History Analysis / MassEffect3

Some stories are VindicatedByHistory. However, it is generally safe to say that Mass Effect 3 is not one of those stories. With large plot holes, huge narrative shifts all over the place with no build up, and making almost every decision inconsequential, even now the ending controversy still casts a large shadow over the franchise.

2) Tali must not have been exiled. If she was, this erodes trust on both sides. On the quarians’ side, she is seen as someone who if not betraying the fleet, exercised poor judgement that jeopardized the fleet. And now she’s advocating peace with their longtime nemesis! Why should they even listen to her? On the geth side, only as an admiral do they see her talk of peace actually getting anywhere. Furthermore, it is possible they now know the reason for her exile.

* ''[[Videogame/MassEffect1 ME1]]'': kill Wrex on Virmire

* ''[[Videogame/MassEffect1 ME1]]'': kill Wrex on Virmire

Let’s take a closer look at the actual effect that you actions have on the Reaper War: When you are getting the krogan to support the turians, they weren’t there to retake Palaven or even to defend it, they were merely trying to delay the Reapers in order to buy you more time in building the Crucible. Similarly, the quarians and the geth weren’t there to help turn the tide, all they could do was help evaluate civilians and do hit-and-run attacks on the Reapers in an attempt to slow them down. Even all the hours (not to mention [=BioWare=] points) that you spent on multiplayer were only to buy Crucible engineers more time, not with the expectation of winning the war or even survive.

Let’s take a closer look at the actual effect that you actions have on the Reaper War, when you are getting the krogan to support the turians, they weren’t there to retake Palaven or even to defend it. They were merely trying to delay the Reapers in order to buy you more time in building the Crucible. Similarly, the quarians and the geth weren’t there to help turn the tide, all they could do was help evaluate civilians and do hit-and-run attacks on the Reapers in an attempt to slow them down. Even all the hours (not to mention [=BioWare=] points) that you spent on multiplayer were only to buy Crucible engineers more time, not with the expectation of winning the war or even survive.

If Shepard (more importantly, you the player) ever looked at the War Assets screen with the green bar filled to the maximum and thought to him/herself ‘I can do this. This war can be won. There is hope’, then s/he was either purely delusional or living in denial. From the very beginning, Admiral Hackett already told you that you cannot win conventionally. And if you have the From Ashes DLC, when Javik reads you for the first time, if you have previously been choosing all the optimistic dialog opinions, he will express his shock and disbelief at how foolish you are in thinking that you can win this war. During the Battle of Earth ''with best possible EMS'', you were told that less than half of the ground forces even made it to the surface. The Catalyst will outright tell a defiant Shepard that this cycle has already used up a lot of its resources after less than a year at war with the Reapers. With this in mind, just how realistic was it that you ever expect your actions of talking down a criminal, rescuing a few hundred civilians, or choosing whether or not to save the residential district or the industrial sector of a colony matters at all?

A paragon Shepard thinks that s/he lives in a story from an old pulp fiction sci-fi (''ComicStrip/FlashGordon'') or pre-cyberpunk traditional space operas (''Franchise/StarWars''), in which the power of friendship and understanding can indeed overcome all obstacles; while a renegade thinks that s/he is the anti-hero badass from an action movie and the leader from a military fiction, in which you must be able to be willing in sacrificing the few for the many or take morally questionable action while others don’t want to get their hands dirty. The one constant thing for both is that you can indeed win against impossible odds if you really work for it.

In reality, they are both wrong, since in the bigger picture, Shepard is not much more important than a random mook. All the previous actions that you have taken have slightly more impact than the background conversation on the Citadel you can overhear, and the hard battles that you fought made slightly more impact than a random mook shooting at enemies at the background. The thing that you fight against is an insane ancient power with incalculable knowledge that can and probably will obliterate everything you know.

* The reasoning in regards to playing a principled Shepard is flawed, as gaining more military strength DOES make a huge difference. If your military strength is low, then the Crucible will not just wipe out synthetics, but also Earth in it's entirety. If you bother to go the extra mile, then the Earth and it's remaining inhabitants (Which includes the people from other races, as in the people who will rebuild the galaxy) will survive. The notion that Shepard's actions ultimately don't matter much are nonsense. He will still be forced to make a hard call in taking the Destroy option, but it will save many lives, not just end them. In the long run, your actions WILL matter.

