Mass Effect Thread

[Cthulhu]

OK all I have to say is this, and I've noticed this. Anyone who has anything bad to say about the game, having finished it already....you're finishing a game that has multiple side missions and quests that effect the ending of the game. Not only that but your previous decisions in both previous games come back to help/haunt you.

If you just blasted through the game, as most people have and talk shit about it, when the game provides 50+ hours of mission gameplay, of course the ending isn't going to be what you expect. Go back, build a new character from game one, make some truly important decisions and then play through everything in number 3 and I mean EVERYTHING. There is no way anyone can blast through this game in two days and have done anything and claim they have any form of a life.

I don't know about Naz, if he played through a good chunk of it all or if he blasted through it, nor do I care to know how it ended yet as I'm not there, I just got off Tuchunka myself.

I've read a lot of reviews saying this game gives an "illusion" of decision and repercussions, but I'm amazed at how much your decisions can effect scene outcomes so far.

My two cents.

[Preach]

Definitely true! It's always necessary to at least give it a go... I think most of the anger comes from feeling 'cheated' by the endings (as in, it didn't live up to expectations). I don't know, though. I haven't played it so I don't feel qualified to pass judgement just yet.

Cthulhu , mind letting us know what you think of it once you play it through?

[Cthulhu]

I'll definitely put in my two cents on the ending. I also noticed that a lot of people were giving it bad ratings because the first part was "predictable" uhm...HELLO we already knew that there was going to be a galactic wide reaper invasion Of course the beginning was going to be mad predictable, the first two games even laid out how the reapers manage to do a full and complete invasion through the citadels catalogs of every species that has made space travel possible for themselves.

Heck I've noticed a lot of points where the gameplay can be different depending on your choices in prior games, such as if you killed the rachni queen, killed Wrex, or if any of your prior team mates in the second game died in the suicide mission! I'm definitely doing another character from the beginning to see if the gameplay differs if I destroy the collector base, or stay with Cerberus.

[Nazgul]

I don't know about Naz, if he played through a good chunk of it all or if he blasted through it, nor do I care to know how it ended yet as I'm not there, I just got off Tuchunka myself.

I completed about 95% of the game. Had a handful of the "fetch" quests that I didn't complete. figure it would have taken me about another 2 hours to do them, bringing my completion time to about 30 hours. I'm thinking I might have missed some content due to the deaths I incurred in ME2.

And don't get me wrong, while I was disappointed in the ending, it's still a good game. And I'm not going to be like all these people online demanding a new ending. I have read books and seen movies where I was disappointed with the ending and I didn't expect a new ending out of it so I'm not going to expect one here. It is the story they wrote, and like it or not, it ends how it ends. My biggest issue with the ending was that it really was anticlimactic. If it was a book or a movie, it's a decent ending, but it felt lacking for a video game.

I found I had to laugh recently watching a review of the game. The reviewer said the game was big on strategy and you needed to have a balanced squad to succeed at it. Played most of the game using the same 2 squad members. Me as a sentinel, Liara and Edi.

End result, I will play it again as there's no denying it's fun. First I have to replay ME2 though so I can keep everyone alive.

Also, I decided to grind out the multiplayer to get the galactic readiness to 100%. The multiplayer's not bad, though I confess as I don't normally do multiplayer games, I don't really have a point of comparison. Personally I would have liked to see an option to co-op the game with someone else.

[Cthulhu]

A co-op gameplay would be tricky to pull off but interesting.

[Nazgul]

A co-op gameplay would be tricky to pull off but interesting.

Bioware has done it in the past, and it was a ton of fun.

[mere]

Honestly, I wasn't disappointed in the ending I got. It was confusing, which might anger people, but I wasn't angry. Now since I only continued form ME2, as my Mass Effect data was corrupted, I'm now going to have start this trilogy over again from the beginning, as I really want to see my ME3 character after both games.

[Tetsuya]

as in, it didn't live up to expectations

This. This is a problem with a lot of other games/books/movies/other series. People overhype things like crazy, and then when the finished product is placed in front of them, they complain because it wasn't the OMGASPLOSIONEPICNESS finale they expected, no matter how good it really was. It's part of the reason I don't look into some things(much) before they come out- to avoid that.

Also, something some people might not be thinking of. This is just the end of Commander Shepard's story. Considering how much money the series has made EA/Bioware, I don't see them stopping there. I wont be the least bit surprised to see a Mass Effect 4 or something.

[Insanity]

Got through 99%(not counting renegade playthrough) of the game in pretty much exactly 25 hours, all I have left is to check out the different endings, although I can't say I felt good about the first ending I got :/ I'll be making a renegade character using the one I'm currently trying to get through ME1, it might take a while though. Really liked the game, the fact that I pushed through it in two days is evidence of that Lots of stuff to do, the gathering quests weren't tedious like the last two games, and the story is awesome as always. Like I said before, the only part I'm really dissapointed about is the ending... Oh, and the fact that there seem to be a lot of graphical bugs in cutscenes, like invisible characters and lots of clipping.

I'm also close to 100% on the Army Readiness rating, got it to 93% after about 4 hours of multiplayer. We'll see what happens when I check out the next ending if anything changes with the readiness rating or not, I'm hoping it does.

[Preach]

Well the one thing people seem to agree about is that it's fun to play... Which is definitely good, I'll say.

I'd be interested in getting confirmation on whether there's a "good ending" which you can achieve when you get over 5000 readiness points or something... I've heard rumours, but nothing concrete. Has anyone else heard anything about this?

@Tets: Like I mentioned before, the creators are seriously considering a MMO set in the Mass Effect universe - Here's an article discussing it . I think it's highly, highly likely, because as you've said, this series is a total cash cow.