Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread

Citizen86 wrote:

I've been reading though, it's interesting that ghost child was explained in DLC. Put me on board of the crowd that thinks it's awesome that it is paid DLC to explain the ending in a reasonable manner.

I haven't played Leviathan yet, but so far my explanation for the child is simply that Shepherd saw a kid who ended up presumably dying, and then she had plain old nightmares about him as sort of a PTSD effect. I also think the kid could be said to represent humanity in Shepherd's mind, which is why she's so stuck on the event. Then in the end, the AI took the appearance of the kid because of his significance to Shepherd, regardless of whether this is something the AI did and appeared as a hologram or, my preference, that the AI was never actually visible but simply given form by Shepherd within her own imagination as a way to visualize the AI talking to her.

Regarding the ending, my issue is really just that the actual ending was kind of a flop compared to different ways I think they could have ended the series. But really, I'd say the same about ME3 in general. Everything up through the Quarian / Geth conflict was fantastic, and things took a nosedive after that. I ultimately just imagined that I chose the "control" ending and then immediately commanded the reapers to fly into the nearest sun. Reaper destruction achieved without any collateral damage.

All I wanted were cut scenes of my biotic student shock troopers, Krogan death squad, Volus dreadnought and Elcors equipped with laser cannons and I got bupkis.

I finally finished the game. I thought the ending was okay. The Leviathon DLC definitely helped with it (I haven't played From Ashes). They said this is the end of Shepard's tale so his sacrifice in the end of ME3 was something that I was kind of expecting.

complexmath wrote:

Everything up through the Quarian / Geth conflict was fantastic, and things took a nosedive after that.

Totally. I loved so much in all the ME games. I wasn't impressed with the end, but the journey was amazing, so I wasn't as cheesed off as a lot of people.

I think ME3 pleasantly surprised me for the following reasons:

1. I never had any expectations about the ending. After Terminator Baby, all bets were pretty much off.

2. ME2 showed that Bioware can't cash the checks they were writing. The 4 divergent states at the end of ME1 suggested radically different game paths through ME2. That didn't happen.

ME3 surprisingly took a lot of elements from ME1 and ME2 and wove out of them a linear narrative that nonetheless could take players to profoundly different events in subtle but expected ways. Contrast to how ME2 does this (disappointing cameos). Contrast to Witcher (hits you over the head with a mallet), contrast to DAO (gives you a still photo and some text). ME3 narrative structure combined with diverse animated and acted content was nothing short of genre-evolving.

And people only noticed the ending?!?! Ugh.

I think the thing that bugs me the most about the DLC, etc. is that it all feels like the art was compromised by the business. All of the things I was afraid EA would do to Bioware seem to have come true and that really bums me out.

Hey now, no white knighting the developers!

DSGamer wrote:

I think the thing that bugs me the most about the DLC, etc. is that it all feels like the art was compromised by the business. All of the things I was afraid EA would do to Bioware seem to have come true and that really bums me out.

I disagree. Essentially all published writing is submitted to peer and editorial review and comes out the better for it. Is reader / player feedback really so different? And for ME3 I get the impression that they didn't really alter the story anyway, but rather tried to communicate it better. Ultimately, the artist is always right though. All those people who insist that Han shot first should just shut up.

I've never understood the idea that all the various races being trapped on Earth would cause a food shortage problem. Earth could easily support the sort of armies that would have ended up stranded there. Even if every race brought a thousand ships with a crew of a thousand each, that's only a million per race. A drop in the ocean compared to Earth's population even today. Even if overcrowding were an issue on future-Earth, it probably wouldn't be after the Reapers were finished with it.

It'd be a tough logistical feat to begin with, but Earth will need to rebuild anyway, and now it has lots of fit members of diverse alien races with many different skill sets to help out. Heck, a new Mass Effect game set in that world would probably be pretty cool!

After listening to the Giant Bombcast and their use of the term retcon, I realized that I felt the same way about the new ME3 ending. It's better overall. Especially with Leviathan. But I experienced the game the original way. It would seem strange to get a Mass Effect 4 set a few years after the last one, complete with mass relays, all the same species, etc. It would be far more interesting to set it in the time where Liara's time capsule is being discovered. Or set it in the Sol System without mass relays. There were potentially interesting stories to tell there.

Redwing wrote:

I've never understood the idea that all the various races being trapped on Earth would cause a food shortage problem. Earth could easily support the sort of armies that would have ended up stranded there. Even if every race brought a thousand ships with a crew of a thousand each, that's only a million per race. A drop in the ocean compared to Earth's population even today. Even if overcrowding were an issue on future-Earth, it probably wouldn't be after the Reapers were finished with it.

It'd be a tough logistical feat to begin with, but Earth will need to rebuild anyway, and now it has lots of fit members of diverse alien races with many different skill sets to help out. Heck, a new Mass Effect game set in that world would probably be pretty cool!

The main problem, I think, would come from the fact that for some of those races we wouldn't even be able to grow food on Earth.

Yep, the Turians and Quarians would be in a tough spot I bet.

I don't think so. The Quarians bring their world with them on their World Ships. They always have. Their food is compatible with Turian physiology, so the chief problem would be getting the World Ships online fast enough with materials from Earth. That may or may not be a problem; but given that the alternative was mass extinction, I count that as a win.

LarryC wrote:

I don't think so. The Quarians bring their world with them on their World Ships. They always have. Their food is compatible with Turian physiology, so the chief problem would be getting the World Ships online fast enough with materials from Earth. That may or may not be a problem; but given that the alternative was mass extinction, I count that as a win.

