Yup. The galaxy saw Hunanity as arrogant and self interested, demanding a seat other species had been tyring to get for ages. By saving the council, even at high losses, it showed humanity was willing to put itself on the line for the sake of others, proudly defying the previous perception.
They sacrificed the council because they belive that they a bunch of entitled, xenophobic jerks.
I sacrificed them because I'm not good at the game and am very indecisive.
We are not the same.
Humanities position in the grand scheme of the galaxy has actually improved a lot in ME2, Shepard just doesn’t benefit from them because they’re working for a human supremacist terrorist organisation who they once opposed after having been thought dead for years.
The issue with that choice is that when you are making it they specifically say “letting the council in could result in heavy casualties in the wards” but that point is never brought up again. Like bro there’s 13 million civilians on the ward and apparently it’s the good option to put them all at risk to protect 3 politicians?
As opposed to in [the space battle of this post](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Qll98IQcI), where every missed shot fired at the Reapers is gonna flatten and vaporize everything on Earth lol.
Millions? I don’t like the council as much as the next guy but it’s explicitly stated in ME2 that saving them saves more lives than it costs, Shepard mentions that the Alliance lost 8 cruisers to save the Ascension, each with a crew of around 300, but the Ascension has a crew of roughly 10,000. I guess we’re assuming all ships are lost with all hands, but yeah.
I still laugh when you get back in 2, and the Truain counselor does "air quotes" when saying, "Oh yes, ("repers")"
It is a very human justure that only makes sense in English. And it's like the only time it happens with other Aliens.
That choice isn't ever about the Council for me. It's about the 50,000 people that crew the Destiny Ascension, and the fact that it is the most advanced/powerful spacecraft in Citadel space.
For me, it's about the fact that hanging back makes no tactical sense. Any Geth ships that were attacking the Council Fleet aren't going to just disappear after destroying the Destiny Ascension.
Better to attack and divide the Geth fleet's attention, rather than try to take on Sovereign *and* the Geth fleet at the same time with no backup.
Yep, I 100% agree here.
I kind of hated how (god I hope I'm remembering this correctly) the "concentrate on Sovereign" dialogue wheel option didn't do that and did something stupid instead. I feel like I might have even retconned that choice when it happened the first time, I don't remember.
Also: this is post-hoc justification, but saving the council also opens up what IMO is easily the best interrupt in the entire series, in ME2. >!Everyone always laughs about the renegade options to punch Khalisah Al-Jilani... but in addition to admitting that I find that distasteful, I have a hard time imagining anything like that being remotely as satisfying as [the *verbal* punch](https://youtu.be/PMyEo0bXpxY?t=35) that paragon Shepard delivers in ME2 if they saved the council.!<
And then the star toddler tries to tell you that organic and synthetic life can't coexist...Look out the window, midwit. They're literally dying to protect each other.
"Yo check that out. Geth and Quarians reconciled their differences and work together. Your purpose is fulfilled."
\*Reapers shut down, everyone claps, roll credits\*
Same Wrex was a bro from the start, I get that the Krogan went a bit nuts after the rachni wars but only like 1/10 births being viable and a people being left like that just didn’t set well for me then grunt joins you and that guy would literally run through a army for you.
Krogan deserved another chance, Grunt and Wrex showed they were capable of being better than what they were turned into by uplifting their race too early to be used as war machines just to be punished for it.
I sacrificed the council and that ship still showed up, I assumed it was just the standard asari dreadnought design. I mean, there are at least 3 of them in this gif.
The big one with 4 fins is the Destiny Ascension, and only shows p if you save the council in mass effect 1. If you don't. Sovereign destroys the Destiny Ascension and kills he council aboard
The other ships still show up no matter what's but they have only 3 fins and are smaller than the DA.
The destiny Ascension gets destroyed by the Geth ships. During that egagement Sovereign is "hooked up" to the Citadel while the Citadel's arms are closed.
They get replaced with worse councilers though. In all of my gaming years I have never hated a character as much as I hated udina (yes even more than kai leng)
It's insane how much content and depth the Mass Effect trilogy has.
I replay the series every few years and it's wild, I find something new every time, like the last time I found a warlord lady that I helped in the first game on Omega working for Aria or if you play as a Earthborn, Shepard was part of a criminal gang of earth supremacists (not cerberus another one) and you can help one of your old "friends" by threatening a turian cop.
If you haven't already, next time you play through give mods a try. Expanded Galaxy, the Spectre Expansion mod, LE3 Diversification Project, Take Earth Back, and the "Happy Ending Mod" (not *that* kind of happy ending, dammit) combine to turn ME3 into an even more comprehensive experience IMO.
I still think the Reapers are the greatest video game villains of all-time. They were the embodiment of existential and cosmic dread. You can't run from them. You can't kill them (mostly). You can't outsmart them. You can't reason with them. There is no stopping them.
Unfortunately, creating such an all-encompassing villain came with its own set of problems. By creating such an all-powerful villain, you back yourself into a corner from a writing standpoint on how to give your protagonists much tighter avenues to defeat said villain. You're going to need to come up with some damn good writing to avoid overly convenient and unsatisfying deus ex machinas - and the only solution they came up with is arguably the most infamous *deus ex machina* in gaming history.
The other problem I think you run into - and I do go back and forth on this in my mind - is that the Reapers become less scary the more we learn about them. In ME1, they were mysterious and there was very little backstory. Obviously, with the story demands of two more games, you have to explain some things, but you also risk de-mystifying your villains and ruining some of the things that made them great - like showing too much of the monster in a slasher film to where it loses the effect of what made it scary. It's such a delicate balance.
> is that the Reapers become less scary the more we learn about them
Considering it's a trilogy of dealing with them over 3 games, I think this was inevitable. And frankly it fits with the standard flow of a story/trilogy. Knowledge being the light that illuminates the darkness and whatnot. ME1 you had no idea what was happening, there was no consoling your wild imagination on what is actually going on. ME2 you understand parts of the threat and it seems hopeless. ME3 you learn more about them and that they can be fought, bringing hope.
In some ways ME3 looked the most hopeless. You'd hear about planets and sectors being lost, wiped out. IIRC you were even *at* some of them (Thessalia IIRC?) and couldn't stop the Reapers.
At the same time, because the Reapers were finally there, fighting - that's when we were also able to fight back too.
For me, my favorite was the beginning where you see Earth being attacked and you have to evacuate. And then you go to Palaven's moon and you see the Turians don't stand a chance either.
The existential dread I felt playing Palaven's moon level and seeing the Reapers in the distance just freely destroying what is supposed to be the galaxy's most powerful military was amazing.
Again, I go back and forth on the Leviathan DLC. A part of me wants to know everything possible about the origin and backstory of the Reapers. Another part of me feels they are lesser for having learned it. I can't quite reconcile it in my mind. Maybe I truly would've preferred them to leave a little bit more to my imagination.
The sacrifice of the mystery is the trade off to knowledge. Space has lost some of its luster now that we know what those sparkly things are in the night sky. The sky in general really, since we figured out why it goes from blue to black. Many believed all of that to be the actions of a God or Heaven.
I feel that unless the villain wins, a technological threat that is seemingly invincible ultimately can't be avoided in understanding more about them. It isn't akin to the first Predator or Alien movies, where the threat was organic.
A friend and I had a similar talk about Sephiroth from FF7 and how he's much more humanized in later installments, from the vague mystery surrounding him in the original game. Is it better to keep the powerful characters a mystery or to let players know more about them? Most of the time, I'd honestly say the latter.
