason the Normandy past through the ship unharmed is because they had the Collector signal thingamajig that they got during the mission you acquire Legion. That's one signal that works for 1 ship, and fighting in a ship stops you from rescuing survivors. How the hell was Shepard suppose to save Chakwas if he was in the Normandy and just fired away at the base?

The IFF just says if the ship is friend or foe, there's no reason to believe it can only be used on a single ship.

After getting the IFF, it's installed straight to the ship instead of copied onto a probe and tested in the relay. Nobody from the ship had been taken yet. Installing it and hoping it works out is insanely reckless.

Speaking of the relay,
Would have been nice to get the option to destroy the relay/system as a renegade option but I suppose they were going by ME1 lore for relay strength at the time.
Pre-ME2-dlc had established that relays could survive supernovas while post-ME2-dlc has them vulnerable to rocket propelled meteors.

Ok yes, I can agree with you there, I just don't like how it was implemented in the game.

Fair enough.

I understand the lore behind the heat sinks but I don't like it from a gameplay perspective and from the uniqueness lost by making the game an ammo dependent system. Also stacking biotic abilities was fun, while the game might explain why that can't be done anymore, it hurt my enjoyment of it. Vanguard Charge was an excellent addition though.

Again, fair call on your half.

 

[RJ 17]

So yeah, I guess I am indeed arguing that you should have expected "weak" writing, as the foreshadowing was present from the very beginning. And if you couldn't see it then you've no one to blame but yourself for your own disappointment.

Okay, I'm going to ignore the idea that the fans are to blame for the quality of the piece, and ignore the fact that you still insist that "theres no other way it could have gone" when so many have been posted in this topic at this point, including one in my previous post that you just quoted (and including the fact that there are many alternatives to conventional warfare other than atom bomb mcguffins), as both of these things are absolutely ridiculous.

You are agreeing that the writing is bad. What, then, is your argument? Rhetorical. Your argument is that people who didn't predict the McGuffin plotline are stupid.

That has nothing to do with the actual criticism.

Thus the criticism stands.

If you have any actual responses to it then I'll debate with you.

To the actual argument, being that I am stupid, sure. I have no desire to debate my intelligence on the internet or persuade you otherwise. I plead no contest.

I never called you stupid, I said you were blind to the foreshadowing, meaning that I'm arguing your interpretation of the evidence/facts established in the first game is incorrect. That doesn't mean I'm saying that you're stupid, it means that I'm saying that you're wrong.

I mean really? A concluding chapter to the trilogy in which the answer to defeating the Reapers is to just destroy the galaxy yourself? Yeah, because that's not as ridiculous as you claim the finished product to be. The objective is to save the galaxy while keeping it as intact as possible. A "Space-Magic MacGuffin" is the only way to do that. Of course I'm going to keep insisting that it's the only way it could work because that's my opinion on the matter...the fact that that's how it turned out in the end gives validity to my opinion.

I never agreed that the writing was bad in general, but rather that the writing around the Crucible could have been handled better. If I agreed that the writing was bad, we wouldn't be having this discussion now would we? I'd be in the same camp as you are. The difference is that I don't see the Crucible's very existence as bad writing while you do.

------

Seeing as how the quality of a piece is determined by how each individual fan interprets that piece, yeah, I'd say it's perfectly fair to say "the fans are to blame for the quality of a piece". Quality is in the eye of the beholder, as has been demonstrated by the very fact that we're having this discussion. An artist/writer/etc. creates something...if you don't like it, you're going to say it's poor in quality, if you do like it then you'll say it's good in quality. So if you blame the work for your low opinion of said work, then those that enjoyed it get to credit the work for their high opinion of it. The result is a net 0, a total wash. As such, my argument in this case would be that you're under the assumption that everyone can look at ME3 and say "that's an example of poor writing", thus making it a fact rather than an opinion.

You cannot prove to me that the Mass Effect trilogy (or even ME3 in particular) suffered from weak writing any more than I could prove to you that it's an example of fantastic writing (which I'm not trying to argue, personally I'd rate it as merely decent as I'm not so zealous as refuse to see the game's flaws...I just find those flaws to be less damning than you do). As you said yourself: I was clearly satisfied with what I got out of the story because I got essentially what I was expected. Conversely: you were clearly dissatisfied with the story because you got something drastically different from what you expected. So tying in with what I said before, my argument is therefor that the game didn't create your expectations, your interpretation of the story did. Your interpretation turned out to be incorrect (as shown by the fact that it ended with something that went contrary to your expectations), and as such it was your interpretation that led to your ultimate dissatisfaction. Ergo: you're to blame for misinterpreting the story, and that misinterpretation is the basis for your opinion.