Did the Quarians bring their agriculture ships to the final battle though? Would they all have been at the Quarian homeworld?

Grubber788:

All Quarian ships were outfitted with weapons in their final showdown with the Geth. There's no reason to think that the final Reaper battle would be any less desperate, requiring the full Quarian fleet once again. As I understood it, the Quarian military fleet is nothing special; it's the additional firepower from support and civilian ships that make it remarkable and desirable as a fighting force.

nel e nel wrote:

Hey now, no white knighting the developers!

What's the origin of the 'white knight' term?

Ok googled it but it's still a tad confusing. I presume in this case 'white knighting' is defending Bioware by blaming EA?!?

It's possible, but hard for me to imagine the Quarians bringing along their entire population to that battle. Doesn't fit with their cautious nature. I suppose they could have left the non-combatants on their home planet, but that's an awful quick turnaround for re-colonization, even with a bit of Geth help (or not, depending on the outcome). The Turians would definitely be screwed if the Geth were left to destroy the Quarians.

Grubber788:

The Quarians never struck me as being cautious. They're careful because their species is hanging by a thread, but when it came down to it, they outfitted every last ship with a cannon. Not even humans did that. They know what it means to fight to the last.

The Turians didn't either. They only sent their military to fight on Earth. Most of their population would still have been on Palaven. At the worst, the majority of the Turian fighting force would have had to scavenge what they could from stores they carried and find a way to make more stuff to eat. That's not exactly super hard with nanotechnology. I suspect that that entire dilemma was never really well thought out by the people who made a big issue of it.

I just wanted a Rakni zerg sweeping in to save the day but then zerging in space against giant robot squid might be trickier than it sounds.

The humans should have built giant robots with humans inside of them to fight the Reapers in one-on-one combat. GLaDOS should be involved somehow.

I think the humans should have built a giant anvil and dropped it on the reapers. They would never see it coming.

Higgledy wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

Hey now, no white knighting the developers!

What's the origin of the 'white knight' term?

Ok googled it but it's still a tad confusing. I presume in this case 'white knighting' is defending Bioware by blaming EA?!?

As you Brits say, I was just taking the piss out of a previous statement in this thread.

But in all seriousness, WHERE WERE MY ELCORS WITH LASER CANNONS?

Redwing wrote:

I've never understood the idea that all the various races being trapped on Earth would cause a food shortage problem.

I've never understood the idea that all the various races were even trapped on Earth to begin with. They still had working space ships, they just didn't have the convenience of instantaneous travel via the relays.

nel e nel wrote:
Higgledy wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

Hey now, no white knighting the developers!

What's the origin of the 'white knight' term?

Ok googled it but it's still a tad confusing. I presume in this case 'white knighting' is defending Bioware by blaming EA?!?

As you Brits say, I was just taking the piss out of a previous statement in this thread.

That explains it :).

nel e nel wrote:

But in all seriousness, WHERE WERE MY ELCORS WITH LASER CANNONS?

Aggressive and over confident: Eat red hot death laser you evil reapers you.

I've never understood the idea that all the various races were even trapped on Earth to begin with. They still had working space ships, they just didn't have the convenience of instantaneous travel via the relays.

Well, from Arrival, you have the Reapers returned being delayed for months to get to the NEXT closest releay. Need to take a trip aross the Galaxy? I suspect we're talking quite a bit longer than that. Not necessarily stranded, exactly, but without an efficient method of travel, trade gets pretty hard or at least less feasible, given eezo needs for travel not using the relays, and that relies on each area even having eezo in an accessable area. Sol wasn't exactly swimming in the stuff.

It will be after the Reapers get salvaged.

I think it shows them rebuilding the relays in every single extended ending except for the 4th "I can't decide" ending. In ME2 Liara's "dad" (can't recall her name right now) mentioned something about the Asari being advanced enough to build new relays themselves.

nel e nel wrote:

I've never understood the idea that all the various races were even trapped on Earth to begin with. They still had working space ships, they just didn't have the convenience of instantaneous travel via the relays.

At the speed of light, travel from Earth to Mars is roughly 30 minutes, and the closest star to our Sun is roughly 4 light years away. I think mass relays are the only way people can travel at super-light speeds in the ME universe, so without them everyone is pretty much stranded.

[edit]

Actually, if the game interface is to be believed, there must be some form of super-light travel aside from the mass relays, since you can cruise around between nearby systems in seconds. That or it was simply a matter of convenience for the fiction.

Actually, if the game interface is to be believed, there must be some form of super-light travel aside from the mass relays, since you can cruise around between nearby systems in seconds. That or it was simply a matter of convenience for the fiction.

Probably convenience. After all, there's enough time at the end of one, two, and three for happy fun times with Shepard and his main squeeze which generally shouldn't last a few seconds, amiright?

Either way, given fuel requirements (based on potentially running out of gas travelling around a star cluster) we see for ships, I really can't imagine it being usable for long term flight like between star clusters. I would see this as potentially becoming somewhat like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where everyone is suddenly using the same routes... which doesn't exactly improve speed based on my morning commute.

I think it was calculated that it would take around 20 years to cross the galaxy at max cruise speeds of the ships in Mass Effect, but then there are complicating factors such as ships not being designed to carry that much fuel etc.

kyrieee wrote:

I think it was calculated that it would take around 20 years to cross the galaxy at max cruise speeds of the ships in Mass Effect, but then there are complicating factors such as ships not being designed to carry that much fuel etc.

Assuming you avoid the galactic core or straight lining it so your trip ends in the middle?