Suskie's Mass Effect 3 review

It's nice to hear a more positive reaction to balance out the unrelenting negative that I've been hearing since ME3's release. I won't be playing it for a while yet, but at least now I'm no longer expecting it to be dire.

The truth can never live up to years of build up, right? Fun to hear Suskie come from another direction and point out that, to him at least, the game did live up to expectations, just not the fake expectations people put on it.

Unrealistic expectations are precisely the problem here. People had this idea that Mass Effect 3 would have a multitude of branching endings reliant on the choices you've made. But that's not how storytelling works. When you write a story - particularly a three-part epic space opera - you don't say, "Okay, here's the beginning, here's the middle, and here are the dozens of ways it can end." You have a specific direction in mind. Not only that, but you take pride in your work and you WANT your story to end in the best way possible (as opposed to, say, Shepard dying before making it to the final area because you killed the rachni or whatever).

Spoilers obviously.

I wanted to hold off on my thoughts until I finished the game and saw one of the controversial endings (I went with the 'synthesis' one). I loved the combat. There's tons of variety to the enemies. It's easily the best playing Mass Effect, but the story/writing I felt was the weakest in the series. This one was at a disadvantage in that its whole overall plot was focused on building an army to take on the Reapers (with too much "You're so awesome, Shepard!"-esque dialogue and being sad that the Reapers are killing people) and a fairly predictable Cerberus/Illusive Man story arc attached. ME1 & 2 had the advantages of building a whole game world and character development. The final bit on the Citadel itself was very silly and brief. I'd say the conclusion itself was more awkward and weird if anything.

I actually found myself most disappointed with the squad. I was happy to have Garrus, Tali, and Liara back. Didn't really care about the new whoreish-looking Ashley (I'm guessing I'll be getting Kaiden with my female Shepard). EDI as a squad member looks ridiculous. James is boring and totally unnecessary. The one thing I really wanted in ME3 was Wrex back in the squad, and that didn't happen. Pretty annoyed that none of the new squad members from ME2 were playable in ME3. They just pop up to fill Shepard in on what they've been up to and then either become a war asset or die. I would have taken Thane, Legion, Miranda, or Grunt in my squad over James. And honestly the $10 price tag for Javik was a sleazy move (because when you hear about a Prothean character, I don't know how a long time fan could pass on that). Despite this big paragraph though, I enjoyed the game a lot because when it comes down to gameplay, it was fucking awesome.

Yeah, honestly, the reason I jumped right into gameplay with this review is because, all things considered, ME3 is still just really fun. Amazing how "fans" are convincing themselves that a disappointing final ten minutes somehow devalues what's otherwise a ridiculously entertaining 30-hour game.

I just played ME2 last night to finish up a playthrough I wanted to import to ME3, and the combat actually felt pretty dated. Some of the tweaks they made for ME3 are subtle, but they make an impact.

I agree with some of your points, Genj. James is a generic meathead who adds nothing to the story (though I did like the bit about him sacrificing his squad for some intel that he didn't wind up needing to begin with). And while I got Javik with the Collector's Edition, I agree that it was slimy to charge for him. And while I didn't miss most of ME2's cast as squad members, it was a little strained that Shepard just happens to run into every single one of them anyway.

SPOILERS

The one thing that I absolutely loved about ME3's finale was the supervillain-esque standoff with the Illusive Man at the end, because you just knew you'd confront him directly at some point and you didn't even get the chance to do that when you stormed his freaking base. One of the novels focuses specifically on the Illusive Man's experiments with Reaper technology, so seeing that arc unfold was kind of a thrill for me. The only problem is that they recycled from the Saren encounter from the first game. Convincing the central villain of a game to kill himself is an awesome idea, but they already did it.

By the way, I also like LOST'S ending. Even though we tend to enjoy different games, Suskie, I think we have the same taste in story. It's one of the reasons I'm holding off on playing Mass Effect 3 until I either decide to break down and pick up an xbox or a PC gaming computer. I just feel that I would agree with you, that the real joy of Mass Effect would be telling MY story from start to finish and being so emotionally involved in that.

COLOSSAL SPOILERS

Unrealistic expectations are precisely the problem here. People had this idea that Mass Effect 3 would have a multitude of branching endings reliant on the choices you've made.

To be fair, people had those expectations because BioWare had promised everybody that ME3 would have those things.