Here's an example of what I'm trying to convey: the notion that Sam and Frodo in the Lord of the Rings trilogy are gay lovers. It's never once said or even implied that Sam and Frodo are anything but friends. Sam was tasked with protecting Frodo, and he turns out to be an exceedingly loyal friend who never abandons his charge. There's a number of people that have interpreted the incredible closeness of their friendship - in particular Sam's loyalty and devotion to helping Frodo on his journey - as being signs of homosexuality. This is a misinterpretation of the story that led to their opinion. The story isn't to blame for that misinterpretation as homosexuality isn't even brought up in the story or even hinted at.

In conclusion, my argument is that your criticism isn't fair because it's based off of a misinterpretation to begin with. It'd be like criticizing Tolkien for making Sam and Frodo gay when in reality they're not.

------

I've said my piece, and judging by the fact that this turned into a rambling essay, I'd say it's about time for me to call it a night. You can say I'm wrong, you can say my arguments don't make sense, you can say whatever you like if you insist on being the "winner" here, but I think I'm going to go ahead and move on from this topic. If you do respond to this, though, I will take the time to read it under the assumption that you took the time to read all this. Just don't expect another response from me.

Frankly I'm amazed that a year and a half after ME3, a Mass Effect topic can still pull in 4 pages worth of responses in the first place.

 

[votemarvel]

Mass Effect 2, despite having my favourite moment of the trilogy in Tali's loyalty mission, is the one which gave me the most disappointment.

I was a real fan of the combat system in the first game, largely in part because of the dice-roll which ran the thing. ME2 combat irritated me, from the nerfing of biotics to shields that vanished when an enemy breathed in your direction.

While I liked the interrupts in dialogue, I found it frustrating that I was forced down either a paragon or renegade route in order to unlock those conversation options.

I liked the customisation options given to Shepard's armour but hated that I had no such option for my squad beyond palette swaps.

The story was also incredibly disjointed and lacked a quality antagonist.

Some of my issues can be fixed by modding. I can boost shields so they are actually useful, I can add paragon and renegade score so I can pick what conversation options I want.

I will say though that I think that Mass Effect 2 is the best looking of the trilogy.

 

[Ruzinus]

-snip-

What I am reading is that the basis to all your arguments is a belief that the quality of art is completely subjective.

Yes, I did read it. Yes, I agree that the debate should end.

For the record, I was "satisfied" with the majority of Acts 1 and 4 of ME3, in the sense that I enjoyed going through them. As I think I said, I made no predictions about the plot. My only expectation was that quality would be maintained.


We live in a world where millions of words are spent responding to and discussing the work of authors and artists dead for centuries, even millenia in some cases. Personally, I think that's wonderful. If there are people arguing about Mass Effect in a century, I think that'd be wonderful. As a species, projects like this are some of our first forays into narrative projects with large creative teams involving 5+ writers at a time, and the difficulties involved in doing that, and in dealing with the creative team even changing over the life of the project, are such that these games might make valuable case studies.

 

[TAdamson]

Mass Effect One is the only Mass Effect worth playing, the second is a rather poor excuse for a game and the third is just appalling.

Me thinks you need to play more games. To call ME3's story "Appalling" is really doing the word a great deal of disrespect.

I mean, look at the Resident Evil Games, the latest CoD games, The original Borderlands, some of the newer Final Fantasy Games. They have just awful stories, and these are big budget, triple A blockbusters.

You can't compare Resident Evil to Mass Effect. One of Resident Evil's charms is that its story and writing are retarded. Resident Evil has never really been about the story. It's about the survival horror and lately the shooting.

Mass Effect was always story driven however, and seems to try to be taken seriously. Especially in the first game.

In the second game the writers commit several cardinal sins such as:

1) Killing the main character at the beginning of the story only to bring him back with no real consequences 30 seconds later.

Killing Shepard could have been a great story point if they had pulled a Metal Gear Solid 2 and made you play as somebody else until shepard turns up. But instead they kill Shepard and replace them immediately, destroy the Normandy only to replace it immediately. Ot is it just a waste of time which cheapens death and leads to questions such as: "If you really need that guy who died why don't you "Lazerus" him, especially since you did it with my remains that went through reentry."

Even a comic book would at least wait about halfway through the next issue before bringing a character


2) Retconned the stupid inept Terrorist organisation from the first game into being ridiculously powerful and able to (A) resurrect humans and (B) Rebuild the Normandy despite it being more valuable than the entire human fleet and only available with Turian Technology.

