General Gaming The next Mass Effect - N7 Day 2023 trailer shows off a nice overcoat or trench coat

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[Bacon]

Elden Ring died for this

[Dre801]

Liara?  Interesting.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

If this is actually set after Mass Effect 3, then it appears that "Destroy" is the canon ending.

[stepee]

Whatever I’m still hyped for this.

[johnny]

HNNNNNNNNNG 

[Brick]

That was definitely Liara, right?

 

I guess Destroy is the canon ending since wasn't there a brief little tease at the end of that one that suggested that Shepard might have survived, and was trapped under rubble? Is the game going to be about, or begin with the search of Shepard?

 

I suppose there's no way they could do the game where there are three versions based on each ending. That would be way too much, but interesting to think about how it could be done. Set it decades or centuries later (Liara would still be alive since asari can live to 1000 years), and either have the Reapers wiped out from Destroy, around but friendly with Control, or everyone is bio-synthetic with Synthesis, and it's all mostly just visual differences I guess. Setting it a long time after 3 would avoid having to do much in-game direct aftermath stuff.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

This is the evidence for Destroy being the canon ending - there's a Reaper in the background and she's climbing what appears to be a Geth ship:

 

[TwinIon]

At this point they need to do more than saying "Mass Effect" to make me excited for the game.

[Fizzzzle]

I liked andromeda well enough until they put fucking sudokus in my shooter RPG. I wasn't having it.

[Keyser_Soze]

7 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

At this point they need to do more than saying "Mass Effect" to make me excited for the game.

 

They did say more. They said "Mass Effect will continue"

[Brick]

33 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

This is the evidence for Destroy being the canon ending - there's a Reaper in the background and she's climbing what appears to be a Geth ship:

 

 

Good catch.

[Greatoneshere]

I loved Mass Effect 3 until the final 10 minutes (I still do). The three choices at the end of the game were asinine, with only the "destroy" ending making any kind of moral/ethical sense, and the fallout from the destruction of the gateways and the stranding of numerous alien races as well as a lack of food for quarians and turians means everyone is stuck in the solar system they are stranded in since the hyperspace gates can't be re-engineered since they were made by a long dead ancient race. I just don't see how the story goes forward. But I didn't play Andromeda, if that game somehow explains it. I mean, its reasons like those that made people hate the ending in the first place. And I don't remember the DLC endings as well, but as I recall those didn't fix much.

[JPDunks4]

[Fizzzzle]

5 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

I loved Mass Effect 3 until the final 10 minutes (I still do). The three choices at the end of the game were asinine, with only the "destroy" ending making any kind of moral/ethical sense, and the fallout from the destruction of the gateways and the stranding of numerous alien races as well as a lack of food for quarians and turians means everyone is stuck in the solar system they are stranded in since the hyperspace gates can't be re-engineered since they were made by a long dead ancient race. I just don't see how the story goes forward. But I didn't play Andromeda, if that game somehow explains it. I mean, its reasons like those that made people hate the ending in the first place. And I don't remember the DLC endings as well, but as I recall those didn't fix much.

Andromeda begins before the end of Mass Effect 3. The council races sent a series of colony ships to Andromeda. I didn't get that far into the game, though, so I don't know more than that. I'm not sure how they'll retcon FTL travel being destroyed. Or if they did that in Andromeda.

[Brick]

16 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

I loved Mass Effect 3 until the final 10 minutes (I still do). The three choices at the end of the game were asinine, with only the "destroy" ending making any kind of moral/ethical sense, and the fallout from the destruction of the gateways and the stranding of numerous alien races as well as a lack of food for quarians and turians means everyone is stuck in the solar system they are stranded in since the hyperspace gates can't be re-engineered since they were made by a long dead ancient race. I just don't see how the story goes forward. But I didn't play Andromeda, if that game somehow explains it. I mean, its reasons like those that made people hate the ending in the first place. And I don't remember the DLC endings as well, but as I recall those didn't fix much.

 

I forgot that the mass relays were destroyed in the Destroy ending as well, and that was a destroyed one near the beginning of that trailer. Hmm that is a problem they'll have to solve.

 

This is why I say Synthesis is the best ending! Everyone wins by getting upgraded!  Even if you're against it for the moral reasons of forcing that on everyone without their consent, well at least the Control ending just has Shepard take control of the Reapers to fix everything and get back to normal. Destroy causes a lot of problems.

[johnny]

The trailer shows a mass relay being broken. I would guess the galaxy is still going to be pretty fucked up no matter how long after 3 this takes place (Asari can live ~1000 years and Liara was a young Asari). But some stuff will be repaired and if they just say “somebody figured out mass relays” that would be fine. Maybe Javik knew how they worked? But it doesn’t really matter to me as long as they’re not like “and everything went back to normal 5 years later” 

[Greatoneshere]

15 minutes ago, Brick said:

 

I forgot that the mass relays were destroyed in the Destroy ending as well, and that was a destroyed one near the beginning of that trailer. Hmm that is a problem they'll have to solve.

 

This is why I say Synthesis is the best ending! Everyone wins by getting upgraded!  Even if you're against it for the moral reasons of forcing that on everyone without their consent, well at least the Control ending just has Shepard take control of the Reapers to fix everything and get back to normal. Destroy causes a lot of problems.

 

13 minutes ago, johnny said:

The trailer shows a mass relay being broken. I would guess the galaxy is still going to be pretty fucked up no matter how long after 3 this takes place (Asari can live ~1000 years and Liara was a young Asari). But some stuff will be repaired and if they just say “somebody figured out mass relays” that would be fine. Maybe Javik knew how they worked? But it doesn’t really matter to me as long as they’re not like “and everything went back to normal 5 years later” 

 

Because I played Mass Effect 3 before the DLC extended cut came out, I went back just now to check what they added because I know they used fan input (super stupid idea) to adjust the endings. From the wikia for the destroy ending, since that's what people think the canon ending now is:

 

The Destroy (red) option will result in the destruction of all synthetic life (this was so stupid - I got the geth and quarians to make peace in my game, so doesn't that disprove what this stupid holo-child thinks is a given inevitability of the destruction of organics by synthetics?). The Crucible will fire a beam/pulse into the mass relay network, spreading the blast across the galaxy but severely damaging every relay and the Citadel in the process. Some time later (how much time later? this matters), the galaxy eventually finishes the repairs to the relays and recovers from the destruction the Reapers had caused (this is bullshit, how?). Admiral Hackett narrates this ending.

