Mass Effect 1-3: Its been a great journey, hasn't it?

[Gungalley]

Regardless of how underwhelming the ending was, anyone else thought it had been a great journey? These thoughts were especially invoked towards the end, where there was a brief flashback of joker and liara. I'm seriously gonna miss my crew members, not so much anderson, but almost everyone else from teh normandy. Especially Liara the nerd, Ashley the racist, Joker, Garrus, Tali, Wrex even EDI, not to mention the ME2 crew too. Last time I felt this much for characters of a game was Max Payne, and before that Baldur's Gate.

[Katsumoto]

For me the ending of the third game kinda rendered the whole 'journey' somewhat... pointless. The games were good, no doubt, but all throughout the series Shepard's purpose was to destroy the Reapers and save the galaxy. Then to go out on such a terrible note is just... lame, to put it mildly.

[Tankfriend]

Yes, it definitely was a great journey if you played the series end-on-end with the same character, I can agree with you there. But I also have to agree with Katsumoto that, regardless of how great the journey was, it was all rendered pointless by the ending, because nothing you ever did in the entire series really mattered in the end.

[Eikki]

Journey that ended with us falling into a space magic plothole filled with speculation and 'artistic integrity'. In other words we're stuck up creek with no paddle.

[Gungalley]

They should have went the dragon age origins route.

[The Dude]

ME1 and ME2 were a great journey.

ME3 was the pile of crap I always feared it would be.

[Vhaelor]

For me the ending of the third game kinda rendered the whole 'journey' somewhat... pointless. The games were good, no doubt, but all throughout the series Shepard's purpose was to destroy the Reapers and save the galaxy. Then to go out on such a terrible note is just... lame, to put it mildly.

I can only agree with you here Katsumoto . This was like playing Luke Skywalker throughout Episodes IV to VI and at the very last part of Episode VI, Luke threw himself on Vader's pyre so the fire wouldn't die out. Just because that's something deep and meaningful to do.

I also didn't like the progressive dumbing down of gameplay elements, and I hate the Spacebar with a passion in ME3, so many actions hammered into one key is not good. Especially since you can't change the keybind for individual actions...

[PGeo36]

I also didn't like the progressive dumbing down of gameplay elements, and I hate the Spacebar with a passion in ME3, so many actions hammered into one key is not good. Especially since you can't change the keybind for individual actions...

This. I have been killed so many times by instead of leaping sideways I take cover, or I'm trying to sprint away but take cover.

[Gaidin]

It's something you have to get used to on the console.

[Gungalley]

ME1 and ME2 were a great journey.

ME3 was the pile of crap I always feared it would be.

I would have to disagree with you. ME3 before the mad rush to the beam was brilliant. There were several unforgettable moments like mordins sacrifice, curing the genophage, rannoch and edi becoming more human to name a few examples.

[The Dude]

I would have to disagree with you. ME3 before the mad rush to the beam was brilliant. There were several unforgettable moments like mordins sacrifice, curing the genophage, rannoch and edi becoming more human to name a few examples.

There were without a doubt brilliant bits of storytelling. But the game as a whole was just... disappointing.

You know what was so awesome about Shepard in ME1? There was no Shepard. Shepard was a blank on the team. Shepard was whoever you made him or her to be. Not a single line of dialogue came from his/her mouth without your approval, not a single decision was made without your consent. It was your adventure, through and through.

In ME2, this still for the most part holds true. There are a few instances of autodialogue, but they pale in comparison to ME3.

Over the course of the trilogy the writers decided that Shep had to go from being an avatar of the player to a pre-conceived person that you can only accentuate. And so in ME3 we get this nonsense with Shep's grief over the kid, the copious amounts of autodialogue, the extremely limited choice wheels, the linear story progression and so forth.

Combine this with an extremely amateurish mainplot that only barely manages to tie events together, and you've got an underwhelming product.

I'm fine with playing a preconceived character in a third person sci-fi shooter. I did so in Gears of War. But that game didn't offer me the pretense of choice, whereas ME3 did. If the guys at Bioware had been honest about it I'd have had less gripes. But the problem is that they genuinely believe that this is the best possible sequel they could've made, when that's such blatant bollocks. They could've made things far better than this.

