What did I just play?
No, really Bioware, what was that? Did you even want to make this game or was it a "The Dark Knight Rises" kind of deal?
Where do I even start with this?
Alright, the truth is a proper retrospective usually touches upon things like the impact of a title/series, the audience, reception, the behind-the-scenes stuff. I avoided doing all of that, because as this is my first run through the series, I wanted to focus on the games themselves.
Mass Effect 3 is of note, however. The first game was the entry that put the series on the map; personally, I highly doubt Bioware ever intended on doing more of these at the time. The second game solidified the series as one of the leading franchises of the last generation.
Neither of these games, however, were met with the same funfare that the third was. I remember people going bananas over the first E3 reveal trailer that showed Shepard taking refuge in the Big Ben, as Reapers had clouded the skies of London. By the time the game was released, it was like no other game has ever been released, ever before.
Then, the outrage. The ending, players said, sucked. It was a betrayal to their loyalty, a rush-job. They pushed to change it. I spoke against that, not because they weren't right to voice their opinions, but because many went to ridiculous lengths (down to attempting to sue EA and Bioware for false advertising). Out of some stroke of luck, they did it. Bioware went back and touched up on the ending.
This was heralded by everyone as the "power of gamers" and how much "we can accomplish". Realistically I think that's a load of crap; if Bioware were really satisfied with the ending in the first place, they wouldn't change a thing. I'm far more willing to bet they knew they rushed it and the outrage gave them the chance to make a few changes they'd liked.
Either way, the ending is the thing that's remembered in regards to Mass Effect 3. That's what everybody hated. Nobody seemed to speak of the rest of the game, outside of pointing out that "don't get us wrong, ME3 is a great game, but".
Uh, no. It's a big, bloated at times, expensive, occasionally impressive, action-packed shadow of its former self. That's what Mass Effect 3 is.
Things seemed bleak from the start for me. The game froze on the Bioware logo in the first two boots, then it just kind of stopped freezing on its own and never froze again.
Then, there was insane stuttering I couldn't even begin to explain. I thought Origin was at fault, so I tried cracking the game, but that didn't fix it. It turns out ME3 is nothing short of an attention-whore coded to remind you at all times that nothing else exists in your computer but itself. I had to shut down both AMD's Gaming Evolved app AND Steam to fix the stuttering.
The actual game didn't impress me at first either. My imported Shepard from ME2 looked absolutely nothing like the character I had made in the previous games. I redid the face to the best of my recollection. That was not an issue when importing my ME1 save onto ME2.
For some reason I loathed the menu sounds and the fonts for this game. I know it's an extremely superficial complaint, but they gave off the impression of someone polishing their work too much to make it flashy and attractive even to the last drunk zombie caveman living in the sewers underneath your city.
I don't think I'm wrong about this, as the moment the story started, my first impression was backed by terrible, godawful facial structures on every beloved character from the series; these faces were just way too detailed for the capabilities of this engine and they looked completely and utterly alien.
And then, Ashley Williams showed up and she was hot. Like, REALLY hot. I don't even like her, but they went out of their way to make her ridiculously attractive. That was an omen of bad things to come.
So, in the story, Shepard has left Cerberus shortly after beating the Collectors and has defected to the Alliance. They put her on "extended leave", until the Reapers start invading the Earth and the entire Galaxy. As the giant dubstep-laser-shooting machines destroy the planet, Anderson reinstates Shepard and tasks her with uniting all the races in the galaxy to save the Earth.
Immediately, questions start filling my mind: when did Shepard leave Cerberus and why? Why is the Normandy under Alliance control? Why am I supposed to be so very invested in Earth getting invaded, when as a player I've spent a total of zero minutes on it in this series? Why is Anderson an Admiral and Udina a Councilor, when Anderson was Council last time-- I know because I literally gave him that job in particular.
If you can't tell already, the major problem with ME3 is that the series sold out with this installment. There is not a single thing in it that doesn't exist to make the games even more mainstream than they already are.
I'm not one of the people (usually) who think that broken mechanics should stay broken, because they're "unique" and whatnot, but ME3 takes some pretty damn obvious steps toward an even larger audience. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can become an issue when the supposed improvements produce a worse product than before.