 

Various epilogue scenes will be shown, depicting the fates of noteworthy characters and races encountered throughout the journey. These scenes will depend on the choices made throughout the game, as well as the entire series. The surviving members of the Normandy's crew are then seen gathered near the memorial wall, honoring the memory of all those listed. The player's love interest (or Samantha if no love interest present: for example if Liara was killed by Harbinger's beam; likewise Miranda, Jack and Kelly will not appear here even if they survive since they are not part of the crew) will place Commander Shepard's name plaque above Admiral Anderson's. If all crew members survived but Shepard does not have a current love interest, then the character Shepard interacted with the most will put the Commander's name on the wall. Afterwards, depending on EMS rating, the Normandy will be shown on the unknown planet, either being repaired or taking off into space (again, this is bullshit, how? and where do they go? the relays will take months to repair and so they are stuck in the star system they crash landed in, and turians and quarians don't eat human food, so . . . ).

 

If the Destroy option was chosen and the player has very high EMS (military strength point system), the plaque is shown, but not placed on the wall (love interest smiles and doesn't place it) and a scene showing Shepard breathing in a pile of rubble is shown as the last scene before the credits roll.

 

After the credits, a scene will be shown in which a Stargazer tells tales of "The Shepard" to a young child.

 

I'll have to dig deeper, but the games were very clear that the mass relays could not be repaired or retro-engineered so this is some serious retconning if true. The original ending had them completely destroyed regardless of ending choice - I guess Bioware realized that made no sense for the extended cut. 

[Greatoneshere]

For those interested, here was literally my original post after 100%ing the game back in 2012 (ended up saving it somewhere and now found it) - this was from early D1P (I beat the game just days after it came out, bought it at midnight) - it does NOT take into account the extended cut material (which is ultimately minor and full of retcons from what I can tell). Be wary, it is a long post but if you're a fan of the games, I'd be curious what you guys think:

 

I thought the final moments of the game (literally just the last ten minutes) were awful.

Everything up until the holographic god-like child being shows up is epic. You get final conversations with all of the characters, you assault and rush the beam of light teleporting you to the Citadel, you can convince the Illusive Man to kill himself even though he's been indoctrinated (which I did) and you chill with Admiral Anderson as he dies as you both view the Earth from the inner sanctum of the Citadel. It's all excellent stuff. Then Shepard struggles to reach the console in front of him because Admiral Hackett says the Crucible (the weapon we want to use to destroy the Reapers) isn't working. He passes out before he reaches the console and an elevator lifts him up to some new, even more secret area of the Citadel where the holographic god-like child shows up.

The entire game, the entire series, has been incredible up until this point for me (for the most part). Just grand, operatic stuff. And then the game (and, by extension, the trilogy) shoots itself in the foot in the LAST TEN MINUTES of the entire series.

The holographic child being explains that each cycle of life ultimately boils down to chaos which always inevitably ends in the domination of organics by synthetics, the created rebelling against and destroying their creators. This is in itself an issue for me - the trilogy was never simply about synthetics vs. organics. While that is a major theme of the games, and we all knew that the Reapers were synthetic (that is, mechanical, robotic, though each Reaper is based on each race the Reapers destroy) the game was never ultimately "this is a game series about synthetics vs. organics". At least, I never got that vibe. This was about different alien species overcoming their differences that divide them, etc. (or not, depending on whether you went Renegade or Paragon in the moral dichotomy system). The trilogy was about a lot of things. Why is the ultimate plot point of the entire series hinging on a minor (and dubious) claim of the inevitability of synthetics vs. organics? I was a super paragon in all three games and I was able to make the geth and the quarians make peace with one another - surely that is evidence in itself that a war between synthetics and organics IS NOT inevitable. But I digress.

The three choices you are ultimately offered by the holo-child completely ruin all the relationships and good will that you have created amongst everyone in the game (if playing as a super paragon as I did). Regardless of the choice you pick, ALL the mass relays are destroyed. This destroys any possibility of space travel between star systems. Given that the mass relays were so far advanced (created by the holo-child people?) that no species could understand them, thus recreating them is impossible, thus stranding everyone wherever they were in the galaxy at the end of the game. People are not reunited. Relationships are not rekindled. Lives are not fulfilled. It destroys so much and makes any choice you end up picking void anyway (this is assuming that the explosions given off by the mass relays at the end of the game don't do what the one blowing up did in the Mass Effect 2: Arrival DLC where it destroyed the entire star system it was in - if that's the case, all the mass relays being destroyed basically kills everyone by default but I suppose these explosions could have been "controlled" - something that's never addressed though).

And what choices they are. Choice 1 allows you to destroy the Reapers. Great! What all of us (not just my Shepard character) have worked so hard for all along. Oh wait - I destroy all synthetic life along with the Reapers? You mean the geth, who I allied with and promised a future, and which Legion sacrificed himself for? EDI, who finally had come into her own? And what counts as "synthetic"? Do VI's count (virtual intelligences, basically what EDI was before she became as sentient as she did)? What about all of the ships the organics are flying? Do they instantaneously also get destroyed, killing everyone inside of them because the computer systems controlling them are so advanced that they could also theoretically count as synthetics? This is the ending I ultimately chose for myself in the game, and I got the "good" version of the ending, where Shepard breathes at the end, implying he's still alive (while I'm glad Shepard is hinted at as being alive in this ending, there's no way that logically he would be alive because the entire Crucible/Citadel explodes based on the cutscenes) but it's still stupid - he's stranded on a destroyed Citadel/Crucible floating around in orbit around Earth with no means to get to Earth. I mean, how is he breathing alone up there in orbit amongst the rubble?

Choice 2 allows you to control the Reapers, but at the cost of your own physical existence. What's that, you end up doing exactly what the Illusive Man wanted for himself, thus justifying all the terrible things that you up to this point were trying to stop the Illusive Man from doing? Stupid. Might as well have just let the Illusive Man do it himself then. While there is no "best/good" version of this ending, what happens to Shepard? Does it even matter given that the rest of the ending is the same as the other two choices (that is, all the mass relays are destroyed, your crew crash landing on a random, fortunately seemingly on a completely habitable planet, etc.)?