Drew Karpyshyn was the lead writer on the first two mass effect games. He left to pursue his personal work after ME2. Every time the end of ME3 comes up I wonder how he might have handled it differently.
This is why I absolutely loved and felt a strong emotional connection to the Javik and Prothean storyline. It's not just that Javik was the last of his kind but that his entire civilization did everything they could stop the Reapers and were unsuccessful. A civilization arguably more powerful and advanced than the Council species. This created an absolute sense of dread in me and really did an amazing job of setting the scale of the Reaper invasion.
They completely ruined the Reapers by explaining them. They went from being mysterious genocidal machines, to just being machines with a very poorly implemented code in them.
Bioware should have kept them mysterious and give us nothing about their origin. Yeah people would have complained, but it would have been better than what they gave us.
Sovereign is the one villain in gaming that made me feel insignificant. Like, we were genuinely fucked.
I know we beat the Reapers in the end, but they still killed trillions before we got them.
For me I doubt I'll ever see something eclipse Disco Elysium in terms of writing (prior to that I thought the same about Planescape: Torment, so proven wrong once!) but different strokes for different folks (though I did really enjoy Mass Effect as well).
DE has to be some kind of niche or something... after hearing about the writing and reviews I absolutely couldn't wait to get fully immersed in it.
And I just didn't. I don't know what it was about it, but it didn't captivate me at all and I quit fairly early on. It just wasn't my style.
PS:T still tops the list for me as a result.
How did you feel about the intro? I kinda felt that it did a good job of showing you what it was about fairly early on.
To me the different intental voices felt like it was a really special way to capture the main characters emotional turmoil. It drops you right into their mind in the way only a good book can manage. It felt well written and thought out.
Theres a fascinating world behind it all but i dont know if its the kind of game to be ‘immersed’ in. Its more of an internal exploration. Exploring different thoughts and ideas in the main characters head and other characters heads. All tied together with lots and lots of political satire. Once it all comes together you can start to get the fantasy theyre presenting but its really trying to get you to explore ideas as much as it wants you to explore the world.
Same. I played through it and I felt that so much of the game was explaining the political climate, which didn't seem to make much of a difference in the scope of the plot. It's well done and I can appreciate the effort that went into it, but it just didn't work for me.
It was an amazing serious filled with sometimes very difficult choices to make... that was more than a little ruined by the entire epic boiling down to a pointless final decision. Even the extended ending left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Its still one of my favorite sci-fi IPs, but man I wish they spent as much time on their ending as it deserved
Hehehe, the thing, nice way to spoiler-protect it and let everybody knows who knows, know.
I got them all in the end. Never felt so cheated in my life.
So long as you believe in your heart that there's only one ending, the whole trilogy really works nicely. All the choices you make are impactful on a small scale but in the end, the only path forward is the one where the reapers are gone. Probably played through a half dozen times. Never picked any other ending.
I remember waiting a few months to pick it up on sale and saw all the hate without knowing about space child. I distinctly remember multiple times during that game thinking, "this is phenominal, I don't know how they could fuck this up." The whole Time you are uniting and bringing the galaxy together and every mission just gets you amped up more. Cure the genophage and see mordin's sacrifice... pure poetry. Free the rachni queen...I'm turning the reapers former weapons against them. So many great missions that just built to a crescendo.
Should have just ended at marauder shields.
I chose green so jester and edi could have little hybrid babies.
I never saw the result of that if you didn't until much later, on Youtube. That was one of the most ridiculously heartbreaking tragedies in the history of gaming. It just kept piling on and the accompanying music just punctuates it all in a perfect way.
If I experienced that in-game and then the sadness of the rest ... yeah, I'm glad that I was truly Commander Shepherd.
"Shepard Commander. I must go to them. I'm sorry. It is the only way.
Legion,... The answer to your question... Was 'yes.'
I know, Tali. But thank you. Keelah se'lai."
I know people hated ME3 because of the ending.
But fuck, it had some unbelievable moments. That, Mordin and the Genophage, Grunt's 'last stand'.
Javik and the conversation about honor and ghosts.
ME3's big problem is the ending. I won't say it was 10/10 for all of the rest (the shadow people cutscenes suuuuck for one) but overall I think it was still a great game.
My favourite moment is when you have tali as the RI (tali best girl, fight me) is when she is talking about her experience with racial prejudice and how she could have rubbed it in the face of the turian officer who abused her when she first arrives in the citadel in ME 1.
Shepard: the difference is you helped when it counted.
Tali: The difference was you.
[Here's](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JFL46SgQOMw&pp=ygU2TWFzcyBlZmZlY3QgMyB0YWxpIGNvbnZlcnNhdGlvbiB3aXRoIHR1cmlhbiBvbiBjaXRhZGVs) a link to the entire convo
That is also a good one.
I think, frankly, they ended *everyone's* arcs in as interesting and powerful of ways as possible. Even the Illusive Man becoming >!a puppet of the Reapers, realizing his "going against the grain for all our interests" ultimately went directly, emphatically against human interests at the time it mattered most,!<
Or bringing Liara and Javik with you on the Asari homeworld mission and her illusion of everything about her species and his being broken.
Or the end of Jack's arc, becoming the coolest teacher in X-man psionic school. Having an actual place to belong and people to protect.
It just missed the shot on the ending. That was it, I think.
Unpopular opinion: at this point I rather like the ending. Could it have been written a bit better? Sure.
But I appreciate that at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the the choices you made. The ends are the same, they do not justify the means, all that changed is what you decided throughout the series.
It makes renegade shepherd regret hit much harder, provides paragon relief of their choices, and leaves neutral to ponder their decisions.
Because in the end you can choose any types “ending”.
For sure. I never had any dlc either when I was younger and only “citadel” later on. Legendary edition has been a nice refresh, almost new content to me! Haha
If the developers had been able to say the indoctrination theory was canon, I would've lost my mind at the level of mind fuck. Instead they stuck with the "artistic integrity" line even though it really just seemed like they got rushed and had to release it unfinished.
The fact that you only get the special cutscene with shepard when you choose a specific option makes me believe it is the only true ending.
Edit: Apparently there are people on this thread that haven't played these games yet, some I'm editing to remove spoilery stuff.
As an aside there is a strategy game called "Stellaris" where you build a space empire. It has one of my favorite variations of this type of conversation. You can choose different Ethos for your Empire two of which are Spiritualism (there is more to the Universe than what we can measure) and Philosophical Materialism (there isn't anything beyond matter, energy and forces of the Universe).
If you have robots in your Empire they might eventually question their sentience. You get a pop-up from the robots asking if they have a soul. There are a few ways to answer but if you are a Materialist Empire you can basically say, "No you don't have a soul but it is fine neither do we."
I actually hated the way she says that, as if the quarians are the ones who get to answer that question. The entire storyline leading up to that made me quite uncomfortable.
The desire of the geth, as described in ME2, was to develop their own technology rather than rely on shortcuts from the reapers. A major theme of the first game was that using Reaper technology unwittingly led us down a path they laid out for us, making us their puppets. And in talking to Legion, Shepard can learn that as a hive mind geth may think and act differently from us, but that doesn't make them any less of a valid life form.
And then ME3 comes around and says "Oh actually, they're not *real* life forms just yet, they need a little bit of that *organic magic* that makes us natural life forms REAL people. Can't be truly intelligent unless you're just like us. Oh also, you should totally trust this reaper code to do what we think it does, despite literally everything we know about them and their indoctrination." So you can force an entire species of AIs to take an upgrade, developed from a known enemy, just to make them more similar to yourself, and keep them from their own self-determination? And that's supposed to be a *good thing?*
It wasn't so much that he needed her to confirm his having a soul for his sake, but by her saying he has a soul she acknowledges as a Quarian that he as a geth and therefore all geth should exist, and are not just malfunctioning machines. So, her statement is a Quarian acknowledging that the war is completely wrong.