The gameplay is a very good indicator of that. Now featuring a multiplayer mode that was obviously the focus of any gameplay changes, the game has moved away from its RPG roots almost entirely and it's a full-blown shooter. I played as a Biotic Adept this time around; my Shepard got bored of doing nothing under Alliance's restrictions for all this time and decided to get implants and train her biotic abilities, to feel closer to her estranged girlfriend, Liara.
I admit, my plasmids --I mean, biotic skills-- were considerably more used (not necessarily useful) than my marskman skills in ME2, but it doesn't change the fact that the noise from the combat alone was enough to just kind of make me not want to play.
I commended ME2 for moving more toward a shooter and I'd be a hypocrite to call ME3 out for essentially doing the same thing, just one step further. In all fairness, there are some genuine improvements; enemy troops are far bigger threats this time around, they have more variety, far better AI, they use good tactics, flank you and your team easily, can hit you behind cover if you're not as well hidden as you think.
The problem is that the battles don't let up. The downside of the shooter approach is that the series has never been built for purely shooter action. Shepard can now use combat rolls, but they don't quite manage to balance out the frenetic, insane pacing of the combat. This isn't a problem in a game like Shadow Warrior, where the protagonist can take quite a bit of punishment and the controls and camera allow for good spacial awareness and coordination.
For a game like Mass Effect, that a good barrage from a turret or group of enemies can kill you in literally under two seconds, all the while even an effort to bear your surroundings is more trouble thanks to the over-the-shoulder perspective that makes it hard to reposition your character in a moment's notice before heavy damage has been inflicted, this level of insane, heavy combat that won't shut up for one cocking minute is problematic.
I died in ME3 more than I did in any of the other two games and I'm not sure I was always at fault. There are some truly wretched encounters that directly contradict the game's mechanics: a face-to-face encounter with a Reaper that consists of trying to avoid its death-laser while aiming at its weak-spot (over-the-shoulder camera and Neo-like evasions don't click), a fight with a cyborg ninja that pits you against a squad of his Cerberus buddies without any cover provided (somewhat of an issue for a COVER-BASED-SHOOTER) or the last level that pits the hardest enemies in the game in an endurance round. More on that later.
I'm also quite disappointed there are no longer any hacking mini-games at all; not even that cursor thing from the first game. Everything in ME3 involves shooting people and maybe sometimes talking to them. Then, shooting them in the face.
The story is the thing that ultimately cripples ME3, though and retroactively damages the series in general. The game focuses on dealing with the Reapers, who are still ineffective as actual villains and could've been replaced with any natural catastrophe (Twister 5: Space Dust) and the other villain is the Illusive Man. Poor Illusive Man is terrible in this game. He's indoctrinated, because god forbid an actual villain in this series is acting on their own, he gets no development, he only exists much like the Reapers as someone to be stopped because his agenda doesn't chime with Shepard's.
And hey, the Illusive Man is fucking insane and should be stopped, no argument there. But his mysterious figure was at least intriguing in Mass Effect 2. In this finale of the trilogy he only shows up to spew the same fucking rhetoric, wasting Martin Sheen who could've been out punching at least one son in the face in what would probably be the greatest boxing match in the history of this species.
The main characters are still fairly likeable and the dialogue is, for the most part, still great. It's the story that once again fails the game. There isn't any explanation for the return of the Reapers, for the full invasion and even though throughout the entire series they have been a constant, an ambiguous evil that threatened all life, the writers don't seem to want to choose whether they'll remain undefined as a metaphor or defined and given backstory as proper villains.
Mass Effect 3's story is about death, literal or metaphorical. The bulk of the game is spent on Shepard running across old faces, making hard (in theory, at least) decisions, uniting armies and being reminded that their entire civilization is about to go extinct. Friends are found, friends are lost and to Bioware's credit there are a few moments with old companions that are truly gut-wrenching; like the option to execute Padok Wiks, for example, which must be the single greatest moment in this entire series.
Mass Effect 3 bothers me, because it's not well-thought-out. I rolled my eyes when Jessica Chobot was shoe-horned into the game as a reporter (and likely the only person in the galaxy that wears a low-cut top, outside of Asari strippers) wanting to hang out in the Normandy. Even if Chobot's soulless acting didn't make me want to kill myself, I was quickly pondering the thought as EDI decided to download into a sex robot (for she is a sex bot and you kid yourselves if you think otherwise) and started dating Joker.