Choice 3 allows you to combine synthetics and organics in the "synthesis" option, thus creating a new life form, what the holo-child calls "the final form of evolution" of both groups. But how does this work? Is Shepard Adam? Who is his Eve? How is this new group propogated? Does it turn everyone currently living into this new form (didn't look like it when we saw Joker and all exit the crashed Normandy)? It's just vague and abstract. Apparently it rewrites everyone's DNA on the genetic level, but the crew of the Normandy looks the same? Wouldn't something change on a visual level? Not only that, but this choice totally negates the paragon/renegade dichotomy. Destroying the Reapers allows you to fulfill the wishes of everyone. Controlling the Reapers allows you to fulfill your own selfish power hungry wish for essentially ultimate power. This choice...gives no one anything really and forces evolution on all alien species when no one asked for it, against their consent. It's silly. Not to mention that if this option existed, why did the holo-child not go with this option in the first place before opting into this "cycle of every 50,000 years must end in the destruction of organics" choice he was peddling until Shepard showed up?

Regardless of the choice you make, I could have lived with it all if the stuff AFTER the choice you make was good. However, it is not. It is rushed and stupid. They take three games' worth of relationships, characters, and story and wrap it up after you make your choice in less than two minutes. The Normandy, for some reason, has all of the crew aboard (how did Joker gather everyone from London where the crew were fighting and get them on board the Normandy while everything was going down?) and is racing through a mass relay (when did Joker and the Normandy enter into one and why is Joker et. al. running away from the battle as it's still going on?) while the mass relays are being destroyed by whatever choice you went with. They (somehow) exit the mass relay travel (wut) and crash land on a habitable alien world (how forutitous) with no means to leave the planet and no means to travel outside of whatever star system they've crash landed onto (and there better be edible food for all species, because quarians and turians don't eat human food or Garrus and Tali are fucked). Joker and two other random characters (depending on your EMS) step outside of the Normandy looking in awe at their new surroundings. CUT TO CREDITS (unless you got the "good" version of the 'destroy the Reapers' ending choice, which adds Shepard inexplicably breathing at the end, seemingly somehow alive).

No tears from Liara, my love interest, at my apparent death? No Kaidan on a beach, relaxing? No reunion for Garrus with his sister and father? Nothing? We're not even sure what happens to ANYONE. I expected a 15-20 minute epilogue sequence allowing me to see at least a war heroes' memorial for my Shepard (if he died) (they do add this to some extent in the extended cut) and all the major characters getting to live out their lives (this never is added), and all the alien species forging ahead with a new peace between them all created by me (this is somewhat added in the extended cut). Nothing. Crash landing and random alien planet. That's it.

And those who say "they left it open for a Mass Effect 4" haven't thought things through. How would a sequel work? There are NO MASS RELAYS. NO ONE knows how to build new mass relays. There is thusly no travel between star systems. Any new game wouldn't be Mass Effect. We just won't know what happens to any of these characters post-end game. It's as simple as that. Our choices don't give us our own unique post-game endings. Maybe that would be too diffiicult for Bioware, I don't know. But no sequel could fix this game's ending problems.

Don't get me started on the random post-credits sequence. The games were amazing. It was literally (I timed it) the final 10 minutes when the holo-child shows up and everything after that that completely ruins it.

 

Back to current me: I never played Andromeda, but I don't think it resolved these issues, did it?

 

 

[Brick]

@Greatoneshere the original ending is definitely not great. I played the game back in 2015, so three years after the game launched, and after all the DLC was released, and the extended ending had been added. I tried to avoid as much as I could about the ending in the meantime so I could judge it myself, basically only knowing that it all came down to three choices and what colour explosion you wanted. After playing it, I felt fine, and thought the Internet, as usual, blew everything out of proportion. Going back and looking at the original ending though I could see how it was a lot more confusing. The DLC and extended ending certainly help. It's still not a perfect or preferred ending, but it is better. Further options with the star child were definitely needed, like being able to convince it and the Reapers to go away, at least for a time being, because you got peace with the geth for example, would have been one good option to add.

 

The whole game, however, was clearly rushed by EA, and I will never forgive them for that. They cared more about their damn fiscal earnings than letting the team complete the story properly, which in turn pissed off the fanbase and probably hurt their earnings in the long run anyway. Remember that the game was originally supposed to come out in holiday of 2011; less than two years after Mass Effect 2 launched in January of 2010. The game was eventually delayed to March of 2012 (still within EA's fiscal year, even if they missed the holiday surge), but obviously still wasn't enough. The game should have been planned for holiday 2012 from the beginning at the very least! That and some of the essential DLC should have been part of the main game. A prothean team member?! How cool of a reveal would that have been to find out while playing the game? Nah let's make it a Collector's and Digital Deluxe Edition bonus. Leviathan DLC to learn about the origins of the Reapers and their creators? Make it after the game comes out and adds a lot more context to the finale with the star child. EA fucked the game so hard with their corporate BS, making the game get dogpiled by the shittiest of shitty "fans", and making the good doctors that founded BioWare in the first place quit the industry all together. If any game needed the proper amount of time to try and get everything right, it was certainly the final entry in a trilogy of RPGs that had all your decisions make meaningful impacts on the story. Who knows what kind of Mass Effect 3 we would have gotten had EA let BioWare take all the time they needed.

[SaysWho?]

4 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

For those interested, here was literally my original post after 100%ing the game back in 2012 (ended up saving it somewhere and now found it) - this was from early D1P (I beat the game just days after it came out, bought it at midnight) - it does NOT take into account the extended cut material (which is ultimately minor and full of retcons from what I can tell). Be wary, it is a long post but if you're a fan of the games, I'd be curious what you guys think:

 

I thought the final moments of the game (literally just the last ten minutes) were awful.

Everything up until the holographic god-like child being shows up is epic. You get final conversations with all of the characters, you assault and rush the beam of light teleporting you to the Citadel, you can convince the Illusive Man to kill himself even though he's been indoctrinated (which I did) and you chill with Admiral Anderson as he dies as you both view the Earth from the inner sanctum of the Citadel. It's all excellent stuff. Then Shepard struggles to reach the console in front of him because Admiral Hackett says the Crucible (the weapon we want to use to destroy the Reapers) isn't working. He passes out before he reaches the console and an elevator lifts him up to some new, even more secret area of the Citadel where the holographic god-like child shows up.