3) Forced you to work for said stupid inept Terrorist organisation. Double points if you picked the sole survivor background story where your squad was killed by Cerberus.

4) Illusive Man? Does he weave illusions? Is he Job for Arrested Development? Or did you mean elusive? Do you need a dictionary?

5) Divert attention from the Reapers in the first game to the Collectors, thus wasting a whole AAA game's worth of story that they could have used to make ME3 more coherent.

6) Liquifying humans and pouring them into a giant space robot shaped like a human.

 

[stroopwafel]

ME2 is my favorite as well. It was the first ME game I played and it just had a vagueness and obscurity about the Reapers true intentions that really made me delve into the game, even if the story took a backseat to the truly excellent characterization. When it was revealed...

Spoiler

..that the true intent of the Reapers to destroy the galaxy was to prevent AI from being made that would surpass and subjugate it's creators it was a huge, huge letdown. Just b/c it doesn't make any sense and it actually becomes ridiculous when you think about the nature of the Reapers themselves.

It actually diminished my enjoyment in the story much more so than the ending. It's still a great game but I can't believe some of the decisions they made with the story.

I read somewhere that Bioware originally had another script for the Reapers intentions(something with countering dark space from expanding) but made last minute changes b/c (parts of) this original script leaked. Don't know if its true though, but sounds like it b/c the sentient AI nonsense we got in ME3 really sounded like an afterthought.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I agree with the OP.

The game never felt like either mechanic was boring; as soon as I finished talking to my crew, I wanted to test my new ability in combat with a space monstrosity(I also like how creepy they made both the Collectors and their base)

Spoiler

I am always unsettled during the distress call mission and that N7 one where Husks invade(also the derelict reaper one)

As soon as I finished with the combat, I was aching to talk to my crew and do their missions.

The story is also self-contained, which meant that I could play through it(I got ME2 first, then ME1 and then ME3) and not be that confused(aside from the references).

Also the music was brilliant, especially the Omega OST, it really sold the atmosphere to me.

Let's also not forget Gilbert & Sullivan:


ME3 went more for an action approach, which sacrificed some of the quality of the writing, and ME1 was more of a conventional RPG, which meant that the action sucked.

ME2 strikes a perfect balance in both aspects.

 

[stroopwafel]

Also anyone ever noticed how they retconned Mordin in ME3? He had a fascinating cold approach, 'the end justifies the means' kinda persona in ME2 but in ME3 he was suddenly a compasionate, sobbing goody-2-shoes. Both in relation to the Krogan. There is also nothing in the story that would hint at such a massive inconsistency in character development. And that is another thing about ME2, it also had much better writing.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Also anyone ever noticed how they retconned Mordin in ME3? He had a fascinating cold approach, 'the end justifies the means' kinda persona in ME2 but in ME3 he was suddenly a compasionate, sobbing goody-2-shoes. Both in relation to the Krogan. There is also nothing in the story that would hint at such a massive inconsistency in character development. And that is another thing about ME2, it also had much better writing.

The cracks in Mordin's cold, calculating facade are foreshadowed in ME2. If you talk to him a lot, you'll learn that he is conflicted about the Genophage.

 

[RevRaptor]

I'm not really sure which of the three is the best, each game had its strengths and weaknesses. For me the second game was the most fun although the end boss mission for the first game was never matched by its sequels. It just felt epic, the second one was silly and the third ones end fight was boring and kinda lame.

If someone thinks ME 2 is the best one I can't find any reason to say otherwise

 

[votemarvel]

I think a lot of the different tone from Mordin in ME3 came from them using a different voice actor.

 

[bug_of_war]

Where do you draw the line when getting conflicting info from codex to cutscene to gameplay?

It's too bad none of the characters ever play as they're characterized. They're pretty much on par with all the regular shooting enemies. If Jack was actually actually able to tear up the battlefield outside of cutscenes, I'd be able to see her usefulness to the mission. In game, each character is interchangeable though probably less so on the hardest difficulties. If enemies had the ability to vanguard charge you, you would have a reason to respect and fear biotic power. In game though, biotics are often less efficient than conventional weaponry. The gameplay really sells the lore and cutscene lore short. You are often told one thing and experience another which is why I see collecting infantry to be a waste of time.

I know Archangel is Garrus but it's another stupid detail to leave out. "Go get Garrus" is quite a bit better than being coy with"Go get this random vigilante, you may find someone familiar", to me anyway.