Then other things downright pissed me off, like Eve, the female Krogan that Bioware decided to base their crude view on gender politics on. Krogans are assholes by design, sure enough, but that entire mission was about one thing: testosterone= bad. I'm not even stretching it; female Krogans are the ones suffering from the genophage the most; they are being experimented on and only one survives. She's not even given a real name, outside of what Wiks calls her. Bioware makes the perfect victim, used and helpless. Do you feel sorry for her already?
She goes on to point out time and again how males have practically screwed up their society with all their tribal maleness and toward the end, before deploying in the final mission of the Krogan, she recounts the history of their planet, Tuchanka.
She's not hostile at any of these points toward the male Krogans, but the message gets across clearly; Krogans reached the peak of evolution so the only thing left for them was to turn against each other. Admittedly no distinction between each sex is made during that discussion, but after all the others, it's hard not to read between the lines; the lines being that men are driven by rage-filled testosterone that will always destroy them, even after they've built Utopia.
Hey, Bioware, how about you go fuck yourselves?
Alright, I admit, if you have fantasy or sci-fi worlds you can take a shot at dressing them in different ways, allow cultural diversity that adopts common conceptions of the human mind, philosophical, societal or otherwise. It's why I have absolutely no problems with the Asari Matriarchy, which has been built throughout the entire series to be the peak of organic civilization: they are all women, their kids all look like them, they've elevated fucking to an ethereal act, their commandos are legendary, they live a thousand years and they acknowledge their homeworld Thessia as the best planet in the galaxy.
The reason none of that bothers is that they don't spend their fucking days passing judgment and preaching to everyone who will listen. If the Asari represent the potential of women, that Krogan bullshit in ME3 represents Tumblr feminism; at its lightest, but Tumblr feminism nonetheless.
Which is particularly funny, when this is a series the first game of which got so much publicity for the half-a-second of human or Asari bum on-screen (FEMALE bum at that) and which added Jessica Chobot's boobs and a fucking SexBot played by BGS's Number 6 in the crew. Also, lest we forget, the fact that Eve herself as a character serves no purpose outside of being the key to unlocking the genophage cure and returning child-bearing abilities (which, under Krogan society would be elevated to obligations) to the women of her species.
This is pathetic.
Back to the game, there are far too many things that feel like design-under-duress and what works feels so disjointed to the overall narrative thread that the flaws of the campaign stand out. Curing (or not curing) the Krogan genophage was a great set of missions (despite the fucked-up societal connotations), but at no point did I feel like I had to do it to garner Krogan support. That's how the game justifies it, fair enough, but the majority of these missions (and even the N7 missions that are optional) are so much more interesting than the running plot, it's easy to lose track of the bigger picture.
As critical as I'm being of the game, I can say that in time it really did get better. As annoying as the new gameplay mechanics are, they do respond well at least. I enjoyed the sense of finality in the story and the stakes got progressively higher, adding a bit of "epic" in the game in a way that ME2 genuinely lacked.
But as you start getting into the game and enjoying the occasional moment of brilliance, the ending happens. Oh my goodness, that fucking ending.
I avoid using any DLC in my first run through games, so I only got the original ending that the game shipped with.
Yes, people, the ending is bad. It's really bad. Just not for the reasons most people claim.
I remember folks bitching about the "lack of choice" in the ending. Apparently, prior to the game's release Bioware had (stupidly) stated that the ending of the trilogy would be the culmination of the player's choices throughout all three games and -imagine that- players kind of held them up to that. They didn't deliver.
But, to be brutally honest, does it really matter? The lack of choice or the lack of reflection of previous choices isn't the real issue with the ending of this trilogy.
For all the big talk from developers and fans alike, the choices in Mass Effect are binary and, honestly, vanilla. With the exception of few moments like the masterful execution of Padok Wiks (or Mordin Solus, if he survived ME2), the series has the nasty habit of rarely making decisions count. They don't cause conflict to the player, they're just an achievement at best.
The occasional dialogue shift for role-playing or the contextual Paragon/Renegade actions are cute and all, but this shit ain't exactly sophisticated, you know? Really, tell me what exactly do you see radically different in the ending of the story if click on a different dialogue prompt or take a different path in a side-quest? Nothing of value changes.