People, if you haven't played the Mass Effect trilogy and love story driven RPGs - go play it now. It's 3 games telling a one long and very interesting story in a very well developed world. It has been remastered with a Legendary edition release where all 3 games are in one package.
And it also ~~had~~ has one of the most fun multiplayer modes ever. Playing as a Krogan and answering a Brute's charge with a charge of your own? FOR TUCHANKA!
Asari Valkyrie, Reegar Carbine, Dark Channel, Warp Rounds IV. Even Platinum Praetorians get melted in seconds. Doubly so when leading off with a Warp for biobooms.
Alliance infiltrator unit with a N7 Crusader was my go too. Fast, able to stay alive, and melted most enemies effortlessly, especially the Shield bitches.
I only played the trilogy once and on Xbox 360. Now I have a monster pc with a 4090 and a widescreen monitor so I’m damn tempted to start the legendary edition. Gotta finish Kingdom Come Deliverance first though!
I love these types of games. I love SciFi. I started playing ME Legendary Edition last year, but I just... could not get into it. I can't tell if it was because it felt a bit dated, or because I had just come off of reading The Expanse series (too much SciFi all at once???), but it just could not hold my interest.
I was very surprised, too, because it's really right up my alley and I expected to love it. Maybe I just need another attempt...
Mass Effect will always be my favorite game series that I kept coming back to replay every once in a while. I will be waiting patiently for the next installment
It's one of the few games that I keep replaying every few years and it's always worth it, so much content and something "new" to discover every single time.
Man, everything really was amazing in that third game right up until literally the last 30-60 minutes, and that was nearly enough to tank the whole series.
Combat? Excellent. Story (minus the ending)? Great. Companions? 10/10. Romance? Heartwarming (Tali is best). Cinematography? Still get chills seeing some of the scenes. Inclusion of previous game’s choices? Done about as well as can be realistically expected.
They did *so much* right, only to stumble the last step. It’s honestly so depressing.
> Man, everything really was amazing in that third game right up until literally the last 30-60 minutes, and that was nearly enough to tank the whole series.
It was really incredible how much they fucked it up at the absolute 11th hour. The whole time I was playing ME3, I was thinking about how as soon as I beat it, I was going to start over on ME1 and make all completely different choices and see how everything turned out. Then I beat the game, and didn't even touch the series again for another 6 years at least.
The fact that ME3 ended like that didn't bother me. Coming up with an ending that was going to bring the trilogy to a successful conclusion, after the titanic scope of the conflict they set up, was a near-impossible task.
What bothered me was that the game *strongly* implied that the synthesis (green) ending was the best one and the one you should pick for the most satisfying resolution. Well, fuck that noise. I spent three games trying to kill the Reapers, I'm going to kill the damn Reapers.
How was it implied? If anything, we have more evidence showing that working with the reapers just leads you to become a tool for them. Look at Saren. Also, Shooting the star child reveals it as being a reaper trying to influence your decision. In my head, if you picked anything but the destroy ending, you mentally succumbed to the reapers, and the final hour of the game is their last desperate attempt to brute force themselves into Shepards mind.
I know it's not real, but the Indoctrination Theory was SO good. I make myself believe it really happened that way so that I can be really happy with the ending of ME3.
Haha, I remember when the Extended Ending DLC came out and I tried shooting the Starchild just for the fun of it, not expecting anything at all to happen. Scared the *crap* out of me.
...Then I was annoyed because I had to play the final sequences through again to pick a "real" ending.
I think the best ending was red (hard to remember meaningless colors)
The one where you destroy all traces of reaper and protean technology across the galaxy.
Then the final scene shows Shepard's chest suddenly heaving with a breath. Showing he survived compared to the other somewhat distasteful choices. To me, if Shepard didn't live, it was a bad ending.
That was me for over a decade. I was so ready to replay the entire series again. And then the entire series came down to
> WHAT. Is your name?
Commander Shepherd of Earth
> WHAT. Is your quest?
To stop the reapers
> WHAT. Is your favorite color?
And I was so pissed, I picked green ending because I didn't care anymore, watched the same cutscene as everyone else with a different color filter, uninstalled the entire series, and didn't bother again.
I recently replayed with the Happy Ending mod so there's at least a real fucking ending this time and it was much better. Still shit, just less shit.
Ditto. I replayed the fuck out of ME2 because the ending was so damned good.
As soon as I finished ME3, I have never touched the game (or series) again because it was that damn terrible.
I was feeling basically the same, and I still haven't replayed it. It really is incredible how a truly horrendous ending can feel like it also invalidates the whole journey.
Game of Thrones is in the same boat for me. I used to rewatch every single previous season leading up to the premier of a new season. I haven't rewatched any of it since that terrible ending. I tried to once, but I got so angry all over again.
I haven't touched the series since ME3 came out. It's the same as Game of Thrones for me; the ending was so bad it killed any interest I had in the franchise.
Man, I have to disagree. GoT was bad for awhile before the last episode aired. The entire final season is a difficult watch. ME3 is still a blast to play through, though. It's only the last few seconds of the game that are a letdown.
I recently replayed the remake trilogy after not touching the games for years, got to the ending of 3 and was so upset at how shit the ending is all over again.
If I remember correctly, I think the big reason the ending felt so abrupt was the writers made the reapers so powerful, that the only reasonable way of defeating them was some "deus-ex machina" shenanigan or making Shepherd do some unrealistic things. While it is a writers job to write their way out of predicaments, I can see why they didn't want to go down either of those roads. In perspective, if each reaper represents the entire knowlege and capability of a cycle, and there are literally THOUSANDS of reapers, you really dont have a chance after some point in time. Their collective knowledge and capabilities just become unstoppable.
But that was it, the crucible was talked up as a super-weapon that had also been created, refined, and improved with each cycle as well. Every cycle added very slight improvements that over time added up to its final design.
The reapers, generally speaking, didn’t improve with each cycle. Technologically they were all just variants of Harbinger, which was just at the level of the Leviathan’s technology. The nucleus of each reaper may have had the knowledge of each cycle, but they were limited when applying that knowledge since it was less advanced than what they already had.
So what would have arguably been better was a story where the crucible actually was a super weapon, and was used as such. Then you could have had the timeless hordes of goliaths that were taken down not through sheer might or ill-defined interactions with unknown entities, but through the determination and sacrifices of the countless billions of those from previous cycles who were presumed to be lesser.
Yeah, and you could just explain it away as the reapers getting complacent.
It's a nice story, and in line with the themes of everyone working together to achieve the ultimate goal. I think they could still throw in elements to make it less of a clean win.
I recall something about a setup for the Reapers' background in Mass Effect 2 that the third game completely ignored. The problem is not organics and synthetics. It's something about dark energy and mass effect fields killing stars.
So an alternative story might just be that the Reapers kill off civilizations harnessing mass effect fields in cycles as their solution. And for the third game, instead of the Crucible, Shepard helps with the project that will solve the problem that the Reapers concluded with genocide – while the Reapers are already invading. In a way, fighting and helping the Reapers at the same time.
If i remember correctly in the original script the reapers harvest species both to slow down the dark matter but also to add them to the collective consciousness trying to solve the issue.
Imagine going the diplomatic route and actually convincing the reapers that it's possible to wean the galaxy off of said mass effect use they're trying to curtail and it all ends that way.
