Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

You know what? This is going to have a ton of spoilers.

_______________________

Even after I initially got the game there were already grumblings and shouts of outrage about an ending that I was no where near to seeing... because I like to take my sweet time with RPGs. However, all the outrage and crying raging and cupcakes actually did light a fire under my butt to speed up my play. I'm ashamed, but I did play it on casual just to get through the enemies a bit faster. I just really needed to see what all the fuss was about. I hadn't seen the spoilers or read anything in depth, all I knew was that people were angry.

So, to begin with, I had written a bunch of notes down about the game after its initial release and my first play of it. This is what I do with every game. If something makes me happy, I write it down. If something makes me feel disappointed, I write it down. If something is just plain stupid, I write it down. And so on...

Here's the bullet list:
-The dramatic narrative is stronger. Good!

-At first, I felt a bit overwhelmed by the size of the Normandy and all the new things to interact with. Turns out, it's a good change!

-Vega is a meatball.

-It was interesting to find out where everyone of my old crew went... again.

-Multiplayer is cool, and I know I had problems with the idea before, my main argument being that not every game needs multiplayer, but I've come to accept it. I do fear that the whole IP will go into a multiplayer rut, however, so I fear for the narrative of Mass Effect in the future. Maybe I'm wrong.

-EDI getting a body was stupid. My initial reaction to it was "WTF?" It seems like just an excuse to add another crew member to the roster. I will admit, I grew to like EDI and her body, because ME characters are deigned to be likable through depth of character (except for Vega), but I still see it for what it is.

-It really pissed me off that all the stuff i paid for in DLCs for Mass Effect 2, like weapons and armor, were all gone to be REcollected. Bullsh*t.

-The story kind of unfolds by saying, "This conflict is going to take 100 years before the reapers get us all." It kind of killed the feeling of imperative action for me at first. I only felt pressured to save the galaxy as the game concluded and I was in the thick of the fight.

-It's actually kind of nice that the crew was more mobile with their interactions around the ship. They moved around, talked to one another, wandered the Citadel and so on. Much an improvement to "this is my space... AND I CAN'T MOVE!"

-Great addition of weapons, choices, and customization. Upgrades and variety were very welcome.

-Javik's addition was also an obvious gimmick, but I still like him.

-Flying around to evade reapers while exploring is both hilarious and a little pathetic.

-There are no mini games for hacking... or anything interesting like that. The exclusion means that the game loses something that would have been a good addition.

-When Bioware announced they were going to concentrate on a smaller group of squadmates, I thought they meant three to five characters in total, not five to eight. Smaller would have been better.

And now, the main focus of the review: How did it all turn out?

You know, I looked at the box art for all three games recently, and in doing that I saw part of the tale of Mass Effect unfold. You can actually tell A LOT about the games form the box art. Can you learn everything? No. But there's plenty of clues there.

For the first game, the box art shows you a story. Shepard is standing in the middle unarmed, behind him is Garrus and Ashley surrounded by an army of Geth and overlooking it all are the eyes of Saren. To me, this promises "BIG STORY". It delivers on the promise. Mass Effect is a BIG STORY and sets up an entire galaxy successfully while still being a decent shooter. But people didn't fall in love with Mass Effect because it was a shooter. People fell in love with it because of the characters and the story.

Mass Effect 2's box art makes a dramatic change. One of the first things you notice about Shepard... is the gun. In the background are both Miranda and Thane, also with guns, smaller guns because that's all that might fit behind Shepard's massive shoulders. The game makes a huge shift that goes along with the art. Maybe you can call it an evolution, I don't know. The shooter aspect of the game gets a massive boost. And while it does a lot for the game to have all of the improvements in the shooting, it detracts from the story by setting a new priority. For me, this was a bit disappointing as an end result. The game became far less open to explore, and felt less like a galaxy where I could roam where I liked and more like a galaxy I could only observe from afar. I actually missed the Mako.

Mass Effect 3's box art is another change. The box art that I received shows Shepard alone, a gun in his hand, a gun on his back, and an omniblade at the ready while Earth is showered in debris behind him. Okay. We know the shooter part's a big deal, but does the art mean the story has gotten even smaller?

Luckily, the story did not shrink any further. There's plenty to do. There's plenty to see. Am I still disappointed that I can't land on a planet whenever I want and only when there is a mission available? Oh, hell yes. The galaxy needs to be explored! Let's get down there and see it, not just look it it from the ship's window.