The entire game, the entire series, has been incredible up until this point for me (for the most part). Just grand, operatic stuff. And then the game (and, by extension, the trilogy) shoots itself in the foot in the LAST TEN MINUTES of the entire series.

The holographic child being explains that each cycle of life ultimately boils down to chaos which always inevitably ends in the domination of organics by synthetics, the created rebelling against and destroying their creators. This is in itself an issue for me - the trilogy was never simply about synthetics vs. organics. While that is a major theme of the games, and we all knew that the Reapers were synthetic (that is, mechanical, robotic, though each Reaper is based on each race the Reapers destroy) the game was never ultimately "this is a game series about synthetics vs. organics". At least, I never got that vibe. This was about different alien species overcoming their differences that divide them, etc. (or not, depending on whether you went Renegade or Paragon in the moral dichotomy system). The trilogy was about a lot of things. Why is the ultimate plot point of the entire series hinging on a minor (and dubious) claim of the inevitability of synthetics vs. organics? I was a super paragon in all three games and I was able to make the geth and the quarians make peace with one another - surely that is evidence in itself that a war between synthetics and organics IS NOT inevitable. But I digress.

The three choices you are ultimately offered by the holo-child completely ruin all the relationships and good will that you have created amongst everyone in the game (if playing as a super paragon as I did). Regardless of the choice you pick, ALL the mass relays are destroyed. This destroys any possibility of space travel between star systems. Given that the mass relays were so far advanced (created by the holo-child people?) that no species could understand them, thus recreating them is impossible, thus stranding everyone wherever they were in the galaxy at the end of the game. People are not reunited. Relationships are not rekindled. Lives are not fulfilled. It destroys so much and makes any choice you end up picking void anyway (this is assuming that the explosions given off by the mass relays at the end of the game don't do what the one blowing up did in the Mass Effect 2: Arrival DLC where it destroyed the entire star system it was in - if that's the case, all the mass relays being destroyed basically kills everyone by default but I suppose these explosions could have been "controlled" - something that's never addressed though).

And what choices they are. Choice 1 allows you to destroy the Reapers. Great! What all of us (not just my Shepard character) have worked so hard for all along. Oh wait - I destroy all synthetic life along with the Reapers? You mean the geth, who I allied with and promised a future, and which Legion sacrificed himself for? EDI, who finally had come into her own? And what counts as "synthetic"? Do VI's count (virtual intelligences, basically what EDI was before she became as sentient as she did)? What about all of the ships the organics are flying? Do they instantaneously also get destroyed, killing everyone inside of them because the computer systems controlling them are so advanced that they could also theoretically count as synthetics? This is the ending I ultimately chose for myself in the game, and I got the "good" version of the ending, where Shepard breathes at the end, implying he's still alive (while I'm glad Shepard is hinted at as being alive in this ending, there's no way that logically he would be alive because the entire Crucible/Citadel explodes based on the cutscenes) but it's still stupid - he's stranded on a destroyed Citadel/Crucible floating around in orbit around Earth with no means to get to Earth. I mean, how is he breathing alone up there in orbit amongst the rubble?

Choice 2 allows you to control the Reapers, but at the cost of your own physical existence. What's that, you end up doing exactly what the Illusive Man wanted for himself, thus justifying all the terrible things that you up to this point were trying to stop the Illusive Man from doing? Stupid. Might as well have just let the Illusive Man do it himself then. While there is no "best/good" version of this ending, what happens to Shepard? Does it even matter given that the rest of the ending is the same as the other two choices (that is, all the mass relays are destroyed, your crew crash landing on a random, fortunately seemingly on a completely habitable planet, etc.)?

Choice 3 allows you to combine synthetics and organics in the "synthesis" option, thus creating a new life form, what the holo-child calls "the final form of evolution" of both groups. But how does this work? Is Shepard Adam? Who is his Eve? How is this new group propogated? Does it turn everyone currently living into this new form (didn't look like it when we saw Joker and all exit the crashed Normandy)? It's just vague and abstract. Apparently it rewrites everyone's DNA on the genetic level, but the crew of the Normandy looks the same? Wouldn't something change on a visual level? Not only that, but this choice totally negates the paragon/renegade dichotomy. Destroying the Reapers allows you to fulfill the wishes of everyone. Controlling the Reapers allows you to fulfill your own selfish power hungry wish for essentially ultimate power. This choice...gives no one anything really and forces evolution on all alien species when no one asked for it, against their consent. It's silly. Not to mention that if this option existed, why did the holo-child not go with this option in the first place before opting into this "cycle of every 50,000 years must end in the destruction of organics" choice he was peddling until Shepard showed up?

Regardless of the choice you make, I could have lived with it all if the stuff AFTER the choice you make was good. However, it is not. It is rushed and stupid. They take three games' worth of relationships, characters, and story and wrap it up after you make your choice in less than two minutes. The Normandy, for some reason, has all of the crew aboard (how did Joker gather everyone from London where the crew were fighting and get them on board the Normandy while everything was going down?) and is racing through a mass relay (when did Joker and the Normandy enter into one and why is Joker et. al. running away from the battle as it's still going on?) while the mass relays are being destroyed by whatever choice you went with. They (somehow) exit the mass relay travel (wut) and crash land on a habitable alien world (how forutitous) with no means to leave the planet and no means to travel outside of whatever star system they've crash landed onto (and there better be edible food for all species, because quarians and turians don't eat human food or Garrus and Tali are fucked). Joker and two other random characters (depending on your EMS) step outside of the Normandy looking in awe at their new surroundings. CUT TO CREDITS (unless you got the "good" version of the 'destroy the Reapers' ending choice, which adds Shepard inexplicably breathing at the end, seemingly somehow alive).

No tears from Liara, my love interest, at my apparent death? No Kaidan on a beach, relaxing? No reunion for Garrus with his sister and father? Nothing? We're not even sure what happens to ANYONE. I expected a 15-20 minute epilogue sequence allowing me to see at least a war heroes' memorial for my Shepard (if he died) (they do add this to some extent in the extended cut) and all the major characters getting to live out their lives (this never is added), and all the alien species forging ahead with a new peace between them all created by me (this is somewhat added in the extended cut). Nothing. Crash landing and random alien planet. That's it.