And then you'd have to convince the council/you go public about it.
It would have been cool if there was an ending where the galaxy straight up beats the reapers. Maybe at a cost or something. Like, you go the “evil” route and use fusion bombs that kill the reapers but coincidentally kills most of earth.
That’s kind of like Destroy and losing the Geth. Would have been cool to see the Geth willingly make that choice themselves. It would have also made future decisions about AI lifeforms much more complex.
Goose bumps every single time. Man that felt good. ME is by far my favorite series, Andromeda included and I'll die on that hill.
I seriously hope the 5th installation will be amazing..
One thing I never got is that what happens after this battle. The Mass Relay's are all gone, and you've now got all these ships and aliens stuck in the one system. How does everyone get home?
There are still plenty of aliens in every sector of the galaxy, and during the extended cut ending cutscenes you can see races coming together to rebuild the mass relays.
Haha, I shot that damn kid not knowing that it *would* trigger another ending. I just wanted to do it for the funny and I got "everyone dies, the end" as a reward.
The conspiracy side of my brain is convinced BioWare did this in response to MrBTongue’s Tasteful, Understated Nerdrage video critique where he talks over a bunch of clips of him shooting the star child.
Giving players with a super high readiness score a different ending for this option would have solved pretty much any issue I had with the ending, that they never implemented something like that instead of the dumb refusal ending is one of the main reasons I don't really have any optimism about modern Bioware.
Yeah, red with high readiness score and paragon male default Shepard.
Only thing I am sad about is Geth getting fucked after them getting freedom and new life... But only Geth I cared about was Legion and he is death. And Quarians created Geths, they can create them again. and I don't like EDI so yeah, no loss here... Also when you are in presence of starchild (aka reaper in disguise, suddenly giving you peace options once they find out they are fucked) for more than 1 second, you wanna elbow drop that little spoiled shit, and destroy the red thing with smashing it's dead body against the machine....
Lmao. On my old reddit account, I once warned a guy who posted about how he was enjoying ME3 to stop at Marauder Shields and just quit the game. This was back before they had even patched the ending. He told me he appreciated the heads up, but he was still going to finish it.
A few weeks later he sent me a message ranting about the ending, and how he wished he had listened to me and stopped at Marauder Shields.
I was 20. Had been an early adopter of Mass Effect and it was one of, and still is one of, the best games I’d ever played.
Went to the midnight release. Hung outside my local GameStop in a sketchy neighborhood with some friends for 3 hours. Got my reserved copy. Went home, played an hour and passed out.
Woke up five hours later and did nothing but play the game. Finished it at 3am the next day with everything finish and a maxed out fleet. If there was a secret ending I was going to get it. I had scanned every fucking planet. Ever side quest. Spoken to every NPC. I had scoured the fucking galaxy for fleet strength and assets. I was going to do it…
We were going to beat the reapers.
That ending — The only game that ever made me physically ill. I felt fucking shook. I was so confused and not even angry I just felt hollow, like I was going to throw up. This was before I had forums to discuss this stuff and I was just… totally bummed out for days. I don’t even remember exactly why the ending felt so fucking horrible at the time but I’ll never forget the feeling.
The Mass Effect trilogy had some of my absolute favorite moments of all time in gaming, both happy and sad.
If you haven't played it yet and like story and characters in a sci-fi setting, go get the Legendary Edition and have 100-300 hours of BioWare's best.
Bioware. What the fuck. Cut the bullshit. Get Casey Hudson back and just make ME4. I know it's pandering but bring back Shepard. Times are tough. We need the guy.
It's was great until you get to stupid ending where it was choose green red or blue
Mass effect 3 was an amazing game until they did that utterly stupid disappointing ending
Oh look at Mr. I Didn't Sacrifice The Council In ME1 over here
It's better for humanity in the long run to save them.
Yeah "I fucking saved your asses" is a pretty strong argument.
Yup. The galaxy saw Hunanity as arrogant and self interested, demanding a seat other species had been tyring to get for ages. By saving the council, even at high losses, it showed humanity was willing to put itself on the line for the sake of others, proudly defying the previous perception.
They sacrificed the council because they belive that they a bunch of entitled, xenophobic jerks. I sacrificed them because I'm not good at the game and am very indecisive. We are not the same.
You hate Batarians because they burned your colony and enslaved your family. I hate Batarians because they're ugly as sin. We are not the same.
Coming from what looks like the unholy offspring of a Krogan and a Hanar, that's not saying much.
Hey the hanar porn is pretty successful in the galaxy
Stick your marklar in my marklar!
The day Batarians graced your colony and enslaved your family was the most important day of your life. To me, it was Tuesday.
You killed my father during the Skyllian Blitz! Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?
One that the Council doesn't really take to heart in ME2. I kinda regretting saving them when they didn't stop being total asses.
Humanities position in the grand scheme of the galaxy has actually improved a lot in ME2, Shepard just doesn’t benefit from them because they’re working for a human supremacist terrorist organisation who they once opposed after having been thought dead for years.
The issue with that choice is that when you are making it they specifically say “letting the council in could result in heavy casualties in the wards” but that point is never brought up again. Like bro there’s 13 million civilians on the ward and apparently it’s the good option to put them all at risk to protect 3 politicians?
As opposed to in [the space battle of this post](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Qll98IQcI), where every missed shot fired at the Reapers is gonna flatten and vaporize everything on Earth lol.
This is a weapon of mass destruction! You **do not** “eyeball” it!
damn really? It was either millions of casualties or like 8 people I really didn't fuck with in the first place so I let them die lol.
Millions? I don’t like the council as much as the next guy but it’s explicitly stated in ME2 that saving them saves more lives than it costs, Shepard mentions that the Alliance lost 8 cruisers to save the Ascension, each with a crew of around 300, but the Ascension has a crew of roughly 10,000. I guess we’re assuming all ships are lost with all hands, but yeah.
I still laugh when you get back in 2, and the Truain counselor does "air quotes" when saying, "Oh yes, ("repers")" It is a very human justure that only makes sense in English. And it's like the only time it happens with other Aliens.
That choice isn't ever about the Council for me. It's about the 50,000 people that crew the Destiny Ascension, and the fact that it is the most advanced/powerful spacecraft in Citadel space.
For me, it's about the fact that hanging back makes no tactical sense. Any Geth ships that were attacking the Council Fleet aren't going to just disappear after destroying the Destiny Ascension. Better to attack and divide the Geth fleet's attention, rather than try to take on Sovereign *and* the Geth fleet at the same time with no backup.
Yep, I 100% agree here. I kind of hated how (god I hope I'm remembering this correctly) the "concentrate on Sovereign" dialogue wheel option didn't do that and did something stupid instead. I feel like I might have even retconned that choice when it happened the first time, I don't remember. Also: this is post-hoc justification, but saving the council also opens up what IMO is easily the best interrupt in the entire series, in ME2. >!Everyone always laughs about the renegade options to punch Khalisah Al-Jilani... but in addition to admitting that I find that distasteful, I have a hard time imagining anything like that being remotely as satisfying as [the *verbal* punch](https://youtu.be/PMyEo0bXpxY?t=35) that paragon Shepard delivers in ME2 if they saved the council.!<
The sound of Renegade interrupts appearing is definitely Paragon Shepard's tinnitus acting up.
God, that's a great moment.
Yeah I dont see the quarians there too
Getting the quarians and the geth to work together and fight side by side was one of my favourite moments in ME that and fixing the genophage.
