Reviews VideoGame / Mass Effect 3

Well you certainly like controversy =D Your pretty brave to write this.

On the one hand you're pretty much factually correct, the ending is not a Deus Ex Machina, considering the whole of the game is about building the Crucible, gathering resources to build the Crucible etc. The fact that the Crucible works isn't much of an ass pull.

On the other hand you're last line is a bit strawmanny. There are many complaints about the ending that don't rely on a Deus Ex Machina.

I like the ending, I like the ending so much that I uninstalled the Extended Cut and the ending left me with a more positive feelings towards the game. Still even I recognise some of the endings many flaws, and whilst I'll leave most of them to the people who can represent them most genuinely, I will try and represent those that I feel are important.

1. Synthetics vs Organics isn't a consistent well explored story theme that it needs to be to work in such an ending. Whilst on paper they tell you that Reapers are Synthetics and they plan to wipe out all Organic life, they never go into this at all and in fact several themes of ME 3 actually contradict this. 1) Even on a sucky playthrough you can invite the Geth (synthetics) to kill the Reapers and the Reapers accept. 2)On a good playthrough the Geth and Quarians will even join hands and help resettke a planet together. 3)A main theme of the Geth storyline here which takes a good large portion of the game and all of the geth storyline from ME 2, is about how the Geth are misunderstood, that the conflict is tragic and could easily be avoided. 4) The allusions in the Geth storyline throughout all the games are towards racism, totalarian regimes, genocides and a strong hint of Naziism. These are all human conflicts that are other come with effort, but by no means inevitable. To draw these pararllels in a storyline and then to conclude that the conflict is inevitable is squicky to say the least. So white people and black people are inevitably going to try and kill each other?

Then we have EDI, a synthetic whose entire ME 3 storyline involves learning to be human, gaining better understanding and appreciation of each other and how it's good to treat each other like equal sentient beings.

This concludes the Synthetic vs Organic interaction seen in ME 3

If we look further back in ME 2 the idea that synthetics vs organics is a racial prejudice that can be easily overcome is again a recurring theme. Geth storylines. EDI. A Is who are abused by evil people and go mad but can be saved with understanding.

2. It's mechanically bad. I've played the ending three times now on different playthroughs and twice I've selected the wrong option by accident (one of these was in the EC though). It doesn't explain clearly enough that your actions will be looked in and before EC it wasn't even clear enough about which side was which. Forgetting all that, it forces you to walk very slowly over a very large distance that quickly becomes boring. (Which incidentally is how I got the wrong option on my 3rd playthrough, I was bored so like the rest of that sections I was randomly firing my gun at stuff and hit the Starchild and suddenly he became angry and told me that the universe was going to suck now because of my choice)

3. It's emotionally poorly paced. You have to play for well over an hour being bombarded with the theme 'everything sucks' with emotional low after emotional low with almost no emotional highs, fighting hard fights in grey drab buildings. Then lots of people die. Then Shepard blows up. Then TIM dies in a sad way. Then Anderson dies being shot by Shepard. On an emotional graph, all these things slope downwards. This is not a good time to spring a bitter sweet ending or a 'choose from these options, all of which have bad aspects' rather than following the flow most players are going to reject the choice and place the blame on the game and the game designers because they were desperate for some sort of emotional high. This also puts them in a bad place to the touching sweetness of a fresh new start from a war-torn universe. They are now too emotionally low/angry to appreciate that and any narrative worth a darn would have given them some sort of good thing to latch onto. Story pacing in all forms is meant to look like a rollercoaster, ups and downs, bumps and valleys. This goes for tension, pacing, and emotional pacing. Stories need narrative contrast. This game failed at that (just like it failed at colour contrast at any point in this game =D).