Of all people, Suskie, I didn't think you'd be drinking the Kool-Aid on this one. I'm amazed that you felt fulfilled after the ending. Did you decide to actually cure the genophage, or did you kill Mordin and lie to Wrex just to get his support alongside the salarians? Doesn't matter, because now all the mass relays are destroyed and the krogans couldn't overrun the galaxy or seek revenge for your deception even if they wanted to. Wrex won't be telling stories to his children and making the name Shepard mean hero, because the krogan/turian armada probably won't return to Tuchanka in his lifetime.

Did you sacrifice the geth so the Migrant Fleet could live, or were the quarians obliterated in the return fire? Or did you end a centuries-long war and leave Rannoch with the geth and quarians working together to rebuild their world? Doesn't matter now, what's left of the Migrant Fleet is now stranded in orbit around Earth, where they'll eventually run out of supplies and die because they can't eat human food. Heck, depending on which ending you picked even the geth might not exist anymore.

How about the rachni queen, did you save her back in ME1? Did you know that if you didn't, the Reapers bring back the rachni and send them against you anyway?

During the attack on Earth, where were the krogan battlemasters charging into enemy lines alongside Alliance marines? Where was the Destiny Ascension firing its main gun into a Reaper's ugly backside in the space battle? Where were those quarian liveships we were told were retrofitted with dreadnaught-equivalent guns launching broadside after broadside at Reaper formations while geth fighters provided cover? Where were the geth primes dropping from low orbit to cover your charge through the no-man's land? All the work we did building up these war assets, and the final battle plays out the same regardless of who we recruited - compare and contrast with ME2's Suicide Mission through the Omega-4 relay. And no matter what choices we made in the last two games, by the time the end credits roll none of them ultimately made a difference. Save the rachni or don't, hold a gun to Conrad's face or not, nothing we did made a difference in the end. No matter what we do, the mass relays are destroyed and galactic civilization as we know it collapses.

And that's to say nothing of the massive plot holes.



Seriously. The Catalyst's "solution" itself rings especially hollow if you managed to get the quarians to back down so the geth could help them rebuild rannoch. IN PEACE. Besides, it's been hinted at since the start and out-right confirmed when Legion takes Shepard into the geth mainframe that the geth-quarian war was started not by geth rebelling against their creators, but by quarians freaking out and trying to exterminate them. Heck, EDI goes out of her way to ensure that she'll never be able to harm the people she cares about - if she and Joker hook up she'll rewrite her core programming to to give herself the capacity to save his life at the expense of her own.

And speaking of Joker, why was he making a relay jump at the end? Did he chicken out and abandon the fight in enough time to reach the Sol relay before Shepard activated the Crucible? That doesn't sound like Joker. And how did he manage to pick up two random squadmates from down on Earth along the way? And how come he gets to hook up with your love interest at the end and play Adam and Eve to a new world? In my ending Tali doesn't even seem to notice or care that Shepard is dead, which was especially impressive given that she was killed by Harbinger during the dash across no-man's land.

What makes this especially disappointing was that, up until the magic platform whisked Shepard away to meet Deus ex Machina (funny you ought to mention Deus Ex in your review, by the way), the game was fantastic. All the little things that had been set up over the last five years got brought back out and dealt with, all leading up to a some great climactic ending. The confrontation with the Illusive man I especially liked, for much the same reason I liked the "final boss" fights of Planescape and Fallout. But then it all goes tits up, DeM feeds us some circular logic and Shepard, the man who made a career out of defying the odds, the man who teamed up with the devil himself when the Alliance wouldn't save its colonies against the Collectors, the man who literally defied death itself, just accepts the bullshit the Catalyst feeds him. Where were Shepard's retorts that synthetics don't have to kill organics, and everybody can get along? Where was his climactic speech about standing together united and overcoming adversity? Hell, I'd have settled for a Renegade interrupt to put a bullet through that ghost kid's skull. It's so bloody out of character, which just comes right back to none of the choices we made in the series ended up making a difference. Quote contrary to some of the things that had been said leading up to release:

"There is a huge set of consequences that start stacking up as you approach the end-game. And even in terms of the ending itself, it continues to break down to some very large decisions. So it's not like a classic game ending where everything is linear and you make a choice between a few things - it really does layer in many, many different choices, up to the final moments, where it's going to be different for everyone who plays it." - Casey Hudson again

What happened to all that promotional material for the series touting that your choices matter and your decisions have consequences? In the end, the only choice you have that matters is whether you want a red, a blue, or a green explosion.

Are you starting to see it now?

Let me answer my previous question: Here's what happened to the "choices matter" line of thinking.

Oh, and for the record, I also liked the ending of Lost. I liked it because it provided closure for the characters. Battlestar Galactica had that too, if slightly more heavy-handed. Mass Effect was conspicuously closure-free.