If Shepard (more importantly, you the player) ever looked at the War Assets screen with the green bar filled to the maximum and thought to him/herself ‘I can do this. This war can be won. There is hope’, then s/he was either purely delusional or living in denial. From the very beginning, Admiral Hackett already told you that you cannot win conventionally. And if you have the From Ashes DLC, when Javik reads you for the first time, if you have previously been choosing all the optimistic dialog opinions, he will express his shock and disbelief at how foolish you are in thinking that you can win this war. During the Battle of Earth *with best possible EMS*, you were told that less than half of the ground forces even made it to the surface. The Catalyst will outright tell a defiant Shepard that this cycle has already used up a lot of its resources after less than a year at war with the Reapers. With this in mind, just how realistic was it that you ever expect your actions of talking down a criminal, rescuing a few hundred civilians, or choosing whether or not to save the residential district or the industrial sector of a colony matters at all?

!! In the [[DarkerAndEdgier Grim-Darkness]] of ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', there was never hope.

If Shepard (more importantly, you the player) ever looked at the war assets screen with the green bar filled to the maximum and thought to him/herself ‘I can do this. This war can be won. There is hope’, then s/he was either purely delusional or living in denial. From the very beginning, Admiral Hackett already told you that you cannot win conventionally. And if you have the From Ashes DLC, when Javik reads you for the first time, if you have previously been choosing all the optimistic dialog opinions, he will express his shock and disbelief at how foolish you are in thinking that you can win this war. During the Battle of Earth, you were told that less than 50% of the ground forces even made it to the surface. With the Extended Cut, the Catalyst will outright tell a defiant Shepard that this cycle has already used up most of its resources after less than a year at war with the Reapers. With this in mind, just how realistic was it that you ever expect your actions of talking down a criminal, rescuing a few hundred civilians, or choosing whether or not to save the residential district or the industrial sector of a colony matters at all?

So, a simple battle of attrition just won’t work. Can we win by starving out the Reapers? No, since their power sources appear to be sufficient to keep them operating at peak for at least a century, while the volus estimates that our own economy will collapse within one year. Can we outmaneuver them in any way? No, since they are about 30 times faster and can control the relay network. Can we use the environment against them somehow? No, since they’ve placed relays far away from any cosmological hazards that could threaten them – since those hazards threaten us, too.

The original idea for the Reapers’ motivation to harvest all life in this galaxy was supposedly to curtail the excessive use of mass effect fields for FasterThanLightTravel before it causes space-time in that region to rip apart or something. While dark energy ripping apart space and time is of great concern to actual physicists in RealLife, using it this way would have been CriticalResearchFailure. Let’s see why.

The original idea for the Reapers’ motivation to harvest all life in this galaxy was supposedly to curtail the excessive use of mass effect fields for FasterThanLightTravel before it causes space-time in that region to rip apart or something. While dark energy ripping apart space and time is of great concern to actual physicists in RealLife, using it this way would have been CriticalResearchFailure taken UpToEleven. Let’s see why.

* The reasoning in regards to playing a principled Shepard is flawed, as gaining more military strength DOES make a huge difference. If your military strength is low, then the Crucible will not just wipe out synthetics, but also Earth in it's entirety. If you bother to go the extra mile, then the Earth and it's remaning inhabitants (Which includes the people from other races, as in the people who will rebuild the galaxy) will survive. The notion that Shepard's actions ultimately don't matter much are nonsense. He will still be forced to make a hard call in taking the Destroy option, but it will save many lives, not just end them. In the long run, your actions WILL matter.

* The reasoning in regards to playing a principled Shepard is flawed, as gaining more military strenght DOES make a huge difference. If your military strength is low, then the Crucible will not just wipe out synthetics, but also Earth in it's entirety. If you bother to go the extra mile, then the Earth and it's remaning inhabitants (Which includes the people from other races, as in the people who will rebuild the galaxy) will survive. The notion that Shepard's actions ultimately don't matter much are nonsense. He will still be forced to make a hard call in taking the Destroy option, but it will save many lives, not just end them. In the long run, your actions WILL matter.

* The reasoning in regards to playing a principled Shepard is flawed, as gaining more military strenght DOES make a huge difference. If your military strength is low, then the Crucible will not just wipe out synthetics, but also Earth in it's entirety. If you bother to go the extra mile, then the Earth and it's remaning inhabitants will survive. The notion that Shepard's actions ultimately don't matter much are nonsense. He will still be forced to make a hard call in taking the Destroy option, but it will save many lives, not just end them.

In short, this calls for GuideDangIt. Fortunately, [[CaptainObvious you are reading a guide]].

This one seems obvious, right? After all, you get two militaries instead of one and avoid having to commit genocide. And the fact that you pulled it off flies in the face of the Catalyst’s barking that it could never, ever be done just adds to the CrowningMomentOfAwesome, doesn’t it? The only issue is that to get it, you have to make some seemingly strange choices. Let’s examine those in closer detail.

* Who says only the Milky Way has its Reapers?