These are the issues that I feel are legitimate and bothered me. I'm sure other people are getting plenty more ready. At the very least I don't feel that ' the anti-ending movement's arguments against the ending rely on hoping players don't acknowledge blatant facts in the game.' was justified, and it weakens what would be a fairly interesting and sensible review by having such a vitrolic remark

And this is from the standpoint of a person who liked the Deus Ex Human Revolution ending, remember that most people complained about that and yet (apart from war assets) I don't see the ME ending iterating positively on that in any other way. (The war assets would have been a significant improvement though, but if and only if it was a little more complex than a numerical value)

Hmm,I wonder if you actually think that so many people are just stupid and believe these silly, easily disprovable things or, maybe, just bare with me here, you might kinda sorta possibly be oversimplifying their arguments to the point of making a strawman out of the one's you mentioned and completely ignoring the rest...

While I appreciate the counter-arguments regarding the endgame, Rhetoric Hunter, but making the other side look like a bunch of strawmen and idiots piss people off. Besides, I think most of the reviews here focus on the endgame and nothing else about the game. Isn't a review supposed to be about the overall product and not just one aspect? To me, that seems rather unfair.

I can't speak for myself, Nord, not having played the game, but I've heard plenty of people say that the endgame is all that really matters in Mass Effect 3, largely because it utterly ruins the intent of the game and series as a whole. Series all about choice, endgame having no such choice, etc. Again, this is all hearsay, but it might apply.

The issues with ME3's endgame has been resolved three months ago, or at least most of them. I appreciate what Bio Ware has done. Heck, the Extended Cut gave me a complete 180 on the endgame. If people are still talking about them, then I can say they're obsessed and would need to let go of the past and move on. Just my thoughts on the whole thing now. Hope I haven't offended you or anything (if I did, I'm sorry).

I'm interested that people fell the extended cut fixed things. Apart from the Normandy shots, some of which were really good and one which was atroscious, it doesn't actually tell you anything you didn't know. I always figured there must be a large percentage of people who wanted to like ME 3 but got caught up in the controversy which made them unable to see past the flaws and the extended cut gave them an opportunity to feel like those flaws were resolved.

Apart from anything the ending is really uncohesive with the EC. It's almost like people took two completely different endings with different themes and tones and smushed them together =D. 'And then they crash on a planet and one by one exit the wrecked shuttle into the light of a new day on a fresh untouched world... and then they got back on the spaceship and left and life actually went on like normal'

Maybe it works better with the destroy ending. I always picked control which is made really really stupid by the EC

I appreciate a civil discourse, Tomwithoutnumbers. Hard to find one on the Internet these days. Anyway, we could do a PM about this discussion, if you want, so it wouldn't fill up the comments section and possibly preventing something ugly happening. What do you think?

If you'd like, I'd have no complaints with doing it like that :D

I will give you (as someone who hates the ending) that the foreshadowing was at least arguably there. The Rannoch Reaper and the Prothean VI provided some information that could certainly be interpreted that way.

But I don't like it still. For one thing, the Reapers were built up as mysterious, beyond understanding, and so far above us that there was no point in trying to grasp their nature. While it doesn't change how the ending is resolved, the brief and easily-understood purpose stated by the Catalyst makes all of that bluster from the Reapers rather silly. It also demotes the Reapers from giant, unfathomable intelligences to pawns of a poorly-thought-out solution.

And it's a solution to a problem that we, the players, never even got to observe. Despite the battles with the Geth, they were always the result of something Shepard tended to fight against: technophobia/racism or the Reapers' active efforts. We did get the chance to recruit the Geth regardless of prior choices (even if it meant killing the Quarians). It's hard to appreciate this sudden reveal when it's contradictory to events that happened to us during the course of our game play. Maybe the Catalyst is right, all AI will rebel against the creators, but the evidence put before us again and again is contradictory. I just didn't feel like that was an adequate motivation, and as a result I didn't want to trust the Catalyst or make any of the choices presented.

The other thing is that it was built upon a premise that didn't jive for me, but that was part of the entire game: the Crucible. I never liked the Crucible. It's hard to consider liking the ending in the first place when the crux of it is based on a Mac Guffin that I never thought was satisfactory. Hackett's incessant line was that the Reapers couldn't be defeated conventionally. Putting aside semantics around the term "conventional," why not? Sovereign died to the Alliance and Citadel ships. The developing Reaper larva died to small arms fire. The Rannoch Reaper died to orbital bombardment. The London Reaper died to Thannix missiles. What is it about the other Reapers, besides numbers, that makes them so invincible? It's as if no one, Hackett included, has ever considered innovative tactics for taking down Reapers. Would it be an easy fight? Absolutely not, but it would be far more satisfying in storytelling terms than the Crucible. The Crucible was a blatant case of Tell not Show.