Mass Effect suffers the same issue as most games, cut-scenes are completely different to gameplay. Look at Halo where Master Chief is a total badass in cut-scenes, jumping over crap, doing awesome stuff, but gameplay wise you really just shoot people. Or the opposite happens such as in Prototype, I've built my character up to be super fast and deadly as hell, yet some how he can't stop a certain someone from killing themselves or detecting that another person is actually a certain monster you fought earlier. This is something a majority of games suffer from, but instead of getting iffy about it I find it easier just to accept, "Wow, that was cool! Back to actually playing the game".

As for Archangel, no one on Omega knows that Garrus is Archangel, all they know is that Archangel is a Turian. The Illusive Man likely did not tell him about Archangel being Garrus in order for it to be a surprise for Shepard (and then that way it makes it look as though the Illusive Man isn't trying to lull Shepard into a false sense of security). ALSO, as for one final point, Garrus did not have to be recruited in the first game, which means that players whom didn't get Garrus were not confused as to why they should care about Garrus being Archangel.

The Illusive man uses Shep like a talking gun, kind of irritating how well Shep taks that. Sending Shepard in blind makes me question why the hell he brought Shepard back in the first place.

Shepard can also act irritated from what the Illusive Man does though. There are multiple points throughout the game where dialogue between Shepard and Illusive Man can be volatile, begrudging, or simply agreeing to work together. Multiple times you can have your Shepard express that he is NOT with Cerberus and that the only reason he is working with them is because they're the ONLY people looking into the abduction of human colonies.

Payments from Cerberus come during the Mission Complete screen. Seems like a payment upon success plan, husk insurance not included.

Yes, Payment to Shepard, but do we ever really see anything other than the clothes change for any of the squad members? Do they ever mention buying things while off the ship? Does Shepard ever offer them a paid job? No, they're not getting paid, Shepard is getting credits from the Illusive Man to help fund the mission.

The IFF just says if the ship is friend or foe, there's no reason to believe it can only be used on a single ship.

After getting the IFF, it's installed straight to the ship instead of copied onto a probe and tested in the relay. Nobody from the ship had been taken yet. Installing it and hoping it works out is insanely reckless.

We'd have no idea if copying the IFF would work, and doing so could make the original copy moot, which means you just lost your one chance. There's a reason it's called a suicide mission, because the odds are not stacked in our favour, and we're running out of time. Is it reckless? Fuckin' oath it is, but it was either put it on the ship that you've been upgrading and preparing for the worst on (and also preparing for it to go through the relay) or waste it on some random ship.

 

[swiftax]

While the second is better as a self-contained story with more originality to it, I have one reason why ME1 was the best of all three games.
The MAKO.
That is all.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Not really ME1 had more depth while ME2 was the better FPS. THo over all ME2 had more polish, ME3 was lacking.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

While the second is better as a self-contained story with more originality to it, I have one reason why ME1 was the best of all three games.
The MAKO.
That is all.

I loved rock crawling, I wish they had it in ME2 with hover craft mods and mods for the weapon system and stuff, insted least take 30% of the game out....blah.

 

[CloudAtlas]

To elaborate on this:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=7004
The main story was complete garbage. Mass Effect's story was just pretty dull with some bright spots, ME2's was downright insulting.

Thank you for posting this link. It was an interesting read. Sadly, I found myself agreeing with most of it.

 

[deathbydeath]

Yeah, I gotta agree with this, it was defiantly the game with the most balance, and all of it was a learning experience from mass Effect 1 (Which I still liked quite a bit, but enjoyed that they cleaned up all the loose ends in the sequel)

I can't see how Bioware learned any lessons from ME1. There were certainly lessons to be learned and mechanics to tweak, but none of those really seemed to be carried into the sequel.

That's just an opinion, not proof of superiority. It's an opinion that many seem to share, but an opinion none the less.

You don't seem to get how opinions work, so let me be compelled by xkcd logic [http://xkcd.com/386/] and help. First, that is not an opinion; it is an argument. An argument is an opinion (interpretation of facts) supported by other sources/facts/logic/etc. You cannot dismiss an argument without proving that it is wrong, usually with other arguments or pointing out that it fallacious.

Acts 1 and 4 are indeed, appalling. They're just a giant deus-ex-machina solution to the major conflict of the series. "The reapers are attacking, oh no! What do! Oh hey, there's a magic mcguffin that'll save the day and we're just suddenly learning about it? How convenient!"

I just wanna touch on the "deus ex machina" notion as it seems to be a problem a lot of people have with the Crucible.