The only time decisions matter is the finale of ME2, when the number of crew and party members that survive the Suicide Mission relies heavily on choices made earlier; not only is this self-contained within that one game and not the series, but the responsibility of the player is also neutered and one really needs to try to fuck that mission up.
No, the problem with ME3's ending is that it feels like it was written within half an hour from a teenager trying to get into the frontpage of Fanfiction.net.
The failure of the trilogy's ending isn't because of one, single thing; it's rather the combination, many smaller parts that fail to produce a whole. From a gameplay standpoint, the final mission is crap. It's the same string of fire-fights that reaches a climax with an endurance round that instantly counters any intuitive thought regarding the game's own mechanics. It's so basic in its execution, it feels like less of a climax than many other missions in this same game, some placed early in the story.
The setting also feels like a step-back. We've spent three games seeing fantastic worlds throughout the galaxy and the final mission of the final game in this trilogy ends in motherfucking London? A London that looks exactly the same as 21st Century London, a boring, familiar, far-too-Earthly setting for the final mission of a space epic. Who the hell thought this would be a good idea? The Mass Effect series takes place around the 30th Century. Did humanity kind of got bored of building stuff after we found the Mass Relays and started exploring space?
Then the game kind of stops and has Shepard barely crawl from objective to objective to have long discussions with Anderson and the Illusive Man.
The lack of a choice here isn't troubling in and on itself, but without the necessary motivation and foundations for the villains (both the Illusive Man and the Reapers) it just makes a segment that could've lasted mere minutes an overlong chore to sit through.
Ultimately, the ending's failure needs to be traced beyond ME3 and to the series in general. For all its successes, the plot of this trilogy just isn't very good. Mass Effect's strength was in the characters, which is why ME2 stands out and in that regard ME3, featuring the boldest and most conflicting moments regarding established side-characters (need I dry-hump that Padok Wiks moment again?) is a success.
We need to come to terms with the fact that ME3 was never going to have a good (as in well-written and well-plotted) ending. There are only minor fixes that could've happened and while fans can come up with more satisfactory endings, a genuinely good ending was out of the question from as far back as ME1.
Not only is the plot ill-conceived, but the running themes end up completely jumbled and the approach to them in the final encounter with the Citadel AI plays out like the efforts of an obsessive Metal Gear Solid fan trying to mimick Hideo Kojima's expository philosophizing in his games. It's awkward and honestly just a bit embarrassing.
Sorry folks, but the story is broken from the word-go and even if Bioware would've put more effort into it, the ending was never going to work.
Having said all that, I actually did end up enjoying most of ME3. The start was rocky, but eventually I was drawn into the heat of the Reaper war and the sense of urgency and finality present throughout the second and third acts of the story.
The gameplay was definitely problematic at parts, but it was mostly functional and Jennifer Hale gave her best performance in this title, making Shepard an entity on her own. Shepard is likely the least likeable character in this series (perhaps after Ashley Williams) and it's hard to sympathize with her (or him), even via all the roleplaying. Hale's performance leads the player in this game and if not for her terrific delivery, every single big decision and emotional moment that's packed into this "war to end all wars" would've sounded empty and hollow.
In the end, I didn't hate Mass Effect 3. I started out that way, but I found things to genuinely like in it. Unfortunately, I found it completely misguided, too far removed in many ways from the series that came before it and, while technically superior, I believe it to be a major step-down from Mass Effect 2 (and in some ways, the original Mass Effect as well).
Still, I will gladly play through the game again; it won't be on its own, it'll be as another run through the entire trilogy, but it won't be that installment I'll feel contractually obligated to sit through even though I hate it.
In the next piece, I'll have a final look back at my experience with the series as a whole, what I enjoyed about it, what it amounts to and what went wrong.
No, really Bioware, what was that? Did you even want to make this game or was it a "The Dark Knight Rises" kind of deal?
Where do I even start with this?
Alright, the truth is a proper retrospective usually touches upon things like the impact of a title/series, the audience, reception, the behind-the-scenes stuff. I avoided doing all of that, because as this is my first run through the series, I wanted to focus on the games themselves.