As it stands I'm seriously not kidding when I say that I'll take Marcus Fenix over Shepard any day of the week. At least Epic didn't lie about what they sold, and they managed to produce a story with more cohesion and better planning than Bioware the oh-so-legendary storytelling RPG developer did. I'll pass on whatever they churn out next, I don't think I've ever been so disappointed with a work of fiction.

[Gaidin]

Mass Effect just makes a shift from the American RPG style to the Japanese RPG style over the series, not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the story starts focuses in on the end.

[Kanaric]

Meh series. It was good but i've played better.

Realms of Arkana, Baldurs Gate, Fallout 1/2, Star Control, Planescape......

I almost felt like 2 of these games had the gameplay of one of those. BG2 at the end I had 180 hours in that game. I think I beat ME1 in 18-20 completing all side quests.

Mass Effect just makes a shift from the American RPG style to the Japanese RPG style over the series, not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the story starts focuses in on the end.

Well JRPGs have been all for about a decade now and if Mass Effect was Japanese it would clearly be the best in that genre.

I agree it was too J. Especially after the beginning of the 2nd game where they rebuild your character to be "special" and related to the finales and bosses ala the typical japanese protagonist. Once that reveal was let loose the game dumped a few notches in greatness as its probably the most cliche JRPG plot point of all time. Since FF7 about 9/10 jrpgs use that trope and i'm tired of it. At least when they did it in BG1 it was still fresh.

The game became not really an RPG but a console style action/adventure game like God of War or something along those lines but with dialogue. Or like Metal Gear Solid but less linear (lol more JDM game plot points that ME uses).

All in all ME was a unoriginal action series with high production values. What saved it was the conversation choices and faux-non linear gameplay. Its what a game should be by default if more companlies like Activision put an effort into their CoD series singleplayer for example but its not great by any means.

Put it in these teams. In the 1980s the foxbody Mustang is considered to be a great car due to its competition. In the similarly malaise era of RPG gaming as in the malaise era of cars ME is considered great as well. The series simply has no competition except from Skyrim (lol) so people will think more highly of a game that isn't one of the all time greats. Like people who think CoD MW3 is good.

[The Dude]

Mass Effect just makes a shift from the American RPG style to the Japanese RPG style over the series, not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the story starts focuses in on the end.

It doesn't "just" make a shift. "Just" implies its fine. What they did was start a trilogy one way and get players invested for it, and then ended up is as something else entirely. Again, I don't mind the execution of ME3 in itself. DE:HR is exactly like this and I don't care, because Eidos knew what they were selling me and didn't pretend to make anything else.

But Mike Gamble, Casey Hudson and Hack Walters spent their time selling a product they would never produce. ME3 as a whole is a completely underwhelming conclusion because not only does it forsake what made the story interesting for a completely hamfisted and shoehorned philosophical angle that contradicts itself, they also take player agency out of the game and replace it with a different model entirely.

Moreover, careful examination of press releases and interviews and statements shows us that even as late as May 2011 (Casey's gameinformer interview) they still didn't know how the story was going to end, because nothing he said there relates in any way to the game Bioware ended up delivering. He was going off concept material. The final draft for the main story is almost certainly a post-summer production. That's not how you go into a trilogy where choice carries over. That's amateurism of the first order.

[Gaidin]

Now you're ranting. As pedantic as your reactions to the game are, you're missing the change in story style. Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 are more character driven stories, allowing for the American RPG style where you are the character. With the high scale reaper invasion of Mass Effect 3, the story shifts directly to an event driven style, with no questions asked, and no apologies made. From the standpoint of RPG style, this is more in line with the Japanese RPG, where you aren't the character so much as you control the character. Your choices, with the event-driven style, aren't about the characters anymore. They're about the war. This is why your choices, with very few exceptions, are about who you're recruiting instead of which individual you're going to screw over with some weird dialogue choice.

[The Dude]

Now you're ranting.