And then the star toddler tries to tell you that organic and synthetic life can't coexist...Look out the window, midwit. They're literally dying to protect each other.
"Yo check that out. Geth and Quarians reconciled their differences and work together. Your purpose is fulfilled." \*Reapers shut down, everyone claps, roll credits\*
And also the organic and synthetic love between Joker and EDI
Who's not gonna wanna nail EDI, brittle bones or not.
> fixing the genophage. This was my magnum opus across the 3 games. Felt legit pride releasing the cure.
And y’know, was muted slightly by the heartbreak.
He made mistakes but he paid for them in his own way.
True, someone else might have gotten it wrong.
He's had a good life. He was old for a Salarian, and he chose to go out both like a badass and doing something redemptive and good.
Had to be him. Someone else might get it wrong.
He was one of my favorite characters. I would pretty much always have him in my party. Was pretty bummed when he died.
Damn, it's been over a decade and I still feel a pang of sadness
Same Wrex was a bro from the start, I get that the Krogan went a bit nuts after the rachni wars but only like 1/10 births being viable and a people being left like that just didn’t set well for me then grunt joins you and that guy would literally run through a army for you. Krogan deserved another chance, Grunt and Wrex showed they were capable of being better than what they were turned into by uplifting their race too early to be used as war machines just to be punished for it.
I sacrificed the council and that ship still showed up, I assumed it was just the standard asari dreadnought design. I mean, there are at least 3 of them in this gif.
The big one with 4 fins is the Destiny Ascension, and only shows p if you save the council in mass effect 1. If you don't. Sovereign destroys the Destiny Ascension and kills he council aboard The other ships still show up no matter what's but they have only 3 fins and are smaller than the DA.
The destiny Ascension gets destroyed by the Geth ships. During that egagement Sovereign is "hooked up" to the Citadel while the Citadel's arms are closed.
Fair enough lol. I was just speaking in grander terms since sovereign is leading the geth.
Nah they are different, the Destiny Ascension has 4 points and the other Asari dreadnoughts only have three.
Well I'll be damned, legit hadn't noticed there was a difference
Fuck that Council. I'd sacrifice them every time.
Ah yes, sacrifice the Council. We have dismissed this claim.
They get replaced with worse councilers though. In all of my gaming years I have never hated a character as much as I hated udina (yes even more than kai leng)
Udina is such a fucking stellar uber-chode it's insane. He is the true villain of the series.
Mass Effect is perhaps one of the most epic and cinematic series of games. There are plenty of goosebump-inducing moments in these games.
Mass Effect is up there with some of the best SciFi franchises. They built an incredible setting. It pulls off scale better than most, too.
It's insane how much content and depth the Mass Effect trilogy has. I replay the series every few years and it's wild, I find something new every time, like the last time I found a warlord lady that I helped in the first game on Omega working for Aria or if you play as a Earthborn, Shepard was part of a criminal gang of earth supremacists (not cerberus another one) and you can help one of your old "friends" by threatening a turian cop.
If you haven't already, next time you play through give mods a try. Expanded Galaxy, the Spectre Expansion mod, LE3 Diversification Project, Take Earth Back, and the "Happy Ending Mod" (not *that* kind of happy ending, dammit) combine to turn ME3 into an even more comprehensive experience IMO.
That first conversation with sovereign always gets me. "You exist because we allow it. You will end because we demand it."
I still think the Reapers are the greatest video game villains of all-time. They were the embodiment of existential and cosmic dread. You can't run from them. You can't kill them (mostly). You can't outsmart them. You can't reason with them. There is no stopping them. Unfortunately, creating such an all-encompassing villain came with its own set of problems. By creating such an all-powerful villain, you back yourself into a corner from a writing standpoint on how to give your protagonists much tighter avenues to defeat said villain. You're going to need to come up with some damn good writing to avoid overly convenient and unsatisfying deus ex machinas - and the only solution they came up with is arguably the most infamous *deus ex machina* in gaming history. The other problem I think you run into - and I do go back and forth on this in my mind - is that the Reapers become less scary the more we learn about them. In ME1, they were mysterious and there was very little backstory. Obviously, with the story demands of two more games, you have to explain some things, but you also risk de-mystifying your villains and ruining some of the things that made them great - like showing too much of the monster in a slasher film to where it loses the effect of what made it scary. It's such a delicate balance.
> is that the Reapers become less scary the more we learn about them Considering it's a trilogy of dealing with them over 3 games, I think this was inevitable. And frankly it fits with the standard flow of a story/trilogy. Knowledge being the light that illuminates the darkness and whatnot. ME1 you had no idea what was happening, there was no consoling your wild imagination on what is actually going on. ME2 you understand parts of the threat and it seems hopeless. ME3 you learn more about them and that they can be fought, bringing hope.
In some ways ME3 looked the most hopeless. You'd hear about planets and sectors being lost, wiped out. IIRC you were even *at* some of them (Thessalia IIRC?) and couldn't stop the Reapers. At the same time, because the Reapers were finally there, fighting - that's when we were also able to fight back too.
Thessia was a great level, showing how even the most advanced species in the galaxy had no chance, then the boss fight happens. Fuck that character.
For me, my favorite was the beginning where you see Earth being attacked and you have to evacuate. And then you go to Palaven's moon and you see the Turians don't stand a chance either. The existential dread I felt playing Palaven's moon level and seeing the Reapers in the distance just freely destroying what is supposed to be the galaxy's most powerful military was amazing.
The Leviathan DLC is so fucking incredible, everything about the Reapers is phenomenal.
Again, I go back and forth on the Leviathan DLC. A part of me wants to know everything possible about the origin and backstory of the Reapers. Another part of me feels they are lesser for having learned it. I can't quite reconcile it in my mind. Maybe I truly would've preferred them to leave a little bit more to my imagination.
The sacrifice of the mystery is the trade off to knowledge. Space has lost some of its luster now that we know what those sparkly things are in the night sky. The sky in general really, since we figured out why it goes from blue to black. Many believed all of that to be the actions of a God or Heaven. I feel that unless the villain wins, a technological threat that is seemingly invincible ultimately can't be avoided in understanding more about them. It isn't akin to the first Predator or Alien movies, where the threat was organic. A friend and I had a similar talk about Sephiroth from FF7 and how he's much more humanized in later installments, from the vague mystery surrounding him in the original game. Is it better to keep the powerful characters a mystery or to let players know more about them? Most of the time, I'd honestly say the latter.
Drew Karpyshyn was the lead writer on the first two mass effect games. He left to pursue his personal work after ME2. Every time the end of ME3 comes up I wonder how he might have handled it differently.
This is why I absolutely loved and felt a strong emotional connection to the Javik and Prothean storyline. It's not just that Javik was the last of his kind but that his entire civilization did everything they could stop the Reapers and were unsuccessful. A civilization arguably more powerful and advanced than the Council species. This created an absolute sense of dread in me and really did an amazing job of setting the scale of the Reaper invasion.
Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.
They completely ruined the Reapers by explaining them. They went from being mysterious genocidal machines, to just being machines with a very poorly implemented code in them. Bioware should have kept them mysterious and give us nothing about their origin. Yeah people would have complained, but it would have been better than what they gave us.
Sovereign is the one villain in gaming that made me feel insignificant. Like, we were genuinely fucked. I know we beat the Reapers in the end, but they still killed trillions before we got them.
Exactly. I forgot I was in a video game for a moment.
RUDIMENTARY CREATURES OF BLOOD AND FLESH, YOU TOUCH MY MIND, FUMBLING IN IGNORANCE, INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING.