Mass Effect 3 is of note, however. The first game was the entry that put the series on the map; personally, I highly doubt Bioware ever intended on doing more of these at the time. The second game solidified the series as one of the leading franchises of the last generation.
Neither of these games, however, were met with the same funfare that the third was. I remember people going bananas over the first E3 reveal trailer that showed Shepard taking refuge in the Big Ben, as Reapers had clouded the skies of London. By the time the game was released, it was like no other game has ever been released, ever before.
Then, the outrage. The ending, players said, sucked. It was a betrayal to their loyalty, a rush-job. They pushed to change it. I spoke against that, not because they weren't right to voice their opinions, but because many went to ridiculous lengths (down to attempting to sue EA and Bioware for false advertising). Out of some stroke of luck, they did it. Bioware went back and touched up on the ending.
This was heralded by everyone as the "power of gamers" and how much "we can accomplish". Realistically I think that's a load of crap; if Bioware were really satisfied with the ending in the first place, they wouldn't change a thing. I'm far more willing to bet they knew they rushed it and the outrage gave them the chance to make a few changes they'd liked.
Either way, the ending is the thing that's remembered in regards to Mass Effect 3. That's what everybody hated. Nobody seemed to speak of the rest of the game, outside of pointing out that "don't get us wrong, ME3 is a great game, but".
Uh, no. It's a big, bloated at times, expensive, occasionally impressive, action-packed shadow of its former self. That's what Mass Effect 3 is.
Things seemed bleak from the start for me. The game froze on the Bioware logo in the first two boots, then it just kind of stopped freezing on its own and never froze again.
Then, there was insane stuttering I couldn't even begin to explain. I thought Origin was at fault, so I tried cracking the game, but that didn't fix it. It turns out ME3 is nothing short of an attention-whore coded to remind you at all times that nothing else exists in your computer but itself. I had to shut down both AMD's Gaming Evolved app AND Steam to fix the stuttering.
The actual game didn't impress me at first either. My imported Shepard from ME2 looked absolutely nothing like the character I had made in the previous games. I redid the face to the best of my recollection. That was not an issue when importing my ME1 save onto ME2.
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| Upon comparison with the other posts, she doesn't look quite as close to my original Amelia as I thought. |
For some reason I loathed the menu sounds and the fonts for this game. I know it's an extremely superficial complaint, but they gave off the impression of someone polishing their work too much to make it flashy and attractive even to the last drunk zombie caveman living in the sewers underneath your city.
I don't think I'm wrong about this, as the moment the story started, my first impression was backed by terrible, godawful facial structures on every beloved character from the series; these faces were just way too detailed for the capabilities of this engine and they looked completely and utterly alien.
And then, Ashley Williams showed up and she was hot. Like, REALLY hot. I don't even like her, but they went out of their way to make her ridiculously attractive. That was an omen of bad things to come.
So, in the story, Shepard has left Cerberus shortly after beating the Collectors and has defected to the Alliance. They put her on "extended leave", until the Reapers start invading the Earth and the entire Galaxy. As the giant dubstep-laser-shooting machines destroy the planet, Anderson reinstates Shepard and tasks her with uniting all the races in the galaxy to save the Earth.
Immediately, questions start filling my mind: when did Shepard leave Cerberus and why? Why is the Normandy under Alliance control? Why am I supposed to be so very invested in Earth getting invaded, when as a player I've spent a total of zero minutes on it in this series? Why is Anderson an Admiral and Udina a Councilor, when Anderson was Council last time-- I know because I literally gave him that job in particular.
If you can't tell already, the major problem with ME3 is that the series sold out with this installment. There is not a single thing in it that doesn't exist to make the games even more mainstream than they already are.
I'm not one of the people (usually) who think that broken mechanics should stay broken, because they're "unique" and whatnot, but ME3 takes some pretty damn obvious steps toward an even larger audience. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can become an issue when the supposed improvements produce a worse product than before.
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| The game attempts to be dark. In its efforts it becomes cheap and pretentious, down to having you dream-chase a dead little boy. |
The gameplay is a very good indicator of that. Now featuring a multiplayer mode that was obviously the focus of any gameplay changes, the game has moved away from its RPG roots almost entirely and it's a full-blown shooter. I played as a Biotic Adept this time around; my Shepard got bored of doing nothing under Alliance's restrictions for all this time and decided to get implants and train her biotic abilities, to feel closer to her estranged girlfriend, Liara.