I'll give you that you can make a case for foreshadowing and player choice (not one I personally think is strong, but you can still make it and back it with evidence), but that doesn't mean that anyone opposed to the ending just ignored what happened in the game. A lot of it is personal experience, and for me there was just too much surrounding the ending that didn't fit with the experience I had with the series.

"Synthetics vs Organics isn't a consistent well explored story theme that it needs to be to work in such an ending."

Synthetics vs. organics appears in every game of the series. Have you even played more than five minutes of a Mass Effect game? After all, it isn't the focus of the final choice.

"Apart from the Normandy shots, some of which were really good and one which was atroscious, it doesn't actually tell you anything you didn't know."

Exactly. Just about every argument about the original ending is a blatant lie.

"And it's a solution to a problem that we, the players, never even got to observe."

You got to observe organic/synthetic conflicts many times. In the end, one question you can ask yourself is if you think the Catalyst is right, based on what you've seen through the series.

"Sovereign died to the Alliance and Citadel ships."

After it became disoriented after Saren's death. Also, the Reapers that were destroyed by Shepard during the course of ME 3 were Reaper Destroyers, not "capital ship" Reapers like Sovereign or Harbinger.

I suppose I should have mentioned the Reaper capital ships that WERE destroyed during the Miracle at Palaven. But who reads that Codex thing anyway?

I love the codex =D

@Rhetoric Hunter I'm not sure how to approach this, I feel that there is some tension in our discussion that probably needs to be viewed, you've made some good points in your review and I've found it interesting and I'd enjoy discussing this further, but I also feel that you're way more passionate about this than I am, and I'm not sure in what mindset I need to be to think of this as blatant lies. I can't believe that all these people (and there are lots of people who I know who genuinely feel like this) were creating a fiction, or conspiracy not to enjoy the game. They might not have accurately diagnosed the problem, but there was clearly a problem there to have so many people reject the ending.

And I mean, we both know that I've played more than five minutes of the game, I hope I put enough detail in my post to not justify the remark as hyperbole either. We can have plot lines involving conflict between organics and synthetics without that being a consistent and well explored theme and I would still argue that it's been portrayed at a very surface level and with a lot of inconsistency.

The problem is, in the Mass Effect universe, syntheticism doesn't mean what it means in real life. There's a stress on the very physical component of the being, in ME 2 the Reaper was created out of the physical mushed up matter of people and that somehow embues it with a very special quality. Also the Reaper in ME 2 was mimicking human life by taking on a human skeleton. Equally in the Extended Cut we have the idea of combing organic and synthetics. But in real life, the material used has very little effect on organic/synthetic life. We're comfortable with the idea that it's very much our brains and what's in them that distinguishes us rather than our actual body. A person whose body is completely paralysed is still very much the same person he would be with a healthy body and people like Stephen Hawking are no less human for the mechanical aid they require to subsist. In our science fiction, we have the idea of imprinting on clones, heads in jars, storing peoples brain on computers etc because we view life as being more about the thoughts than the physical construction.

And that is reflected in computing. Its not important whether it's made of silicon or not, silicon is a tool that's helps us create the appropriate structure. We can make computers out of wood, out of valves, out of silicion, out of redstone and Minecraft blocks, out of Little Big Planet switches, because all you need to create a computer is something that conveys the concept of on and off for different inputs.

And in real life there are very tangible differences between the way and a human and an AI would think, an AI processes millions of parallel possibilities with complete accuracy and incredible speed, humans less so, but we're better at independent thinking and bridging links. The greatest danger of conflict between AI and humans, is basically, one day we will reach a point where the AI is infinitely more intelligent and capable than we are, because AI can be designed and improved upon in a way we can't.