No I think I quite accurately pointed out what my objections to the game are and what I base them on. On the other hand, you're being contrary for its own sake, as always.

Also, all you're doing is provide (speculative) clarification on why Bioware did what they did. That doesn't make it any less bad.

[Gaidin]

Also, all you're doing is provide (speculative) clarification on why Bioware did what they did. That doesn't make it any less bad.

Yea really. Let's see you give a reason why it's not an event driven story. It should be interesting, if you can even do that. You don't even analyze the material, ever. Like a guided laser you go straight towards ranting on Demonic Entities That Work At Bioware(TM) as opposed to saying anything useful. You're not even pissed off about the material, you got to the ending, and then you got pissed, went back to the rest of the story, and looked for more. When that didn't work you thought up the crazy idea of 'this is what they said but this isn't what they gave me' and let yourself loose. Hence why you focus on them instead of the actual material at hand. If you were really upset about the style of story you'd have been ranting from minute one instead of focusing on the ending for a month and then seeing what else can piss you off because dammit you're not pissed off enough already.

[Vhaelor]

Now you're ranting. As pedantic as your reactions to the game are, you're missing the change in story style. Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 are more character driven stories, allowing for the American RPG style where you are the character. With the high scale reaper invasion of Mass Effect 3, the story shifts directly to an event driven style, with no questions asked, and no apologies made. From the standpoint of RPG style, this is more in line with the Japanese RPG, where you aren't the character so much as you control the character. Your choices, with the event-driven style, aren't about the characters anymore. They're about the war. This is why your choices, with very few exceptions, are about who you're recruiting instead of which individual you're going to screw over with some weird dialogue choice.

And frankly, I have always despised JRPGs for that very reason, western RPGs are the reason why I fell for games like Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Mass Effect. I started a new playthrough in ME1, and every dialoguewheel is filled with choices. In the third game it's utter crap in comparison with at most 3 choices. Four if you include paragon/renegade choices - and that's another aspect of "dumbing down" that i despise in the third game.

Sure ME3 delivers a good story, but in terms of RPG'ing - both ME1 and ME2 outperform ME3 by lightyears.

Bioware's mistake in my opinion has been to change the formula instead of improve on it. Changing a winning recipe for the sake of changing it is simply put a stupid thing to do.

[Gaidin]

And frankly, I have always despised JRPGs for that very reason, western RPGs are the reason why I fell for games like Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Mass Effect. I started a new playthrough in ME1, and every dialoguewheel is filled with choices. In the third game it's utter crap in comparison with at most 3 choices. Four if you include paragon/renegade choices - and that's another aspect of "dumbing down" that i despise in the third game.

Sure ME3 delivers a good story, but in terms of RPG'ing - both ME1 and ME2 outperform ME3 by lightyears.

Bioware's mistake in my opinion has been to change the formula instead of improve on it. Changing a winning recipe for the sake of changing it is simply put a stupid thing to do.

I think that dialogue wheel change is largely due to the annoyance of the dialogue wheel between missions in the second game. Typical pattern was to see what the characters had to say between missions, problem being, that particular dialogue was layered 3 levels deep into their dialogue wheels, and it could get pretty damn annoying going through three levels dialogue only to have them say "Nah, I got nothing to talk about right now". Needless to say, it didn't take me very long to stop giving a frak what the other characters had to say about the game's developments. In ME3, it's so damn easy to hear that dialogue it's beautiful.

That said, it should've been a change that was only applied locally, to the characters on the Normandy, when they were on the Normandy, so you could hit that dialogue very easily, but they took it off every other character you run across for the most part. That's where their mistake was, not the fact that they made that change at all.

[ggggtotalwarrior]

I personally really liked the events in the game at Tuchanka, Rannoch, etc. They were events that were really well done. The area where I'll agree with The Dude on the main game (other than the ending, which I agree sucked) is the progression of the Renegade options, from doing the brutal thing because it's necessary to just being a dick for no apparent reason and with no advantage. I thing it really happened when they decided to use a KoTOR-style "scarring" system to show your Shepard's corruption. Once that happened they started making the Renegade options useless.