I admit, my plasmids --I mean, biotic skills-- were considerably more used (not necessarily useful) than my marskman skills in ME2, but it doesn't change the fact that the noise from the combat alone was enough to just kind of make me not want to play.
I commended ME2 for moving more toward a shooter and I'd be a hypocrite to call ME3 out for essentially doing the same thing, just one step further. In all fairness, there are some genuine improvements; enemy troops are far bigger threats this time around, they have more variety, far better AI, they use good tactics, flank you and your team easily, can hit you behind cover if you're not as well hidden as you think.
The problem is that the battles don't let up. The downside of the shooter approach is that the series has never been built for purely shooter action. Shepard can now use combat rolls, but they don't quite manage to balance out the frenetic, insane pacing of the combat. This isn't a problem in a game like Shadow Warrior, where the protagonist can take quite a bit of punishment and the controls and camera allow for good spacial awareness and coordination.
For a game like Mass Effect, that a good barrage from a turret or group of enemies can kill you in literally under two seconds, all the while even an effort to bear your surroundings is more trouble thanks to the over-the-shoulder perspective that makes it hard to reposition your character in a moment's notice before heavy damage has been inflicted, this level of insane, heavy combat that won't shut up for one cocking minute is problematic.
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| RE: Walking animations, this is the prissiest hero of the galaxy EVER. Shimmer down, princess. |
I died in ME3 more than I did in any of the other two games and I'm not sure I was always at fault. There are some truly wretched encounters that directly contradict the game's mechanics: a face-to-face encounter with a Reaper that consists of trying to avoid its death-laser while aiming at its weak-spot (over-the-shoulder camera and Neo-like evasions don't click), a fight with a cyborg ninja that pits you against a squad of his Cerberus buddies without any cover provided (somewhat of an issue for a COVER-BASED-SHOOTER) or the last level that pits the hardest enemies in the game in an endurance round. More on that later.
I'm also quite disappointed there are no longer any hacking mini-games at all; not even that cursor thing from the first game. Everything in ME3 involves shooting people and maybe sometimes talking to them. Then, shooting them in the face.
The story is the thing that ultimately cripples ME3, though and retroactively damages the series in general. The game focuses on dealing with the Reapers, who are still ineffective as actual villains and could've been replaced with any natural catastrophe (Twister 5: Space Dust) and the other villain is the Illusive Man. Poor Illusive Man is terrible in this game. He's indoctrinated, because god forbid an actual villain in this series is acting on their own, he gets no development, he only exists much like the Reapers as someone to be stopped because his agenda doesn't chime with Shepard's.
And hey, the Illusive Man is fucking insane and should be stopped, no argument there. But his mysterious figure was at least intriguing in Mass Effect 2. In this finale of the trilogy he only shows up to spew the same fucking rhetoric, wasting Martin Sheen who could've been out punching at least one son in the face in what would probably be the greatest boxing match in the history of this species.
The main characters are still fairly likeable and the dialogue is, for the most part, still great. It's the story that once again fails the game. There isn't any explanation for the return of the Reapers, for the full invasion and even though throughout the entire series they have been a constant, an ambiguous evil that threatened all life, the writers don't seem to want to choose whether they'll remain undefined as a metaphor or defined and given backstory as proper villains.
 | |
| Even Jack has been remade into a (kinda) hottie in ME3. Nobody's safe from the massive sell-out. |
Mass Effect 3's story is about death, literal or metaphorical. The bulk of the game is spent on Shepard running across old faces, making hard (in theory, at least) decisions, uniting armies and being reminded that their entire civilization is about to go extinct. Friends are found, friends are lost and to Bioware's credit there are a few moments with old companions that are truly gut-wrenching; like the option to execute Padok Wiks, for example, which must be the single greatest moment in this entire series.
Mass Effect 3 bothers me, because it's not well-thought-out. I rolled my eyes when Jessica Chobot was shoe-horned into the game as a reporter (and likely the only person in the galaxy that wears a low-cut top, outside of Asari strippers) wanting to hang out in the Normandy. Even if Chobot's soulless acting didn't make me want to kill myself, I was quickly pondering the thought as EDI decided to download into a sex robot (for she is a sex bot and you kid yourselves if you think otherwise) and started dating Joker.