(Also, I'm slightly pissed that the big reveal of what Tali looks like under the helmet was little more than a poor photoshop of a stock image. But that's another matter entirely.)

Somewhat back on topic: Hi Suskie, this was a pretty nice review that somewhat, kinda makes me want to play Mass Effect 1 through 3. I've only ever played the first part of 1, didn't care for it, and haven't touched the series since. Perhaps I'm approaching it from the wrong angle or something, but I loved the first Dragon Age. Maybe Bioware has just lost it's "oomph" for me over the years.

Now I want Will to turn that into a review. That's an awesome counterpoint, Will, and is something I've heard said by others, but never with such good backing explanation. Usually people were just ranting and it felt awkward. From your response I see where the ire is quantifiably coming from and it makes me wonder which experience I would feel more in line with.

Or he could just link to this article, from which he's borrowed quite a bit. That right there is a perfect example of how utterly out of proportion this issue has been blown, that a guy who claims ME3 is otherwise an "exceptional" game would nevertheless feel the need to write a six-page rant on why the last ten minutes are terrible. (See also: Will comparing me to a member of Jonestown for not taking up a pitchfork.)

It's amazing. People big up the Uncharted series for being some masterwork of interactive storytelling, yet they lead you in a straight line from one set piece to another with no input from the player. Everything is scripted. Everything is predetermined. It's the same experience for every player. And I like the Uncharted games, but compare that to Mass Effect, in which BioWare creates a rich new world and allows us to explore it in ways no other medium could, and tells a complex story while letting us put our own personal spin on it, and just because the last ten minutes failed to live up to people's expectations, the entire series can go to hell.

You said it yourself, Will:

What makes this especially disappointing was that, up until the magic platform whisked Shepard away to meet Deus ex Machina (funny you ought to mention Deus Ex in your review, by the way), the game was fantastic.

See, even if I did hate the ending, I wouldn't let it devalue the 70-80 hours of wonderful entertainment that the trilogy otherwise provides. The final scene isn't even that important to me, hence why I didn't spend much time talking about it in the review. What I did find important was that little bit just before the final mission in which Shepard walks around and talks to all of his friends individually and relationship arcs are completed. He and Ashley shared a final kiss in my game. Javik shook hands with him, which he refused to do when they first met. That sort of thing. I meant it when I called Mass Effect a character-centric piece, meaning I'll devote more attention to reminiscing about the time I spent with them than to ripping the game apart because BioWare didn't bother to explain what one of them was doing in the Normandy during the final cutscene.

To be clear, Will: I don't like everything about the ending. I hate the cheesy post-credits epilogue, and the scummy DLC pitch that follows. I think the entire idea of the "synthesis" choice is ridiculous, and I wish they'd given Shepard the option to simply walk away and take his chances battling the Reapers.

As for the "synthetics designed to save you from synthetics," yeah, that explanation has holes. The reason I have no trouble accepting it is that I've always seen the Reapers as a religious allegory. I liked it more when they were mysterious, all-powerful beings -- gods, basically, or at least that's what they consider themselves. BioWare should have simply stuck with the explanation that their purpose is to rigidly control organic life. Do their newly-revealed motivations make sense? Not really, but are they supposed to? They're the freaking villains. They wouldn't be very good villains if the explanation for their evildoing has you nodding your head in agreement, as if the execution of an entire civilization could ever do so. I don't know what people were expecting in that regard.

Like I said, this whole idea that ME3 was supposed to go in a million different directions is preposterous, and make no mistake: BioWare is absolutely at fault for promising it. But if I judged games entirely by much they live up to what their developers promised, Fable would have been the worst game ever made (which, unfortunately, some people actually think it is).

I understand why people don't like the ending. I understand that it's important, and I think people should voice their displeasure. Hell, if I was dissatisfied with the ending, I'm sure I'd be pretty verbal about it as well. But where fans have crossed the line is in demanding that BioWare actually retroactively change the ending, with the defense that they're somehow "owed" better. Christ, all that uproar when Roger Ebert said that video games aren't art, and now legions of Mass Effect fans are treating the series like it's a household appliance or something. No one has to like the ending, but they need to respect that it was BioWare's artistic direction. I thought Dragon Age II was half-assed, and I've even told BioWare that they need to regain my trust before I care about that series again. But it never would even have occurred to me to demand that BioWare make an entirely new Dragon Age II to replace it. That's absurd.