And those who say "they left it open for a Mass Effect 4" haven't thought things through. How would a sequel work? There are NO MASS RELAYS. NO ONE knows how to build new mass relays. There is thusly no travel between star systems. Any new game wouldn't be Mass Effect. We just won't know what happens to any of these characters post-end game. It's as simple as that. Our choices don't give us our own unique post-game endings. Maybe that would be too diffiicult for Bioware, I don't know. But no sequel could fix this game's ending problems.

Don't get me started on the random post-credits sequence. The games were amazing. It was literally (I timed it) the final 10 minutes when the holo-child shows up and everything after that that completely ruins it.

 

Back to current me: I never played Andromeda, but I don't think it resolved these issues, did it?

 

 

 

This post brought me back to the drama surrounding the endings.  

 

I played all three ME games the year after ME3 released. I was told to make sure I downloaded the free extended cut because the original ending was terrible. So I did.

 

Or at least I thought I did. I downloaded it but I didn't install it. So after going through all that and accidentally picking synthesis... well lemme back up because this is maybe the kicker -- I walked up to it thinking there would be a text overlay that reminded me which option was which, but nope, in the original ending, Shepard jumps right. So first I was stunned that he did that and didn't allow me to press a button to confirm my choice. I'm watching the ending while in my head upset that I didn't think the choices through. But before I could process that, the ending was already over.

 

I forget how long it took me to process that I never installed the extended cut. Took about a whiplash of 2 minutes, though, starting with "picking" the ending.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

[BloodyHell]

6 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

For those interested, here was literally my original post after 100%ing the game back in 2012 (ended up saving it somewhere and now found it) - this was from early D1P (I beat the game just days after it came out, bought it at midnight) - it does NOT take into account the extended cut material (which is ultimately minor and full of retcons from what I can tell). Be wary, it is a long post but if you're a fan of the games, I'd be curious what you guys think:

 

I thought the final moments of the game (literally just the last ten minutes) were awful.

Everything up until the holographic god-like child being shows up is epic. You get final conversations with all of the characters, you assault and rush the beam of light teleporting you to the Citadel, you can convince the Illusive Man to kill himself even though he's been indoctrinated (which I did) and you chill with Admiral Anderson as he dies as you both view the Earth from the inner sanctum of the Citadel. It's all excellent stuff. Then Shepard struggles to reach the console in front of him because Admiral Hackett says the Crucible (the weapon we want to use to destroy the Reapers) isn't working. He passes out before he reaches the console and an elevator lifts him up to some new, even more secret area of the Citadel where the holographic god-like child shows up.

The entire game, the entire series, has been incredible up until this point for me (for the most part). Just grand, operatic stuff. And then the game (and, by extension, the trilogy) shoots itself in the foot in the LAST TEN MINUTES of the entire series.

The holographic child being explains that each cycle of life ultimately boils down to chaos which always inevitably ends in the domination of organics by synthetics, the created rebelling against and destroying their creators. This is in itself an issue for me - the trilogy was never simply about synthetics vs. organics. While that is a major theme of the games, and we all knew that the Reapers were synthetic (that is, mechanical, robotic, though each Reaper is based on each race the Reapers destroy) the game was never ultimately "this is a game series about synthetics vs. organics". At least, I never got that vibe. This was about different alien species overcoming their differences that divide them, etc. (or not, depending on whether you went Renegade or Paragon in the moral dichotomy system). The trilogy was about a lot of things. Why is the ultimate plot point of the entire series hinging on a minor (and dubious) claim of the inevitability of synthetics vs. organics? I was a super paragon in all three games and I was able to make the geth and the quarians make peace with one another - surely that is evidence in itself that a war between synthetics and organics IS NOT inevitable. But I digress.

The three choices you are ultimately offered by the holo-child completely ruin all the relationships and good will that you have created amongst everyone in the game (if playing as a super paragon as I did). Regardless of the choice you pick, ALL the mass relays are destroyed. This destroys any possibility of space travel between star systems. Given that the mass relays were so far advanced (created by the holo-child people?) that no species could understand them, thus recreating them is impossible, thus stranding everyone wherever they were in the galaxy at the end of the game. People are not reunited. Relationships are not rekindled. Lives are not fulfilled. It destroys so much and makes any choice you end up picking void anyway (this is assuming that the explosions given off by the mass relays at the end of the game don't do what the one blowing up did in the Mass Effect 2: Arrival DLC where it destroyed the entire star system it was in - if that's the case, all the mass relays being destroyed basically kills everyone by default but I suppose these explosions could have been "controlled" - something that's never addressed though).

And what choices they are. Choice 1 allows you to destroy the Reapers. Great! What all of us (not just my Shepard character) have worked so hard for all along. Oh wait - I destroy all synthetic life along with the Reapers? You mean the geth, who I allied with and promised a future, and which Legion sacrificed himself for? EDI, who finally had come into her own? And what counts as "synthetic"? Do VI's count (virtual intelligences, basically what EDI was before she became as sentient as she did)? What about all of the ships the organics are flying? Do they instantaneously also get destroyed, killing everyone inside of them because the computer systems controlling them are so advanced that they could also theoretically count as synthetics? This is the ending I ultimately chose for myself in the game, and I got the "good" version of the ending, where Shepard breathes at the end, implying he's still alive (while I'm glad Shepard is hinted at as being alive in this ending, there's no way that logically he would be alive because the entire Crucible/Citadel explodes based on the cutscenes) but it's still stupid - he's stranded on a destroyed Citadel/Crucible floating around in orbit around Earth with no means to get to Earth. I mean, how is he breathing alone up there in orbit amongst the rubble?

Choice 2 allows you to control the Reapers, but at the cost of your own physical existence. What's that, you end up doing exactly what the Illusive Man wanted for himself, thus justifying all the terrible things that you up to this point were trying to stop the Illusive Man from doing? Stupid. Might as well have just let the Illusive Man do it himself then. While there is no "best/good" version of this ending, what happens to Shepard? Does it even matter given that the rest of the ending is the same as the other two choices (that is, all the mass relays are destroyed, your crew crash landing on a random, fortunately seemingly on a completely habitable planet, etc.)?