Then other things downright pissed me off, like Eve, the female Krogan that Bioware decided to base their crude view on gender politics on. Krogans are assholes by design, sure enough, but that entire mission was about one thing: testosterone= bad. I'm not even stretching it; female Krogans are the ones suffering from the genophage the most; they are being experimented on and only one survives. She's not even given a real name, outside of what Wiks calls her. Bioware makes the perfect victim, used and helpless. Do you feel sorry for her already?
She goes on to point out time and again how males have practically screwed up their society with all their tribal maleness and toward the end, before deploying in the final mission of the Krogan, she recounts the history of their planet, Tuchanka.
She's not hostile at any of these points toward the male Krogans, but the message gets across clearly; Krogans reached the peak of evolution so the only thing left for them was to turn against each other. Admittedly no distinction between each sex is made during that discussion, but after all the others, it's hard not to read between the lines; the lines being that men are driven by rage-filled testosterone that will always destroy them, even after they've built Utopia.
Hey, Bioware, how about you go fuck yourselves?
Alright, I admit, if you have fantasy or sci-fi worlds you can take a shot at dressing them in different ways, allow cultural diversity that adopts common conceptions of the human mind, philosophical, societal or otherwise. It's why I have absolutely no problems with the Asari Matriarchy, which has been built throughout the entire series to be the peak of organic civilization: they are all women, their kids all look like them, they've elevated fucking to an ethereal act, their commandos are legendary, they live a thousand years and they acknowledge their homeworld Thessia as the best planet in the galaxy.
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| No comments, it's just a funny picture. |
The reason none of that bothers is that they don't spend their fucking days passing judgment and preaching to everyone who will listen. If the Asari represent the potential of women, that Krogan bullshit in ME3 represents Tumblr feminism; at its lightest, but Tumblr feminism nonetheless.
Which is particularly funny, when this is a series the first game of which got so much publicity for the half-a-second of human or Asari bum on-screen (FEMALE bum at that) and which added Jessica Chobot's boobs and a fucking SexBot played by BGS's Number 6 in the crew. Also, lest we forget, the fact that Eve herself as a character serves no purpose outside of being the key to unlocking the genophage cure and returning child-bearing abilities (which, under Krogan society would be elevated to obligations) to the women of her species.
This is pathetic.
Back to the game, there are far too many things that feel like design-under-duress and what works feels so disjointed to the overall narrative thread that the flaws of the campaign stand out. Curing (or not curing) the Krogan genophage was a great set of missions (despite the fucked-up societal connotations), but at no point did I feel like I had to do it to garner Krogan support. That's how the game justifies it, fair enough, but the majority of these missions (and even the N7 missions that are optional) are so much more interesting than the running plot, it's easy to lose track of the bigger picture.
As critical as I'm being of the game, I can say that in time it really did get better. As annoying as the new gameplay mechanics are, they do respond well at least. I enjoyed the sense of finality in the story and the stakes got progressively higher, adding a bit of "epic" in the game in a way that ME2 genuinely lacked.
But as you start getting into the game and enjoying the occasional moment of brilliance, the ending happens. Oh my goodness, that fucking ending.
I avoid using any DLC in my first run through games, so I only got the original ending that the game shipped with.
Yes, people, the ending is bad. It's really bad. Just not for the reasons most people claim.
I remember folks bitching about the "lack of choice" in the ending. Apparently, prior to the game's release Bioware had (stupidly) stated that the ending of the trilogy would be the culmination of the player's choices throughout all three games and -imagine that- players kind of held them up to that. They didn't deliver.
But, to be brutally honest, does it really matter? The lack of choice or the lack of reflection of previous choices isn't the real issue with the ending of this trilogy.
For all the big talk from developers and fans alike, the choices in Mass Effect are binary and, honestly, vanilla. With the exception of few moments like the masterful execution of Padok Wiks (or Mordin Solus, if he survived ME2), the series has the nasty habit of rarely making decisions count. They don't cause conflict to the player, they're just an achievement at best.
