Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC to be released Tuesday 6/26

[bearilou]

Just picked up a saved game and played one of the endings with the new dlc.

Not...perfect but I'll take it over the completely wide open, no-resolution ones we were given. I didn't really need the extended star-child explanation. I actually inferred all that through playing the game as it was.

But to not even know who survived and who didn't? They could all be dead and that would have been fine. Just friggin' tell me.

[Opty]

If you have any Shepards saved where Liara was your love interest, take her to the beam with you as one of the two squadmates.

There's a really nice scene between her and Shep.

[efkelley]

Fan made. Beautiful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tJ1LYi_tUM

Also fan made. Silly but, love the Breakfast Club vibe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtRVonWAV1s

[ShadowyEclipse]

Just finished the DLC.

I ended up getting the rejection ending, which is

Highlight below.

Shepard refuses to choose any of the choices given to him, which I chose because I believed, I lived off of the Indoc. theory. Not only did that turn out to be false, Shepard sits there and just watches as the entire fleet gets hopelessly fucked up, and then Liara's capsule is shown underground, her describing what happened, that they lost and the new guys need to build the crucible, and then ends with an alien and her grand-alien in a cycle that managed to stop the reapers or something.

It was disappointing. In fact, it nearly broke my heart, "The indoctrination theory is NOT true!" But it is not as bad as the other endings. It is a fresh ending, and YES, it is a TERRIBLE ending in the sense of what happens. You make a mistake, and pay the price. I like that.


But the other endings are just the normal Deus Ex: Happy Fun Time colors endings, only longer. I did the Destroy ending next... and it was GREATLY better than the old one, but still sucked.

I believe they should have

Highlight Below.

After the shot of the Reapers going all supernova on Earth, skipped RIGHT to the spot where they put Shepard's name on the wall.

It would have made me bawl, in the good way, not the bad way where I threw my controller against the wall because EA fucked this up for me.

AGAIN.


How do you spoiler? Gah.

[efkelley]

You did a good job of de-spoilering. No worries there.

As for your experience: I'd apologize, except that I had NOTHING to do with their SHIT-TASTIC writing. These idiots want to polish a turd.

IMPOSSIBLE!

[efkelley]

My friend Melinda was pissed enough to hand EA their asses on their own site: http://social.bioware.com/1995143/blog/214664

[Opty]

What she says is accurate and I agree with a lot of it but at this point it's simply continuing to beat a dead horse. There's nothing in her post that hasn't been posted a dozen times already on the BSN message board and various blogs (including Forbes, Kotaku, etc.) around the Internet by fans, gaming critics, legit sci-fi authors, and there's even a thread on BSN with the analysis of a literary professor detailing how ME3's ending and structure were "thematically revolting."

Given that the game has been out for nearly 4 months now, she's a little late to be jumping on the "ME3 suxxor" bandwagon and isn't offering a new, fresh, or even unique analysis. They've released the EC now. Hasn't made everyone happy but it's past time to move on.

[Zoombie]

Frankly...even with the ending garble barble, I still think that the Mass Effect series was still a seminal moment in sci-fi history, and a worthy thing to have happen.

It was a grand experiment...and it nearly perfectly pulled itself off. Nearly.

[efkelley]

Zoomers, that's the tragedy of it all. The absolutely BRILLIANT game they could have had... I mean, from start to finish, have there been many that have held us for five years and three releases? Alas. No. And then, to have it ruined in the final ten minutes.

Yadda yadda ending doesn't spoil the ride yadda yadda dead horse yadda yadda the story they wanted to tell yadda yadda expecting too much and so on and so forth... Look, kids, here's the deal. We're all writers here. Take away the lesson that a shitty ending can devastate your audience. How many times have we run across this? The Matrix, Sherlock, most things with Star Trek on it... The 'rules' exist for a reason. You can break them. You SHOULD try! But if a significant portion of your audience says you've failed the sniff test, then you broke those rules in the wrong way.

[Dommo]

The biggest issue is that your choices ultimately didn't matter. Personally I liked the control ending. I like the idea of Shephard becoming the godemperor of the galaxy.

[bearilou]

Originally Posted by efkelley

We're all writers here. Take away the lesson that a shitty ending can devastate your audience. How many times have we run across this? The Matrix, Sherlock, most things with Star Trek on it... The 'rules' exist for a reason. You can break them. You SHOULD try! But if a significant portion of your audience says you've failed the sniff test, then you broke those rules in the wrong way.

Agreed. And honestly, I think reading (as a writer) why the ending failed on so many levels for so many people is an interesting and informative thing to take away from all this. Yeah, a lot of the lip-flapping now is old, stale and not saying anything new. I still have learned something valuable through it all.

[amrose]

Originally Posted by Zoombie

Frankly...even with the ending garble barble, I still think that the Mass Effect series was still a seminal moment in sci-fi history, and a worthy thing to have happen.

Agreed. I never had a thing before Mass Effect.

My friends had Star Wars or Star Trek. Those franchises are entertaining, but I'm not a part of those fandoms.

I am a huge fan of the Mass Effect universe even with the non-stellar ending. Opens the doors for more work of this quality that delivers all the way.

[efkelley]

Yet another breakdown, and actually a decent treatise on writing for games: http://social.bioware.com/98918/blog/214936/

And part 2: http://social.bioware.com/98918/blog/214937/

Really enjoyed his fourth solution.