But how does it all turn out? Well, that's a hard question.

Endings are difficult, and the only one I think Bioware got totally correct was the ending of the original game. I mean, I still get shivers when Shepard crawls out of the wreckage of Sovereign and smiles all the way to his/her final speech about the upcoming fight.

The second Mass Effect ending let me down, but not too hard. I mean, I don't totally approve of the direction it ended in, but it didn't feel like a kick in the gut either. I just think they could have done better. In ME2 you end up fighting a giant... terminator, essentially. It would have been WAY more fulfilling for me to see that all of the humans were being harvested to kick start Harbinger's engines instead, after millenniums of hibernation, and get him active to begin the invasion. Instead, we're given a giant terminator that plays a role in only one battle, and is never a threat again. That's not interesting, it's not intelligent, and it's not the most creative road that Bioware could have followed. Meh....

And... the ending of the third game. So far, I've been through the game twice: once before the extended cut, and once after.

My first play, the kind of rushed one, just about turned me off to the game entirely. It was just... illogical. It all begins in the final fight, right after taking down the destroyer reaper. You're in that truck, and the truck is attacked. You get out because Harbinger, I think it's Harbinger anyway, lands in front of you and starts tearing everything to bits with his laser. Your squadmates disappear mysteriously and you're left running toward the relay in London all by yourself until... you're hit by Harbinger. I only started to wonder where my team was when all the comm chatter started talking about no one making it to the relay. I thought.... are they dead?

Some of it then played out the way I would have expected. You zoom up to the Citadel and find Anderson there, and I called it when I assumed the Illusive Man would make a final appearance. I even liked how that whole exchange turned out. For me, the Illusive Man turned the gun on himself and took his own life, like Saren had. A fitting end to a last effort at redemption after a history of terrible deeds and indoctrination. Good. Then, Shepard and Anderson sit down together, dying side-by-side. Like many others, I thought the game would end there with the final words over the comm being, "You did it" or some variation.

But, it kept going...

So, with curiosity I watch as Shepard is elevated up, up, up on a hovering platform to... the place where the Crucible and the Citadel meet. And there is, as commonly referred to as, the Star Child.

Now, listen, I'm not an idiot. Maybe you're not either. I know when a game is about to end. Maybe you do too. I thought to myself, "They're going to introduce a new character into the plot... just before the game ends? That's... not good." The Star Child tells me that its the Catalyst and totally controlling the reapers. Why does it look like the kid we saw killed in Earth? Why is it glowing? Is it supposed to be benevolent? Was this the best choice of an avatar to use to speak to Shepard? Someone new? Hell no.

Honestly, this would have been a lot better if it were Harbinger at the end.

Yeah! Really.

I mean, Bioware spent so much effort in building the damned thing up in the last game, and it's hardly even mentioned in the conclusion. What a waste of an antagonist.

I would have liked to have seen Harbinger latch onto the hull and speak to Shepard directly while it attempted to rip the Crucible apart from the outside. No cruddy holograms, no silly collectors, but finally face-to-face.

Turns out, no, it won't be all that satisfying. Instead, Star Child says to me "I'm an AI that made AI to kill you because your own AI would eventually kill you. So, I'm a homicidal AI that will save you from homicidal AI by killing you first."

What? WHAT?????

So, the Star Child gives me three options. It opens three paths.

For me, there's only ONE option though. Even though I have three to choose from, I choose DESTROY.

How do you not pick destroy? HOW!? Honestly, think about it. The reapers are killing your friends, you species, the galaxy, culture, art, and everything you know. The ENTIRE SERIES has been moving in the direction of DESTROYING THE REAPERS. That's the idea of the game! Also, you're talking to the thing that's controlling the reapers. HOW DO YOU TRUST THAT THING? It's obviously EVIL and it's circular logic is obviously misguided. Save you from AI by killing you with AI?

Eat it. Destroy.

I knew Shepard was going to die... again... sort of die, I mean... but not really? It's the end of the Shepard story. That would have been satisfying. As the reapers all fell over dead, I thought it was going to end mostly well.. however uneasily. I mean, AI designed to kill everyone and save them from being killed by AI? Wtf...