And really, who are the true Mass Effect fans: those people, or the ones who still see the trilogy as 70-80 hours of extraordinary gaming regardless of how the final five or ten minutes stack up?

That's why I can't sympathize with this relentless picking-apart of everything that happens in ME3's final cutscene, even when I agree with parts of it. Had it not been for the rampant discussion all over the internet, ME3's ending would barely be on my mind. That scene I cited in my review with Garrus is a perfect example of the sort of thing that did stick with me, because I see Mass Effect as a journey, and a rather personal one at that. By the end of ME3, that journey felt complete.

One last thing:

In my ending Tali doesn't even seem to notice or care that Shepard is dead, which was especially impressive given that she was killed by Harbinger during the dash across no-man's land.

In my ending, neither of my squad members were in the final cutscene. If that happened for you, fair point, but I can only base my review on my own experiences.

Well, even though I disagree I can see your point.

EDIT: Actually...on re-reading your post, Suskie, you sound a bit like this guy in a few places:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqgRP5_YKu0

Not in choice of words and demeanour, obviously, you're a lot more pleasant than he is. But a couple of specific positions, namely that consumers of video games are not entitled to demand they get what EA and BW told them they were buying. I'll refrain from commenting further for now, as I don't want to straw man you into a position based on some similarities to an opinion video on YouTube, and if I've done so already feel free to call bullshit.

My apologies for the Jonestown crack, it was intended to be a lighthearted jest rather than to imply you're some kind of mindless cult zombie.

I do get where Will (and others) are coming from. Note that this is from somebody who hasn't played any of the Mass Effects, so I'm not trying to point to one of you as right. I do remember Mass Effect 3 being lauded as a game which pretty much created a unique ending for you based on your actions across all three games and I've heard a lot to the contrary. One of the things I liked about Suskie's review was that he claims the uniqueness is all in the player-character connection. That and that he basically said, who cares about the ending, the game is really fun.

At the same time, I don't think Will's point is wrong, which to me was saying that it's not right for a video game developer to blow their product way out of proportion to the deliverables. It was, as Suskie fears, the first reason I hated the Fable series (really poor quests and a stupid setting being also high on the list, but that's another review). The main reason I picked up Fable was to experience the then intriguing idea of forging your own path through a story with very different endings. LIES.

I was also disappointed in Deus Ex 1 and 3 for that reason, though I was prepared for it in Deus Ex 3 (and they never really advertised the game as having branching story paths). Oddly enough, Deus Ex 2, which was otherwise terrible, so far has been the one where your decisions mattered the most.

I'm digressing. Anyway, I'm not mediating this argument or anything, it just interests me and I think Will (regardless of where he got his material from) has a point which shouldn't just be shot down and ignored. Which, to his credit, Suskie hasn't done while defending his position.

Suskie(and anybody else), if you're interested here's a review by the California Literary Review that takes a position opposite to yours, namely, that the ending does matter to the whole experience.

I don't know if it ruined the entire experience for me, but it was pretty damn close. I do know that when I finished 1 and 2 it wasn't long before I fired it up again to see where some of the different choices got me. I have absolutely no desire to replay 3 upon finishing it, or even to go back to 1 and 2, just because I know that none of the decisions I make will get me a different ending. And I think that says a lot.

I think I'm more massively(pardon the pun) let down than actually outraged at my experience being ruined, because, as I said and you pointed out, I did enjoy the rest of it up until the last ten minutes. It's just that those last ten minutes stick out and should, I think, have been a lot different. It's sort of the narrative equivalent of getting blueballed.

Anybody else who's finished 3, do you think you're going to replay it soon?

I'm replaying it as a female Sentinel and I'm having a lot of fun, but I felt a little melancholy when I started thinking about how at the end of my replay it would turn into Xenosaga.

Genj = hilarious.

Or maybe it's just that Xenogear/saga references always make me laugh because I instantly feel oppressed.

I can sympathize with an ending making a game feel flat. I felt that way about God of War 3. What an incredible game for almost no purpose. Really, the ending was completely blase. Compare that to the first game, which was a fully self contained epic with a truly appropriate and satisfactory twist to its final scenes. Or even the second game. Though the second game doesn't really end it has a very satisfying finale where you feel like the stakes have just been raised.

Raised for what, I now ask? God of War 3 tries so damn hard to raise the stakes again that it practically shits itself in the process, and it is a very fun game, but it's also the only God of War I have yet to replay.

Will, you'll have to excuse me, because fan response to ME3's ending has at this point made me genuinely upset. Not only that, but embarrassed. The next time an elderly film critic attacks our medium, who's going to take us seriously? We were so let down by ME3's ending that we reported it to the FTC.