The occasional dialogue shift for role-playing or the contextual Paragon/Renegade actions are cute and all, but this shit ain't exactly sophisticated, you know? Really, tell me what exactly do you see radically different in the ending of the story if click on a different dialogue prompt or take a different path in a side-quest? Nothing of value changes.
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| An admittedly cute nod, a memorial inside the Normandy that fills up with companions and friends that perish in the war. |
The only time decisions matter is the finale of ME2, when the number of crew and party members that survive the Suicide Mission relies heavily on choices made earlier; not only is this self-contained within that one game and not the series, but the responsibility of the player is also neutered and one really needs to try to fuck that mission up.
No, the problem with ME3's ending is that it feels like it was written within half an hour from a teenager trying to get into the frontpage of Fanfiction.net.
The failure of the trilogy's ending isn't because of one, single thing; it's rather the combination, many smaller parts that fail to produce a whole. From a gameplay standpoint, the final mission is crap. It's the same string of fire-fights that reaches a climax with an endurance round that instantly counters any intuitive thought regarding the game's own mechanics. It's so basic in its execution, it feels like less of a climax than many other missions in this same game, some placed early in the story.
The setting also feels like a step-back. We've spent three games seeing fantastic worlds throughout the galaxy and the final mission of the final game in this trilogy ends in motherfucking London? A London that looks exactly the same as 21st Century London, a boring, familiar, far-too-Earthly setting for the final mission of a space epic. Who the hell thought this would be a good idea? The Mass Effect series takes place around the 30th Century. Did humanity kind of got bored of building stuff after we found the Mass Relays and started exploring space?
Then the game kind of stops and has Shepard barely crawl from objective to objective to have long discussions with Anderson and the Illusive Man.
The lack of a choice here isn't troubling in and on itself, but without the necessary motivation and foundations for the villains (both the Illusive Man and the Reapers) it just makes a segment that could've lasted mere minutes an overlong chore to sit through.
Ultimately, the ending's failure needs to be traced beyond ME3 and to the series in general. For all its successes, the plot of this trilogy just isn't very good. Mass Effect's strength was in the characters, which is why ME2 stands out and in that regard ME3, featuring the boldest and most conflicting moments regarding established side-characters (need I dry-hump that Padok Wiks moment again?) is a success.
We need to come to terms with the fact that ME3 was never going to have a good (as in well-written and well-plotted) ending. There are only minor fixes that could've happened and while fans can come up with more satisfactory endings, a genuinely good ending was out of the question from as far back as ME1.
Not only is the plot ill-conceived, but the running themes end up completely jumbled and the approach to them in the final encounter with the Citadel AI plays out like the efforts of an obsessive Metal Gear Solid fan trying to mimick Hideo Kojima's expository philosophizing in his games. It's awkward and honestly just a bit embarrassing.
Sorry folks, but the story is broken from the word-go and even if Bioware would've put more effort into it, the ending was never going to work.
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| Remember when the Protheans were a mysterious, larger than life species? Never mind, they looked like Power Rangers villains all along. |
Having said all that, I actually did end up enjoying most of ME3. The start was rocky, but eventually I was drawn into the heat of the Reaper war and the sense of urgency and finality present throughout the second and third acts of the story.
The gameplay was definitely problematic at parts, but it was mostly functional and Jennifer Hale gave her best performance in this title, making Shepard an entity on her own. Shepard is likely the least likeable character in this series (perhaps after Ashley Williams) and it's hard to sympathize with her (or him), even via all the roleplaying. Hale's performance leads the player in this game and if not for her terrific delivery, every single big decision and emotional moment that's packed into this "war to end all wars" would've sounded empty and hollow.
In the end, I didn't hate Mass Effect 3. I started out that way, but I found things to genuinely like in it. Unfortunately, I found it completely misguided, too far removed in many ways from the series that came before it and, while technically superior, I believe it to be a major step-down from Mass Effect 2 (and in some ways, the original Mass Effect as well).
Still, I will gladly play through the game again; it won't be on its own, it'll be as another run through the entire trilogy, but it won't be that installment I'll feel contractually obligated to sit through even though I hate it.
In the next piece, I'll have a final look back at my experience with the series as a whole, what I enjoyed about it, what it amounts to and what went wrong.
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| Amelia Shepard. Fell to the Reapers, thrice hero of the galaxy, loved Liara, was kind of a bitch. |
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