But in Mass Effect AI doesn't work like that, there's no sign of the increased intelligence, despite having a consistent culture for 100's of 1000's of years, the Reapers tech is only about twice as much advanced as the product of just one cycle of organics. Likewise the Geth are shown to be on the same footing as the Quarians, not far above it. Legion is not shown to strategise more accurately or efficiently than Shepard (although to be fair, Legion wasn't hooked up to the collective) and neither was EDI or any of the other encountered AI's. EDI could pilot a ship more effectively than any human, but in combat EDI and the Geth didn't show machine precision, reflexes or thinking.

Everything in the ME universe seems to stress apart from some cultural differences with the Geth, that aren't really much more extreme than the cultural differences between Turians/Asari/Humans, that synthetics are basically just people. They're all shown as displaying emotions (including both Legion and the rest of the Geth and the Reapers), they're all shown as holding irrational beliefs, not acting entirely logically, thinking as people do with the same sort of capabilities of people. The plotlines involving AI (Legion, the Geth in general, EDI, the rogue AI's) all suggest that the synthetics are misunderstood people, being mistrusted unjustly out of racial prejudice. This is why the conflict was not adequately explored, and where it was explored, they almost never explored it in a direction that was consistent with the ending.

Your point about it being left up to us whether the Catalyst is right was interesting though and appreciate the point. In fact two of the endings involve you believing him wrong (although the Synthesis ending shows designer intent involves him being correct) but the problem is, they aren't Catalysts conclusions, they're the conclusions of a long lived species who had repeated negative interactions with synthetics and created the Catalyst to solve the problem. So if it's not completely inevitable, canon history shows it as almost inevitable, whereas the game has shown it as no different than any of people's natural conflicts and evolutions.

@Rhetoric Hunter and @Tomwithnonumbers

The above is a more eloquent explanation of my problem with the synthetic-organic conflict theme (thanks Tom for the elaboration). I never felt exposed to "organics vs. synthetics" as a theme; rather, the fact that organics and synthetics specifically were fighting was merely incidental. The conflict wasn't BECAUSE one side was organic and one side was synthetic. Likewise, organics conflicted with organics, and synthetics conflicted with synthetics.

It's entirely possibly that this is specific to my playthrough. Other players may have different information as a result of their choices with Legion, Tali, and the Geth-Quarian war in ME 3. In this light, I don't discount other interpretations of the ending, but I merely seek to shed some light on why it doesn't work for me. It's not that I'm ignorant of the facts or haven't put any thought into the information I was given. It's just that the complete picture is out-of-whack based on my evidence.

Pretty much agree with the reviewer completely, but the Extended Cut still needed to happen. I loved what happened in the ending, the problem was what didn't. It was almost like they forgot to put the ending on the disc in the first place and released it as a free dlc later. Also, people tend to look at the Catalyst's choices as "The endings", while I always felt they were really like a final choice and that what follows is the ending. So it's not that there was only three endings; there was No Ending. Naturally, this was fixed by the Extended Cut. The only thing that wasn't foreshadowed was that the Catalyst was an AI and would interact with you; but that's only presentation, it doesn't actually affect the way it functions at all. It's not like you stumbled upon a completed Crucible in London out of nowhere and everything just happened for no reason; people are just too excited to be butthurt because it's cool to hate Bioware. I like the synthesis ending the best (which you can't even get without a high EMS, even pre-EC, so that alone shows that your actions affect it), not because it's a "Happy Ending", but because of the ambiguities that everyone hates about it. I like that the endings twist your morality around. I like that Shepard dies almost always. I like that there is no easy option. I even like the way the Catalyst was presented. I liked the directing, Sam Hullick's and Clint Mansell's scoring for the scenes, and the fact that despite having to rewrite it three times they still managed to find an ending with themes Foreshadowed since the first game ('I'm forging an alliance between us and the Reapers, between organics and machines, and in doing so, I will save more lives than have ever existed,' anyone?), and that alone is an accomplishment. Before the Extended Cut people were overreacting to a shitty lack-of-an-ending, but it was still a bad ending, but after I played the EC I just wanted to beat my face into the corner of the nearest table at the pure, embarrassing nerdrage that everyone on the internet still hasn't gotten over.