I think ME1 might be the best written game ever.
For me I doubt I'll ever see something eclipse Disco Elysium in terms of writing (prior to that I thought the same about Planescape: Torment, so proven wrong once!) but different strokes for different folks (though I did really enjoy Mass Effect as well).
DE has to be some kind of niche or something... after hearing about the writing and reviews I absolutely couldn't wait to get fully immersed in it. And I just didn't. I don't know what it was about it, but it didn't captivate me at all and I quit fairly early on. It just wasn't my style. PS:T still tops the list for me as a result.
It plays like Grim Fandango and I just can't seem to enjoy that style of game despite how amazing the story is.
How did you feel about the intro? I kinda felt that it did a good job of showing you what it was about fairly early on. To me the different intental voices felt like it was a really special way to capture the main characters emotional turmoil. It drops you right into their mind in the way only a good book can manage. It felt well written and thought out. Theres a fascinating world behind it all but i dont know if its the kind of game to be ‘immersed’ in. Its more of an internal exploration. Exploring different thoughts and ideas in the main characters head and other characters heads. All tied together with lots and lots of political satire. Once it all comes together you can start to get the fantasy theyre presenting but its really trying to get you to explore ideas as much as it wants you to explore the world.
Same. I played through it and I felt that so much of the game was explaining the political climate, which didn't seem to make much of a difference in the scope of the plot. It's well done and I can appreciate the effort that went into it, but it just didn't work for me.
The first game had a lot of thought put into the hard parts of the science fiction. I really liked that.
“This is my favorite shop on the citadel” *shivers. Wipes away a tear*
It was an amazing serious filled with sometimes very difficult choices to make... that was more than a little ruined by the entire epic boiling down to a pointless final decision. Even the extended ending left a bitter taste in my mouth. Its still one of my favorite sci-fi IPs, but man I wish they spent as much time on their ending as it deserved
> that was more than a little ruined by the entire epic boiling down to a pointless final decision. Which color did you pick?
There's only red. Red with high enough readiness that the \_thing\_ happens during the end cutscene.
If you picked anything but red, in my head canon, you succumbed to the Reapers.
I wholeheartedly believe in the indoctrination theory. It just makes the most sense given everything the game tells you through out all 3 games.
Hehehe, the thing, nice way to spoiler-protect it and let everybody knows who knows, know. I got them all in the end. Never felt so cheated in my life.
So long as you believe in your heart that there's only one ending, the whole trilogy really works nicely. All the choices you make are impactful on a small scale but in the end, the only path forward is the one where the reapers are gone. Probably played through a half dozen times. Never picked any other ending.
Same the other endings are not real and are the reapers tricking you. as proven by the thing happening.
I remember waiting a few months to pick it up on sale and saw all the hate without knowing about space child. I distinctly remember multiple times during that game thinking, "this is phenominal, I don't know how they could fuck this up." The whole Time you are uniting and bringing the galaxy together and every mission just gets you amped up more. Cure the genophage and see mordin's sacrifice... pure poetry. Free the rachni queen...I'm turning the reapers former weapons against them. So many great missions that just built to a crescendo. Should have just ended at marauder shields. I chose green so jester and edi could have little hybrid babies.
This scene still gives me chills! Ever since ME I chase the same sense of awe and epicness and can hardly find it.
My personality matrix can predict what the real Commander Shepard would say with 7% accuracy.
If you didn’t get the Geth and Quarians to settle their differences and help, could even call yourself Commander Shepard?
I never saw the result of that if you didn't until much later, on Youtube. That was one of the most ridiculously heartbreaking tragedies in the history of gaming. It just kept piling on and the accompanying music just punctuates it all in a perfect way. If I experienced that in-game and then the sadness of the rest ... yeah, I'm glad that I was truly Commander Shepherd.
"Shepard Commander. I must go to them. I'm sorry. It is the only way. Legion,... The answer to your question... Was 'yes.' I know, Tali. But thank you. Keelah se'lai."
I know people hated ME3 because of the ending. But fuck, it had some unbelievable moments. That, Mordin and the Genophage, Grunt's 'last stand'. Javik and the conversation about honor and ghosts.
ME3's big problem is the ending. I won't say it was 10/10 for all of the rest (the shadow people cutscenes suuuuck for one) but overall I think it was still a great game.
the walk up to the last mission where you can have a final talk with each crew member is worth 100 shitty endings imo
My favourite moment is when you have tali as the RI (tali best girl, fight me) is when she is talking about her experience with racial prejudice and how she could have rubbed it in the face of the turian officer who abused her when she first arrives in the citadel in ME 1. Shepard: the difference is you helped when it counted. Tali: The difference was you. [Here's](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JFL46SgQOMw&pp=ygU2TWFzcyBlZmZlY3QgMyB0YWxpIGNvbnZlcnNhdGlvbiB3aXRoIHR1cmlhbiBvbiBjaXRhZGVs) a link to the entire convo
That is also a good one. I think, frankly, they ended *everyone's* arcs in as interesting and powerful of ways as possible. Even the Illusive Man becoming >!a puppet of the Reapers, realizing his "going against the grain for all our interests" ultimately went directly, emphatically against human interests at the time it mattered most,!< Or bringing Liara and Javik with you on the Asari homeworld mission and her illusion of everything about her species and his being broken. Or the end of Jack's arc, becoming the coolest teacher in X-man psionic school. Having an actual place to belong and people to protect. It just missed the shot on the ending. That was it, I think.
I didn’t do Jack’s mission in time and it absolutely gutted me learning what I missed out on, after having to put her down as a phantom
Unpopular opinion: at this point I rather like the ending. Could it have been written a bit better? Sure. But I appreciate that at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the the choices you made. The ends are the same, they do not justify the means, all that changed is what you decided throughout the series. It makes renegade shepherd regret hit much harder, provides paragon relief of their choices, and leaves neutral to ponder their decisions. Because in the end you can choose any types “ending”.
I'd agree with that. Extended cut definitely... Well, helped with the landing for that, too.
For sure. I never had any dlc either when I was younger and only “citadel” later on. Legendary edition has been a nice refresh, almost new content to me! Haha
Oh man, even Javik? Javik should have been base game. Seeing the aftereffects of the previous cycle embodied felt. Vital, to me.
I've pretty much accepted the Indoctrination Theory. No one is immune to indoctrination.
If the developers had been able to say the indoctrination theory was canon, I would've lost my mind at the level of mind fuck. Instead they stuck with the "artistic integrity" line even though it really just seemed like they got rushed and had to release it unfinished. The fact that you only get the special cutscene with shepard when you choose a specific option makes me believe it is the only true ending. Edit: Apparently there are people on this thread that haven't played these games yet, some I'm editing to remove spoilery stuff.
As an aside there is a strategy game called "Stellaris" where you build a space empire. It has one of my favorite variations of this type of conversation. You can choose different Ethos for your Empire two of which are Spiritualism (there is more to the Universe than what we can measure) and Philosophical Materialism (there isn't anything beyond matter, energy and forces of the Universe). If you have robots in your Empire they might eventually question their sentience. You get a pop-up from the robots asking if they have a soul. There are a few ways to answer but if you are a Materialist Empire you can basically say, "No you don't have a soul but it is fine neither do we."