Choice 3 allows you to combine synthetics and organics in the "synthesis" option, thus creating a new life form, what the holo-child calls "the final form of evolution" of both groups. But how does this work? Is Shepard Adam? Who is his Eve? How is this new group propogated? Does it turn everyone currently living into this new form (didn't look like it when we saw Joker and all exit the crashed Normandy)? It's just vague and abstract. Apparently it rewrites everyone's DNA on the genetic level, but the crew of the Normandy looks the same? Wouldn't something change on a visual level? Not only that, but this choice totally negates the paragon/renegade dichotomy. Destroying the Reapers allows you to fulfill the wishes of everyone. Controlling the Reapers allows you to fulfill your own selfish power hungry wish for essentially ultimate power. This choice...gives no one anything really and forces evolution on all alien species when no one asked for it, against their consent. It's silly. Not to mention that if this option existed, why did the holo-child not go with this option in the first place before opting into this "cycle of every 50,000 years must end in the destruction of organics" choice he was peddling until Shepard showed up?

Regardless of the choice you make, I could have lived with it all if the stuff AFTER the choice you make was good. However, it is not. It is rushed and stupid. They take three games' worth of relationships, characters, and story and wrap it up after you make your choice in less than two minutes. The Normandy, for some reason, has all of the crew aboard (how did Joker gather everyone from London where the crew were fighting and get them on board the Normandy while everything was going down?) and is racing through a mass relay (when did Joker and the Normandy enter into one and why is Joker et. al. running away from the battle as it's still going on?) while the mass relays are being destroyed by whatever choice you went with. They (somehow) exit the mass relay travel (wut) and crash land on a habitable alien world (how forutitous) with no means to leave the planet and no means to travel outside of whatever star system they've crash landed onto (and there better be edible food for all species, because quarians and turians don't eat human food or Garrus and Tali are fucked). Joker and two other random characters (depending on your EMS) step outside of the Normandy looking in awe at their new surroundings. CUT TO CREDITS (unless you got the "good" version of the 'destroy the Reapers' ending choice, which adds Shepard inexplicably breathing at the end, seemingly somehow alive).

No tears from Liara, my love interest, at my apparent death? No Kaidan on a beach, relaxing? No reunion for Garrus with his sister and father? Nothing? We're not even sure what happens to ANYONE. I expected a 15-20 minute epilogue sequence allowing me to see at least a war heroes' memorial for my Shepard (if he died) (they do add this to some extent in the extended cut) and all the major characters getting to live out their lives (this never is added), and all the alien species forging ahead with a new peace between them all created by me (this is somewhat added in the extended cut). Nothing. Crash landing and random alien planet. That's it.

And those who say "they left it open for a Mass Effect 4" haven't thought things through. How would a sequel work? There are NO MASS RELAYS. NO ONE knows how to build new mass relays. There is thusly no travel between star systems. Any new game wouldn't be Mass Effect. We just won't know what happens to any of these characters post-end game. It's as simple as that. Our choices don't give us our own unique post-game endings. Maybe that would be too diffiicult for Bioware, I don't know. But no sequel could fix this game's ending problems.

Don't get me started on the random post-credits sequence. The games were amazing. It was literally (I timed it) the final 10 minutes when the holo-child shows up and everything after that that completely ruins it.

 

Back to current me: I never played Andromeda, but I don't think it resolved these issues, did it?

 

 

It really was one of the best ever made up until the multiple choice ending.

 

Andromeda didn’t solve anything because the sleeper ship left before Mass Effect 3 happened. It was a last ditch effort to save humanity (and alienity?)in case the Synthetics won and destroyed all life in the galaxy. I forget if they even know what happened back in the Milky Way.

 

Tou should play it. Its not horrible, I enjoyed it, it just wasn’t as good as the original trilogy, but it was still interesting, and combat was fun. Jts been patched into a much better state than it launched in.

[Greatoneshere]

9 hours ago, Brick said:

@Greatoneshere 

 

The whole game, however, was clearly rushed by EA, and I will never forgive them for that. They cared more about their damn fiscal earnings than letting the team complete the story properly, which in turn pissed off the fanbase and probably hurt their earnings in the long run anyway. Remember that the game was originally supposed to come out in holiday of 2011; less than two years after Mass Effect 2 launched in January of 2010. The game was eventually delayed to March of 2012 (still within EA's fiscal year, even if they missed the holiday surge), but obviously still wasn't enough. The game should have been planned for holiday 2012 from the beginning at the very least! That and some of the essential DLC should have been part of the main game. A prothean team member?! How cool of a reveal would that have been to find out while playing the game? Nah let's make it a Collector's and Digital Deluxe Edition bonus. Leviathan DLC to learn about the origins of the Reapers and their creators? Make it after the game comes out and adds a lot more context to the finale with the star child. EA fucked the game so hard with their corporate BS, making the game get dogpiled by the shittiest of shitty "fans", and making the good doctors that founded BioWare in the first place quit the industry all together. If any game needed the proper amount of time to try and get everything right, it was certainly the final entry in a trilogy of RPGs that had all your decisions make meaningful impacts on the story. Who knows what kind of Mass Effect 3 we would have gotten had EA let BioWare take all the time they needed.

 

In retrospect, playing the game long after the anger faded away was probably the right way to go. But I remember my visceral reaction to this day when it happened and it's rare for a piece of media to do that to me in a negative way. And this is while granting that 99.9% of Mass Effect 3 is fucking baller. I only had mostly minor quibbles until that point. As for the DLC, I did play all the DLC since it was all day one DLC (obviously the extended cut came later) and I agree leaving out Javik, the Prothean team member, from the core game was one of those quibbles I just mentioned I had. That made no sense at all. And he was a great character too with one of the most important stories in the game. A lot of the DLC for all three games are important, surprisingly. I mean, two DLC characters from Mass Effect 2 are pretty cool and come into play even in Mass Effect 3.