Anyway, things got worse. Joker is suddenly flying away from Earth, crashes on a mystery planet, and all of the relays are destroyed in the process. Is everyone stranded? Is my love interest going to make babies with Joker on the jungle planet? Are Krogan stuck on Earth? Why the hell did Joker run away in the first place?

I didn't feel good about the ending. I think it was a bad direction to go in. Worse than the terminator at the end of ME2. I could probably imagine 100 better endings. However, I wasn't outraged, I didn't demand a change, and I didn't send cupcakes to Bioware.

I thought Bioware should live with what they've done and learn from the whole thing. Interpretation at the end of a video game is a very tricky thing to do, and making sudden left turns with the plot at the end makes is all the trickier.

The ending inspired me to walk away from the game for several months. The promise of an extended release made me hope for a positive change. The outrage of the community called for a more complete answer, and I took that as a potentially good thing, so I reserved my judgement.

Right out of the box, after playing through the whole game again a bit slower this time, a question is answered. What happened to my squad when we approached the relay in London? They got hurt and extracted.

Satisfaction.

Things still pan out the way they did before with Anderson and the Illusive Man. There's a few extra bits in there to show how things are turning out in the surrounding battle with Admiral Hacket.

Satisfaction.

You still take the hover platform up to the Star Child. The Star Child explains a bit more to you about your choices, making them more clear. However, it's an over explanation. I mean, we're no idiots as players... at least I'm not. The brief explanation about the choices in the original ending was enough. I get it. A full blown thesis and analysis is not needed. Plus, Shepard is DYING. How do we plug in all of that conversation to someone bleeding profusely, half burnt to a crisp, and, oh, hit by a giant LASER?

Nah, I've got time to talk. Just dying. That's all.

So the same three choices, even with more explanation, and I still take destroy. Why? Because that's what the game is all about! Destroy the reapers! Give life in the galaxy the choice to choose their own path without this endless cycle. End the stupid circular logic cycle. AI will all be destroyed, and stuff will be damaged sure, but the Star Child said everything can be repaired so... yeah, reapers gotta die. Rebuild the AI. Rebuild EDI. I'm sure it's possible.

We see why Joker had to fly away. We see what happens after the crash. We get a nice narrative that should have been in the game in the first place with an explanation of the future.

I feel at ease with these little bits of information. They help me feel better.

But you know what? I still object to the Star Child and the "AI sent to kill you before AI can kill you" idea. Dumb.

Of all of the directions and end-encounters that the game could have taken, this one is obviously the result of a bunch of game designers who were looking up at the night sky and trying to combine the universe, religion, and something mind-bending as part of the ending if the series. But, it doesn't work. The trend of "evil machines" was the already established idea. Why they were evil was the only mystery left.

The way I figured it, these reapers were machines that advanced to their limit and found out that the only way they could sustain themselves was to harvest entire species and eat them, then go back into hibernation in dark space. In the reapers' minds, they were perfection and just needed to stay alive. This is how the do it. That ending would have been good enough for just about anyone, I would think.

In my better and sexier idea, giving these other species the technology of mass relays and so on, allows them to grow and provide more food with greater populations on more planets. Harvesting only advanced species allows others to evolve and take their place, thrive, and then become more food.

It doesn't make any sense to say that the technology to make AI was passed down by the reapers so that lesser species could make AI and just be destroyed. The game would have us believe that the cycle is reluctant, but it's really a matter of entrapment.

It's like saying, "Here are the tools you need to kill yourselves, and no, we're not going to leave helpful warnings to prevent war and disaster. No, we're not going to try to work cooperatively to prevent your annihilation. Yeah, even after like a billion years, we still don't help anyone out. We're just going to let it happen. We're no evil, by the way, we just aren't good or imaginative... nor do we think of easy solutions... only complicated ones."

It's frustrating. It's just a dumb idea, just like that terminator.

You know what? I still like the damned game a lot. I like most of what happens before the dumb idea, and I like the bits they added on after the dumb idea. I won't let this one dumb idea take away from the wealth of great things that come with it. It can not undo the other two games or the events that happened in them. It's just too damned bad that one of the biggest focal points of the story, of any story, the end, was so damned dumb. But I just can't condemn the whole game because of it.

Is it the best in the series? No way.

Is it the best conclusion possible? No way.

Should Shepard be super dead, and not taking a breath at the end? Totally.

Is the whole greater than all of the sum of it's parts?

Absolutely.