I said this already, but I want to make it absolutely clear: Not liking the ending is fine. I'm only arguing with you because, well, damned if I'll let a long angry rant slip by me without a long angry rant in retort :)

But fans have taken it too far, to the point that it's just sickening. I guess if you view video games as products and nothing else, there's nothing I can do. But for the many ways Mass Effect has demonstrated the potential of video games as an artistic and storytelling medium, its crazed fanbase has pulled us right back.

If nothing else, that people can be so emotionally devastated over this confirms just how fantastic the Mass Effect series is as a whole, and how completely it's absorbed people over the years. I mean, if Gears of War 3's ending had sucked, no one would've cared.

Also, Zipp, I can't really sympathize with your God of War comparisons because that trilogy's story did nothing for me. (If you're dumb enough to get "tricked" into murdering your own family, you really shouldn't be blaming anyone else.) On the subject of raising the stakes, though... honestly, no game I've ever played does that better than Mass Effect. The entire plot revolves around the revelation that incredibly powerful machines are coming to rid the galaxy of all advanced life, and you believe it, because present civilization is based around the technology left behind by those who were already driven to extinction by said machines. The first two games have a phenomenal sense of impending doom, and the third game (when they've finally invaded) is incredibly downtrodden.

That's another thing I like about the way ME3 concludes: There's no happy ending. (And Zipp, it seems like you've read everything there is to read about the ending at this point, so I assume you don't care.) ME3's plot revolves around building an unfinished weapon that can supposedly be used against the Reapers, but a one-step, no-hassle solution would be a unfitting method of overcoming such a formidable enemy. I don't like all of the choices we're presented at the end, but I do like that none of them are easy to make.

If nothing else, that people can be so emotionally devastated over this confirms just how fantastic the Mass Effect series is as a whole, and how completely it's absorbed people over the years. I mean, if Gears of War 3's ending had sucked, no one would've cared.

On this I agree completely. When fans are so upset about what they feel is a bad ending that they launch a coordinated protest and raise over $30,000 for charity to get the media's attention, that speaks a lot to how brilliant the series is. I've never seen a game that got me so emotionally invested.

I haven't finished ME3 yet but I am so looking forward to reading this topic when I'm done with it.

Yeah, I'm not going to call the spoilers card at this point, Suskie. Mostly, my unfamiliarity with the plot of any of the games or their science fiction elements makes any talk about the details of the finale the oral equivalent of someone trying to read The Great Gatsby to me in Latin.

And yes, Kratos is a humungous fuck head. I talk about that in my review of God of War III and how that doesn't entirely work for me, either. It worked for me in the first game, though, because the fulfillment of his destiny is to fully become that which he hated. It's a nice little bit of "making your own bed."

This post comes a little late, but will asked if anyone was planning on replaying the game soon.

I'm already half way through a second playthrough, because the game is just that good. Yes, the ending is disappointing, whatever. The characters, the writing, the everything up until the last five minutes of the game is some of the most fun I've ever had with a video game ever.

Perhaps I just have thick skin because of more than 10 years of ending disappointment in RPGs, but the ending didn't even really bother me that much.


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Also, to be a nitpicking nerd, Krogan live hundreds of years, and the reapers fly into the galaxy from deep space under normal FTL drive in only a handful of years. Wrex would make it home.

Hey, has anyone read this theory on the ending? It's almost certainly not true, but various details he points to were obviously intentional and the whole concept... kinda blows my mind, to be honest.

If it is true, everyone who ever complained owes BioWare a formal letter of apology, as far as I'm concerned.

I'd stumbled across it myself.

If it is true, then on the one hand BioWare deliberately shipped an incomplete game and planned to tack on the "real" ending as a paid addition(as opposed to a 'fan service' add-on, like Bethesda did with Broken Steel), which opens up a huge can of worms for the future of gaming and DLC.

On the other hand, holy christ that would be ambitious from the standpoint of pure narrative. I've seen books and TV shows that relied upon the Unreliable Narrator/Protagonist to misinform the viewer, but to indoctrinate not just Shepard, but (effectively) the audience themselves? Talk about interactive storytelling. Chalk me up in the "mind blown" column.

It's so brilliant that I seriously think BioWare should go with it even if this wasn't their intention.

Which, of course, it wasn't. I mean, they'd be giggling themselves to sleep right now over these reactions if this had been the plan all along.

Also stumbled across this on Twitter.

This is probably my favourite thing about social media.