I actually hated the way she says that, as if the quarians are the ones who get to answer that question. The entire storyline leading up to that made me quite uncomfortable. The desire of the geth, as described in ME2, was to develop their own technology rather than rely on shortcuts from the reapers. A major theme of the first game was that using Reaper technology unwittingly led us down a path they laid out for us, making us their puppets. And in talking to Legion, Shepard can learn that as a hive mind geth may think and act differently from us, but that doesn't make them any less of a valid life form. And then ME3 comes around and says "Oh actually, they're not *real* life forms just yet, they need a little bit of that *organic magic* that makes us natural life forms REAL people. Can't be truly intelligent unless you're just like us. Oh also, you should totally trust this reaper code to do what we think it does, despite literally everything we know about them and their indoctrination." So you can force an entire species of AIs to take an upgrade, developed from a known enemy, just to make them more similar to yourself, and keep them from their own self-determination? And that's supposed to be a *good thing?*
It wasn't so much that he needed her to confirm his having a soul for his sake, but by her saying he has a soul she acknowledges as a Quarian that he as a geth and therefore all geth should exist, and are not just malfunctioning machines. So, her statement is a Quarian acknowledging that the war is completely wrong.
Hearing “I” after only hearing him say “we” the whole time really snapped it into place for me.
If you didn't genocide at least one species out of spite, did you even play Mass Effect?
I did, they're called the Krogans and its fine because Ashley killed Wrex in my first ME1 playthrough anyway.
Shepard: *signal Ashley* *Wrex gets shot* Shepard: "Ashley! WTF!"
Now that you mention it, some of my decisions involving Batarians may be considered war crimes.
That’s difficult to do in one playthrough, without reading the step by step on how to do that. Some of the choices are not intuitive.
People, if you haven't played the Mass Effect trilogy and love story driven RPGs - go play it now. It's 3 games telling a one long and very interesting story in a very well developed world. It has been remastered with a Legendary edition release where all 3 games are in one package.
And it also ~~had~~ has one of the most fun multiplayer modes ever. Playing as a Krogan and answering a Brute's charge with a charge of your own? FOR TUCHANKA!
Oh, how I wish they had revived multiplayer when they released the Legendary Edition.
I was so mad they didn't.
Asari Valkyrie, Reegar Carbine, Dark Channel, Warp Rounds IV. Even Platinum Praetorians get melted in seconds. Doubly so when leading off with a Warp for biobooms.
Alliance infiltrator unit with a N7 Crusader was my go too. Fast, able to stay alive, and melted most enemies effortlessly, especially the Shield bitches.
Here I gooooo
SCREAM MY LUUUNGS OUUUT
Went to see how much it cost, got greeted with an “already purchased” so guess it’s time to learn what I’ve been missing
Do it!!!
I only played the trilogy once and on Xbox 360. Now I have a monster pc with a 4090 and a widescreen monitor so I’m damn tempted to start the legendary edition. Gotta finish Kingdom Come Deliverance first though!
The disk drive on my Xbox quit working so maybe I'm due for the legendary. And maybe the whole first game won't be fuzzy like a soap opera
I love these types of games. I love SciFi. I started playing ME Legendary Edition last year, but I just... could not get into it. I can't tell if it was because it felt a bit dated, or because I had just come off of reading The Expanse series (too much SciFi all at once???), but it just could not hold my interest. I was very surprised, too, because it's really right up my alley and I expected to love it. Maybe I just need another attempt...
Mass Effect will always be my favorite game series that I kept coming back to replay every once in a while. I will be waiting patiently for the next installment
Even andromeda? Good gravy that game was ass
It was okay not something worth replaying though I'd say
Becoming a the first human spectre is right up there though. Such an awesome moment.
Another good one is when you get to the Citadel, and Hackett's reaction is a surprised "Holy shit, he did it."
Pride... and accomplishment?
Laughs in EA
Insert woody harrelson wiping tears with money meme
Getting everyone through the Suicide Mission in ME2 was an enormous sense of accomplishment for me. I was SO nervous, and then SO relieved.
STILL gives me goosebumps
I have this in my library and have never played it.
I'm not saying you should drop everything and play it, but you should drop everything and play it. Lol I love ME. It is easily one of my favorites.
Make the time, it's worth it.
I would kill to be in your position and be able to experience the story fresh. I love the game and play the trilogy every few years.
ME1 plays a little rough these days, but 2&3 are fucking fantastic.
It's one of the few games that I keep replaying every few years and it's always worth it, so much content and something "new" to discover every single time.
Man, everything really was amazing in that third game right up until literally the last 30-60 minutes, and that was nearly enough to tank the whole series. Combat? Excellent. Story (minus the ending)? Great. Companions? 10/10. Romance? Heartwarming (Tali is best). Cinematography? Still get chills seeing some of the scenes. Inclusion of previous game’s choices? Done about as well as can be realistically expected. They did *so much* right, only to stumble the last step. It’s honestly so depressing.
> Man, everything really was amazing in that third game right up until literally the last 30-60 minutes, and that was nearly enough to tank the whole series. It was really incredible how much they fucked it up at the absolute 11th hour. The whole time I was playing ME3, I was thinking about how as soon as I beat it, I was going to start over on ME1 and make all completely different choices and see how everything turned out. Then I beat the game, and didn't even touch the series again for another 6 years at least.
[удалено]
The fact that ME3 ended like that didn't bother me. Coming up with an ending that was going to bring the trilogy to a successful conclusion, after the titanic scope of the conflict they set up, was a near-impossible task. What bothered me was that the game *strongly* implied that the synthesis (green) ending was the best one and the one you should pick for the most satisfying resolution. Well, fuck that noise. I spent three games trying to kill the Reapers, I'm going to kill the damn Reapers.
How was it implied? If anything, we have more evidence showing that working with the reapers just leads you to become a tool for them. Look at Saren. Also, Shooting the star child reveals it as being a reaper trying to influence your decision. In my head, if you picked anything but the destroy ending, you mentally succumbed to the reapers, and the final hour of the game is their last desperate attempt to brute force themselves into Shepards mind.
I know it's not real, but the Indoctrination Theory was SO good. I make myself believe it really happened that way so that I can be really happy with the ending of ME3.
Haha, I remember when the Extended Ending DLC came out and I tried shooting the Starchild just for the fun of it, not expecting anything at all to happen. Scared the *crap* out of me. ...Then I was annoyed because I had to play the final sequences through again to pick a "real" ending.
The synthesis ending is Saren's ending.
I think the best ending was red (hard to remember meaningless colors) The one where you destroy all traces of reaper and protean technology across the galaxy. Then the final scene shows Shepard's chest suddenly heaving with a breath. Showing he survived compared to the other somewhat distasteful choices. To me, if Shepard didn't live, it was a bad ending.
That was me for over a decade. I was so ready to replay the entire series again. And then the entire series came down to > WHAT. Is your name? Commander Shepherd of Earth > WHAT. Is your quest? To stop the reapers > WHAT. Is your favorite color? And I was so pissed, I picked green ending because I didn't care anymore, watched the same cutscene as everyone else with a different color filter, uninstalled the entire series, and didn't bother again. I recently replayed with the Happy Ending mod so there's at least a real fucking ending this time and it was much better. Still shit, just less shit.
Ditto. I replayed the fuck out of ME2 because the ending was so damned good. As soon as I finished ME3, I have never touched the game (or series) again because it was that damn terrible.
I was feeling basically the same, and I still haven't replayed it. It really is incredible how a truly horrendous ending can feel like it also invalidates the whole journey. Game of Thrones is in the same boat for me. I used to rewatch every single previous season leading up to the premier of a new season. I haven't rewatched any of it since that terrible ending. I tried to once, but I got so angry all over again.
I haven't touched the series since ME3 came out. It's the same as Game of Thrones for me; the ending was so bad it killed any interest I had in the franchise.