Quite simply: just how DID you expect to win the war with the Reapers? Three full fleets were required to take down one Reaper escorted by the Geth armada, and those three fleets still got their asses kicked in the process. Even if you united every fleet in the galaxy and went for just one gigantic space battle, it's established in the first game that there's no WAY you're going to win against the might of the Reaper fleet. Quite literally: a giant space-magic deus ex machina doomsday device is the only chance you'd have at defeating the Reapers. So again I ask just how DID you expect to win the war?

You don't seem to get how deus ex machinas work, so yadda yadda yadda. The use of deus ex machinas are a sign of flawed writing, and here's why: they are a lazy way of making what the author wants happen. A deus ex machina is a plot device that comes out of nowhere and resolves the plot. It is usually used when the author "paints themselves into a corner" and has left themselves no way of resolving the conflict, while still wanting the conflict to be resolved.

If what you said in the second paragraph was true (there was no way to beat the Reapers), then Bioware should have been good writers and have stuck with by the rules they initially set up, or they could have gone with a "Checkov's Gun", where they introduce the formerly d.e.m. earlier in the story, and only have it appear at the end to resolve the plot. Even with your argument, you have defined the Bioware writers as terrible.

 

[Zombie Badger]

One of the chief traits of Lovecraftian horror is the bad guys always win. The best protagonists can hope for is a pyrrhic victory that comes at horrendous cost, that really changes nothing in the long run, and as per Lovecraftian horror that generally comes via MacGuffin. Mass Effect 3 managed to stay relatively close to that original theme and genre interweaving, leaving the more disturbing questions of the ending even in the best-case scenarios to inference and interpretation. So, again, what did you expect?

The hole I see in your argument is that shortly after release the lead writer for Mass Effect 3 responded to the backlash, saying that his motivation for the ending was 'To give players the chance to experience an inspiring and uplifting ending'. These are rarely the words use to describe an ending in which the villains are intended to win, or one which is meant to have disturbing implications.

My personal view on each game are thus:

Mass Effect 1: Overall this is my favourite of the series for a number of reasons. The overall plot was the strongest of the three and it is possibly the only game of its kind to make me feel as though I was in a huge, open universe, not only because of the Mako (bless its awkward controls), but that the level design in general was far larger and more open. In this game my infiltrator was able to fight people at a range appropriate for sniping, whereas in the sequels (particularly the second game) I fought people almost exclusively at short range. It really reminds me of the change in level design from Deus Ex 1 to Invisible War, in that while the first game's levels weren't the most detailed they felt large enough to be real places, whereas by the sequel you spend most of your time in relatively small rooms and corridors.

Mass Effect 2: While having the strongest characterisation of the series, the second game's plot is relatively thin and in the grand scheme of things inconsequential (although this may be due to the third game discarding its forshadowing in favour of its own story). The second game improves the combat a fair bit from the first game's, but overall the action is merely ok by the standards of shooters. Also the mindless repetitiveness of the planet scanning was quite impressively boring. I did really like the way the geth were handled though.

Mass Effect 3: As far as the quality of writing goes, Mass Effect 3 is wildly uneven. On one hand you have the Geth/Quarian and Tuchunka arcs, much of the interaction between squadmembers and Shepard being developed as a character, and on the other hand you have the really rushed opening with very generic dialogue, a new major villain being a completely one-dimensional generic cyborg ninja who the game expects me to already know, the introduction of a Deus Ex Machina to defeat the villains with no build up (which never fails to remind of the Shark-Repellent Bat Spray) and of course the ending. The shooting mechanics were evolved to be genuinely good but that was all there really was to the gameplay. After many hours of cover-based shooting I started to look back on the hacking minigames from the second game nostalgically just because they provided some variety. The game lacked any real sidequests as well, and what there was threadbare at best. The Galaxy at War mechanic at release was atrocious as well, not only reducing you readiness for war to a visible percentage, but (as I found out the hard way) was for all intents and purposes impossible to get high enough to get the 'best' ending without playing the multiplayer. Although it did do an excellent job of giving a genuine sense of impending destruction at the hands of the reapers, and we finally got an option for Shepard to get together with a human of the same sex, so there's that. Overall though, It's easily the weakest of the three games, even discounting the ending.

 

[votemarvel]

While the second is better as a self-contained story with more originality to it, I have one reason why ME1 was the best of all three games.
The MAKO.
That is all.

See I'd completely disagree with that.

To me the only game of the trilogy that can stand on its own story wise is the first one. Much like the first Star Wars film (episode IV: A New Hope). Both are obviously written to be the first part of a trilogy but yet could have ended there and been enjoyed in its own right.

Think about Mass Effect 2 or the Empire Strikes Back. Would either of those stories have been any where near as enjoyable without the context provided by the first.