 

You are absolutely right about it being rushed, thanks EA. Furthermore, the other problem was one of the key writers on the Mass Effect writing team left just before the release of Mass Effect 2, and he's explained in the past where he thought the story might go, though he's candid in explaining that things were not super fleshed out in terms of the ending. But every end idea he proposes sounds better than what we got. The key idea was about "dark energy" plotline that was introduced in Mass Effect 1 (a little bit) and Mass Effect 2 (remember the sun Tali was studying on Haelstrom that was aging rapidly? that was a plot thread meant to be picked up on much more in Mass Effect 3). The rest of the writing team stayed on, so that's why Mass Effect 3 is still very good, but without him, just couldn't stick the landing.

 

Ex-BioWare writer discusses dropped ideas for Mass Effect trilogy ending

WWW.EUROGAMER.NET

 

5 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

 

This post brought me back to the drama surrounding the endings.  

 

I played all three ME games the year after ME3 released. I was told to make sure I downloaded the free extended cut because the original ending was terrible. So I did.

 

Or at least I thought I did. I downloaded it but I didn't install it. So after going through all that and accidentally picking synthesis... well lemme back up because this is maybe the kicker -- I walked up to it thinking there would be a text overlay that reminded me which option was which, but nope, in the original ending, Shepard jumps right. So first I was stunned that he did that and didn't allow me to press a button to confirm my choice. I'm watching the ending while in my head upset that I didn't think the choices through. But before I could process that, the ending was already over.

 

I forget how long it took me to process that I never installed the extended cut. Took about a whiplash of 2 minutes, though, starting with "picking" the ending.

 

I can't even remember if I did a button press or just walked towards the choice and it automatically happened but the whole color coded choices thing alone was so hokey. The drama surrounding the endings was epic at the time, when things like that were all that mattered.  

 

3 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

It really was one of the best ever made up until the multiple choice ending.

 

Andromeda didn’t solve anything because the sleeper ship left before Mass Effect 3 happened. It was a last ditch effort to save humanity (and alienity?)in case the Synthetics won and destroyed all life in the galaxy. I forget if they even know what happened back in the Milky Way.

 

You should play it. Its not horrible, I enjoyed it, it just wasn’t as good as the original trilogy, but it was still interesting, and combat was fun. Jts been patched into a much better state than it launched in.

 

I didn't even know the premise of Mass Effect: Andromeda, but that makes sense. Is it at least better, story-wise, than the ending to Mass Effect 3?  

[johnny]

I forgot which choice was which and luckily walked up to the destroy ending lol

[Brick]

Mass Effect 3 is in a lot of ways the best of the trilogy, but the ending soured people, and they whined about it too much that it suddenly became the worst. Like okay if you think those final 15 minutes are bad, but to undo all the hours leading up to it, with an actual fun multiplayer mode to boot? I don't think so. People just being babies because overreacting is what the Internet does best. 

 

I haven't played Andromeda yet, but isn't the reason they're going there nothing at all to do with the Reapers, but instead it's quite simply a science exploration mission? They're not trying to escape the Reapers, they're out there to colonize and explore a brand new galaxy, knowing full well it'll take 600 years just to get there, and there's no coming back, but the scientific prospect of it all is far too grand to pass up. 

[Greatoneshere]

16 minutes ago, Brick said:

Mass Effect 3 is in a lot of ways the best of the trilogy, but the ending soured people, and they whined about it too much that it suddenly became the worst. Like okay if you think those final 15 minutes are bad, but to undo all the hours leading up to it, with an actual fun multiplayer mode to boot? I don't think so. People just being babies because overreacting is what the Internet does best. 

 

I haven't played Andromeda yet, but isn't the reason they're going there nothing at all to do with the Reapers, but instead it's quite simply a science exploration mission? They're not trying to escape the Reapers, they're out there to colonize and explore a brand new galaxy, knowing full well it'll take 600 years just to get there, and there's no coming back, but the scientific prospect of it all is far too grand to pass up. 

 

On point 1, you are correct - it's sad that people think Mass Effect 3 is a bad game. It has the highest highs of the trilogy. The war on the moon of Garrus' home planet was truly next level at the time. Unfortunately, endings matter, and a bad ending can sour people on the entire thing. You gotta stick the landing. That being said, 99.9% of Mass Effect 3 is awesome. 

 

And you are correct about Andromeda, it's unrelated. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

2 hours ago, Brick said:

Mass Effect 3 is in a lot of ways the best of the trilogy, but the ending soured people, and they whined about it too much that it suddenly became the worst. Like okay if you think those final 15 minutes are bad, but to undo all the hours leading up to it, with an actual fun multiplayer mode to boot? I don't think so. People just being babies because overreacting is what the Internet does best. 

 

I haven't played Andromeda yet, but isn't the reason they're going there nothing at all to do with the Reapers, but instead it's quite simply a science exploration mission? They're not trying to escape the Reapers, they're out there to colonize and explore a brand new galaxy, knowing full well it'll take 600 years just to get there, and there's no coming back, but the scientific prospect of it all is far too grand to pass up. 

I agree, ME3 was a good game. Despite the ending. Probably the best in the series. It wasn’t perfect outside of the ending, but it was good. 
 

as for the mission to Andromeda, I think it was both. For many it was the scientific endeavor. But I recall there being some signs that for others this was the only way to ensure the survival of the species from the Milky-way. Not everyone believed the Reaper threat was real, but some did. 

[Brick]

3 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

On point 1, you are correct - it's sad that people think Mass Effect 3 is a bad game. It has the highest highs of the trilogy. The war on the moon of Garrus' home planet was truly next level at the time. Unfortunately, endings matter, and a bad ending can sour people on the entire thing. You gotta stick the landing. That being said, 99.9% of Mass Effect 3 is awesome. 

 

And you are correct about Andromeda, it's unrelated. 

 

 

I agree that endings are important, and you need to stick the landing, but there's a difference between a simple bad ending, and an ending so bad it ruins everything before it. For me Mass Effect 3's ending is the former, yet the Internet would have you believe it's the latter. I think for long form stories like games, and even television shows it's harder to get an ending that ruins the whole thing. To have an ending like that it would need to have some sort of twist or revelation that just makes the whole story stupid, so in a two hour movie that can certainly happen; everything seems good, but then you get to the climax, and something so stupid happens that makes you go, "oh fuck this!". I'm sure we can all think of movies where that has happened. For a game I think that's harder to have happen because we have gameplay, and ME3 had stellar gameplay; bringing back more RPG elements that were forgotten in the second game, while not being over bloated like the first, adding in exciting new action set pieces, enemy types, and the aforementioned multiplayer. So even if the story of the whole game had been bad, at least we'd have the gameplay, but the story up until the ending was some of the best in the trilogy as well with us getting new revelations, having to say goodbye to old friends, payoffs to some of our choices from the first two games, and some other really emotional moments. The ending was less, "this has ruined everything", and more, "oh that's it? Well that was a letdown." 