The TLDR (and it really is TL) is that the game teaches you about the universe you're playing in. The ending should really test you on that knowledge and reflect what you've learned. It's the same sort of thing with a stealth game that expects you to go for the guns for the boss fight (Deus Ex <cough cough>).

[Dommo]

Sorry, I hate the golden ending.

You've got a machine race that's had the collected knowledge of sentient life for untold millenia. You're fucked. To me, the only way to defeat the reapers is to concede defeat but stack the deck for the next round of sentient life. As thorough as the reapers are, the galaxy is a gigantic place even for them, and hiding caches of knowledge would be trivial. This is kind of the direction that makes sense to me.

This way when you get snuffed out, the next round of races will know what is coming for them, and will pass a long their collective knowledge. After a few cycles like this, the sentient races would have a better chance of approaching technical parity with the reapers, and in turn would have a chance of winning.

The other big factor, is that civilizations when they know the reapers are coming, have to have a collective suicide button. This way the reapers are denied the ability to create more reapers. In a sense this is probably what the protheans did to spite the reapers, and by doing that, they weakened the reapers for the next generation of life (e.g. fewer usable sentients to construct new reaper forms).

This is how you win. Scorched earth and passed down knowledge. With every generation of failed harvests, and destroyed reapers, the overall reaper numbers will start to decline. Given enough time (possibily just a few generations if the galactic civilizations go down after a hard fight), the reapers could be in a position where they will be unable to control the subsequent cycle.

[Zoombie]

Which is how the Crucible works...right?

[Dommo]

Not really the crucible is more of a macguffin that magically does crazy shit. I'm talking about passing on real knowledge and history.

Think about it. The Asari got to putz around the galaxy for like 5000-10000 years before humanity wandered onto the scene. If they'd have known the impending doom that was arriving, and had the entirety of prothean history and knowledge at their disposal (ironically they did, but didn't realize it), the reapers would have had a tough row to hoe. They'd have still succeeded in the end, but the long dragged out fight, and ritualistic mass suicides to prevent assimilation would have weakened the Reapers for the next round of life.

That's the key right there. It's not going to be a 1 trick superweapon, it's going to be 5000 years of advanced notice and preparation, instead of the "oh shit, we've got Cthulu at the gates", that the citadel experience.

[Opty]

Isn't that pretty much already the story of the game?

The Protheans passed down their knowledge (or attempted to) from their cycle in the form of the beacons, but the message wasn't clear because they communicated more psychically than verbally. They had gotten their knowledge passed down to them fom the Inousannon, etc. The Crucible was technology that had been passed down to each cycle, with each cycle improving it with their improved technology.

Also, Glyph informs Liara at one point in the game that a colony did commit mass suicide. I forget the name of the colony, but once they detected the Reapers in orbit, they nuked themselves rather than being captured.

[Zoombie]

Originally Posted by Dommo

That's the key right there. It's not going to be a 1 trick superweapon, it's going to be 5000 years of advanced notice and preparation, instead of the "oh shit, we've got Cthulu at the gates", that the citadel experience.

Now...maybe I'm insane, but...I distinctly remember the Crucible talking about how it was designed and modified by countless previous generations, that you're actually using what is, in effect, a design that has been improved and gotten better and better until it finally gets a chance to go off.

Or...something like that.

[efkelley]

Originally Posted by Zoombie

Now...maybe I'm insane, but...I distinctly remember the Crucible talking about how it was designed and modified by countless previous generations, that you're actually using what is, in effect, a design that has been improved and gotten better and better until it finally gets a chance to go off.

Or...something like that.

You've got it exactly. Javik says as much. Liara confirms it. And there are tidbits in other places.

[JLBrady]

I thought the EC did a nice job of changing the "tone" of the endings to make them less vomit-inducing. Destroy is still my favorite. I mean, it's still dumb. But it's a more acceptable kind of dumb.

ME3 was pretty lackluster all the way through. Lots of survival waves, the plot was questionable, and all the mission were on rails. Good moments on Tuchanka and Rannoch, along with some good dialogue, but otherwise...

Well, the multiplayer is more fun than the actual game, and that's pretty sad.

I think the plot and feel of the series took a nose dive after the first game. I did like their improvements to combat, though.

[efkelley]

Yeah, they improved the systems nicely in each iteration.

[JLBrady]

Yeah, vanguard class went from "oh, this is kind of fun" to "AHAHAH CHARGE!" What could go wrong with slamming head first into a giant geth colossus at 80 miles per hour? Toying with the other classes in multiplayer has been a lot of fun, too.

[Opty]

It's a lot of fun to biotic charge into a crowd, then slam the ground with Nova, watch them all go flying, and then finish them off with guns.

I haven't played multiplayer since the demo but once the Earth DLC pack is released, I'm probably gonna sign up for Xbox Live Gold and start playing.

[efkelley]

The Krogan vanguard was a real hoot. Just be sure to get the talent that recharges your shields when you charge, and build for melee. Heck, I almost never used my gun.

[bearilou]

Originally Posted by efkelley

The Krogan vanguard was a real hoot. Just be sure to get the talent that recharges your shields when you charge, and build for melee. Heck, I almost never used my gun.

You guys are making me wish I had the internet connection that could support playing multi-player.