Goodbye Commander Shepard

[buck]

Finally beat mass effect three. So finally I'll have some writing time

[Deleted]

Ha! There's a reason I haven't owned a console gaming system since the original Nintendo lo those many years ago. Too much time lost without realizing it.

Congrats on beating the game.

-M

[buck]

Console gaming has came so far though. It's honestly became one of the best places for complete freedom of creative storytelling.

[The Wonderful Wachter]

I beat it a couple weeks ago. It was quite epic and a brilliant achievement in both storytelling and gameplay.

However, I hate to be that guy but... The ending left you wanting. It wasn't an ending at all... It just sorta happened. While as a writer and creator myself, I can appreciate that way of story telling, it is out of place in the supposed final installment of a series. I'm not even mad at what happened, I thought it was a brilliant ending. But that's all it was... A single ending. The only thing that really changed at the end was the color of the galactic wave. It would have been fine if that happened in only one of the endings or one of the series of endings. As it is, Bioware made a lot of promises they're now paying for with the release of the free DLC this summer.

Honestly, I loved the game but after over 100 hours of play over years of playing... I get a DEM energy wave that saves the galaxy. I beat it and it's the first time a game has ever made me go "Okay, this sucks." Drop the controller and turn the system off. It took some stewing before I came to like it in the grand scheme of things. That said... I probably would have been fine with at least epilogue paragraphs for what happens afterwards.

It's not a movie, it's not a show, it's not a book... We are these characters. All of them, even if we only play from Shepherd's POV. It was an injustice for their ending to be "Okay, three of your party crashland and everything else is destroyed." It's made all the worse when you consider a bit of the greedy tendencies of EA and Bioware of late when you let paranoia take over and realize one of the reasons it was done that way was for potential future installments... not a true end. They needed to set the galaxy up in a certain relatively uniform way so they could tell have future DLC like Shepherd's Recovery of some sequel that takes place after the civilizations have discovered new travel.

All in all, it's still a 9 out of 10 game. If it wasn't a single ending as opposed to multiple endings, it could have been a perfect ten.

[buck]

Yeah I was dying for an epilogue after the game. The game touched so many characters an d worlds it'd be nice to see what happened to everyone. The ending though us really cemented by your choices I played the whole series preserving every life I could so in the end my decision was made before I ever got offered the choices that part I did enjoy.

[The Wonderful Wachter]

The ending has no bearing at all on your choices throughout the three games which is part of the reason for all the backlash. You could be the most renegade character ever who killed off all your party members as you could and the ending would remain the same with the montage, different color wave and either the Reapers blowing up or leaving. (I went green/Synthesis... I wanted Joker to be happy with EDI... That and they really didn't make it obvious that there was a ramp or other objectives so... I just went over the edge by accident.)

Now the road to that ending, that depends on your story choices (though I failed to see any Rachni or Geth fighting by my side when I retook Earth) and that's where Bioware made gaming evolve by the bonds you forged or broke, the sacrifices you made, the epic scale and beautiful landscape. That was fun and ultimately what the game was about. It just sucks that they cheated us with their ending.

[buck]

Well see my thing is i played the game a certain way the entire time perserving every life that I could so the synthesis was the only way I could possible go.