 

Something like Game of Thrones' final season doesn't ruin the rest of the show before it, and likewise ME3's ending doesn't ruin the whole game that came before it. 

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, Brick said:

 

 

I agree that endings are important, and you need to stick the landing, but there's a difference between a simple bad ending, and an ending so bad it ruins everything before it. For me Mass Effect 3's ending is the former, yet the Internet would have you believe it's the latter. I think for long form stories like games, and even television shows it's harder to get an ending that ruins the whole thing. To have an ending like that it would need to have some sort of twist or revelation that just makes the whole story stupid, so in a two hour movie that can certainly happen; everything seems good, but then you get to the climax, and something so stupid happens that makes you go, "oh fuck this!". I'm sure we can all think of movies where that has happened. For a game I think that's harder to have happen because we have gameplay, and ME3 had stellar gameplay; bringing back more RPG elements that were forgotten in the second game, while not being over bloated like the first, adding in exciting new action set pieces, enemy types, and the aforementioned multiplayer. So even if the story of the whole game had been bad, at least we'd have the gameplay, but the story up until the ending was some of the best in the trilogy as well with us getting new revelations, having to say goodbye to old friends, payoffs to some of our choices from the first two games, and some other really emotional moments. The ending was less, "this has ruined everything", and more, "oh that's it? Well that was a letdown." 

 

Something like Game of Thrones' final season doesn't ruin the rest of the show before it, and likewise ME3's ending doesn't ruin the whole game that came before it. 

 

While I definitely agree with you - 99.9% of Mass Effect 3 is top notch, and 4.5 seasons of Game of Thrones are pretty much par excellence. But . . . I don't know if I agree it doesn't ruin it. I genuinely am unsure. I've met people who now swear off Mass Effect and Game of Thrones, and apologists who try not to let perfect be the enemy of good.

 

I'll definitely give more credit to Mass Effect 3 though. Seasons 7 and 8 of GOT were godawful, especially as a book reader, and I probably will never rewatch the show again.  

[johnny]

Game of thrones has a lot more going against it than mass effect does. The entire last season had major issues and it was weeks of complaining as we watched it. Some were upset with the season before it as well and some even didn’t like season 6. 
 

mass effect 3 was awesome until the very end. The extended ending makes the ending bearable to me but not everybody agrees with that lol. 

[BloodyHell]

18 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

 

This post brought me back to the drama surrounding the endings.  

 

I played all three ME games the year after ME3 released. I was told to make sure I downloaded the free extended cut because the original ending was terrible. So I did.

 

Or at least I thought I did. I downloaded it but I didn't install it. So after going through all that and accidentally picking synthesis... well lemme back up because this is maybe the kicker -- I walked up to it thinking there would be a text overlay that reminded me which option was which, but nope, in the original ending, Shepard jumps right. So first I was stunned that he did that and didn't allow me to press a button to confirm my choice. I'm watching the ending while in my head upset that I didn't think the choices through. But before I could process that, the ending was already over.

 

I forget how long it took me to process that I never installed the extended cut. Took about a whiplash of 2 minutes, though, starting with "picking" the ending.

People were mad for a reason. I think it was Hudson who said “Your choices from all games will matter, our ending won’t be just A, B and C”. Not a direct quote but close. This was after 2 released.

 

and if you beat it after the patch to fix it, you don’t know what we were upset about.

 

That said, abuse is always wrong. But those respectfully voicing their opinions were right to do so. 

[legend]

The three choices were just bad, even with the patch. They're thrown at you in the last minute with some huge new heavily contrived info dump and every choice goes against what the game was about before that and doesn't even give you a good understanding about what your choice really means rendering it a pretty unsatisfying "choice."

 

Destroy: Oh you spent the last three games turning the Geth from a villain into an ally, talking about how you're stronger together without sacrificing each other? Sorry they're doomed to kill you all, we couldn't possibly be wrong about this, so genocide it is.

 

Control: You just minutes before were telling the Illusive Man that you can't control the Reapers, they control you? Naa it's cool you're Shepard try anyway and become the Galaxy tyrant. Sure, much of yourself will be lost in the process, but what could go wrong?

 

Synthesis: How about we just mandate some vague notion of "evolution" onto ever single living being in the Galaxy whether they want it or not? Don't worry, you'll actually all still be yourselves, you'll just superficially have green lines on your face. But trust us, these meaningless green lines on your face will make all the difference in stopping wars between "synths" and "organics" because now you all have a superficial similarity!

 

It was fucking awful.

 

 

But otherwise the I love those fucking games.

[JPDunks4]

 

Great thread by Shinobi

 

Can click it for the rest, think its 16 tweets long.

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, legend said:

The three choices were just bad, even with the patch. They're thrown at you in the last minute with some huge new heavily contrived info dump and every choice goes against what the game was about before that and doesn't even give you a good understanding about what your choice really means rendering it a pretty unsatisfying "choice."

 

Destroy: Oh you spent the last three games turning the Geth from a villain into an ally, talking about how you're stronger together without sacrificing each other? Sorry they're doomed to kill you all, we couldn't possibly be wrong about this, so genocide it is.

 

Control: You just minutes before were telling the Illusive Man that you can't control the Reapers, they control you? Naa it's cool you're Shepard try anyway and become the Galaxy tyrant. Sure, much of yourself will be lost in the process, but what could go wrong?

 

Synthesis: How about we just mandate some vague notion of "evolution" onto ever single living being in the Galaxy whether they want it or not? Don't worry, you'll actually all still be yourselves, you'll just superficially have green lines on your face. But trust us, these meaningless green lines on your face will make all the difference in stopping wars between "synths" and "organics" because now you all have a superficial similarity!

 

It was fucking awful.

 

Man, you took my long post and said exactly what I meant in a shorter amount - I agree with all of this. None of the choices make thematic sense based on the prior 3 games up to that point. It was all just an abject failure of an ending.