Man, I have to disagree. GoT was bad for awhile before the last episode aired. The entire final season is a difficult watch. ME3 is still a blast to play through, though. It's only the last few seconds of the game that are a letdown.
I recently replayed the remake trilogy after not touching the games for years, got to the ending of 3 and was so upset at how shit the ending is all over again.
I remember sitting there as the credits scrolled completely dumbfounded and confused. "Wait, that was it? This is how it ends? What the fuck!?"
> They did so much right More than we could have hoped for.
Someone else would have gotten it wrong.
If I remember correctly, I think the big reason the ending felt so abrupt was the writers made the reapers so powerful, that the only reasonable way of defeating them was some "deus-ex machina" shenanigan or making Shepherd do some unrealistic things. While it is a writers job to write their way out of predicaments, I can see why they didn't want to go down either of those roads. In perspective, if each reaper represents the entire knowlege and capability of a cycle, and there are literally THOUSANDS of reapers, you really dont have a chance after some point in time. Their collective knowledge and capabilities just become unstoppable.
But that was it, the crucible was talked up as a super-weapon that had also been created, refined, and improved with each cycle as well. Every cycle added very slight improvements that over time added up to its final design. The reapers, generally speaking, didn’t improve with each cycle. Technologically they were all just variants of Harbinger, which was just at the level of the Leviathan’s technology. The nucleus of each reaper may have had the knowledge of each cycle, but they were limited when applying that knowledge since it was less advanced than what they already had. So what would have arguably been better was a story where the crucible actually was a super weapon, and was used as such. Then you could have had the timeless hordes of goliaths that were taken down not through sheer might or ill-defined interactions with unknown entities, but through the determination and sacrifices of the countless billions of those from previous cycles who were presumed to be lesser.
Yeah, and you could just explain it away as the reapers getting complacent. It's a nice story, and in line with the themes of everyone working together to achieve the ultimate goal. I think they could still throw in elements to make it less of a clean win.
I recall something about a setup for the Reapers' background in Mass Effect 2 that the third game completely ignored. The problem is not organics and synthetics. It's something about dark energy and mass effect fields killing stars. So an alternative story might just be that the Reapers kill off civilizations harnessing mass effect fields in cycles as their solution. And for the third game, instead of the Crucible, Shepard helps with the project that will solve the problem that the Reapers concluded with genocide – while the Reapers are already invading. In a way, fighting and helping the Reapers at the same time.
If i remember correctly in the original script the reapers harvest species both to slow down the dark matter but also to add them to the collective consciousness trying to solve the issue.
Imagine going the diplomatic route and actually convincing the reapers that it's possible to wean the galaxy off of said mass effect use they're trying to curtail and it all ends that way. And then you'd have to convince the council/you go public about it.
It would have been cool if there was an ending where the galaxy straight up beats the reapers. Maybe at a cost or something. Like, you go the “evil” route and use fusion bombs that kill the reapers but coincidentally kills most of earth.
That’s kind of like Destroy and losing the Geth. Would have been cool to see the Geth willingly make that choice themselves. It would have also made future decisions about AI lifeforms much more complex.
Goose bumps every single time. Man that felt good. ME is by far my favorite series, Andromeda included and I'll die on that hill. I seriously hope the 5th installation will be amazing..
One thing I never got is that what happens after this battle. The Mass Relay's are all gone, and you've now got all these ships and aliens stuck in the one system. How does everyone get home?
There are still plenty of aliens in every sector of the galaxy, and during the extended cut ending cutscenes you can see races coming together to rebuild the mass relays.
But how long would that take. I feel like there would still be a massive refugee problem. That's a lot of extra people to feed and stuff...
And then you got to pick between red, green, or blue ending.
They later added an ending where you shoot the kid, and everyone dies.
Haha, I shot that damn kid not knowing that it *would* trigger another ending. I just wanted to do it for the funny and I got "everyone dies, the end" as a reward.
The conspiracy side of my brain is convinced BioWare did this in response to MrBTongue’s Tasteful, Understated Nerdrage video critique where he talks over a bunch of clips of him shooting the star child.
You forgot the refusal ending.
Which was basically a “fuck you guys” ending. “Guys” being the players.
Giving players with a super high readiness score a different ending for this option would have solved pretty much any issue I had with the ending, that they never implemented something like that instead of the dumb refusal ending is one of the main reasons I don't really have any optimism about modern Bioware.
Yeah, red with high readiness score and paragon male default Shepard. Only thing I am sad about is Geth getting fucked after them getting freedom and new life... But only Geth I cared about was Legion and he is death. And Quarians created Geths, they can create them again. and I don't like EDI so yeah, no loss here... Also when you are in presence of starchild (aka reaper in disguise, suddenly giving you peace options once they find out they are fucked) for more than 1 second, you wanna elbow drop that little spoiled shit, and destroy the red thing with smashing it's dead body against the machine....
Bingo. I almost tripped with how fast I sprinted to hit the red button. Fuck the Reapers. Fuck the Starchild. Ya'll ain't fooling me.
Marauder Shields and the Three Husketeers tried to stop us from seeing that ending
Lmao. On my old reddit account, I once warned a guy who posted about how he was enjoying ME3 to stop at Marauder Shields and just quit the game. This was back before they had even patched the ending. He told me he appreciated the heads up, but he was still going to finish it. A few weeks later he sent me a message ranting about the ending, and how he wished he had listened to me and stopped at Marauder Shields.
Posting this without sound and music is a crime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Qll98IQcI
Still gives me chills watching this.
\*Cracks knuckles\* Currently unplayed in my games library
The Avengers assemble moment of the trilogy.
To think we lost Mass Effect for Anthem.
I was 20. Had been an early adopter of Mass Effect and it was one of, and still is one of, the best games I’d ever played. Went to the midnight release. Hung outside my local GameStop in a sketchy neighborhood with some friends for 3 hours. Got my reserved copy. Went home, played an hour and passed out. Woke up five hours later and did nothing but play the game. Finished it at 3am the next day with everything finish and a maxed out fleet. If there was a secret ending I was going to get it. I had scanned every fucking planet. Ever side quest. Spoken to every NPC. I had scoured the fucking galaxy for fleet strength and assets. I was going to do it… We were going to beat the reapers. That ending — The only game that ever made me physically ill. I felt fucking shook. I was so confused and not even angry I just felt hollow, like I was going to throw up. This was before I had forums to discuss this stuff and I was just… totally bummed out for days. I don’t even remember exactly why the ending felt so fucking horrible at the time but I’ll never forget the feeling.
Felt super similar, I also binged the hell out of the game, only to feel the biggest disappointment I felt in gaming at the end.
Bro…when he said he was proud of me I legit never heard someone say that to me in my life…I still remember it
For me it was everybody surviving the final mission in mass effect 2
When I saw the first time, I was blown away. Now I am thinking of playing again to just feel this moment again.
I'll never forgive them for how little time we got with Legion and Thane.
The Mass Effect trilogy had some of my absolute favorite moments of all time in gaming, both happy and sad. If you haven't played it yet and like story and characters in a sci-fi setting, go get the Legendary Edition and have 100-300 hours of BioWare's best.
Bioware. What the fuck. Cut the bullshit. Get Casey Hudson back and just make ME4. I know it's pandering but bring back Shepard. Times are tough. We need the guy.
Old man shepherd with a sexy beard? Bring it on
It's was great until you get to stupid ending where it was choose green red or blue Mass effect 3 was an amazing game until they did that utterly stupid disappointing ending
You can't count the top 3 games in Scifi franchise without mentioning the Mass Effect series.