I need your reaction to my comments on your blog so I'm gonna go all @NeonNinja on you.
- NeonNinja
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19Oct 12
I'm entertained. Beyond that, I'm interested. Mass Effect 2 did not entertain me, nor did it keep me interested in the game world.
But Mass Effect 3 gets sh*t done right.
Mass Appeal
Before you start the game you can choose how you want to play: Action, Role-Playing or Story. I naturally chose role-playing as that it is the full experience, but Action focuses on combat and conversations are just cutscenes, no dialogue wheel. This is the intended evolution that Mass Effect 2 was going for.
Story makes combat easier but lets you experience all the dialogue and story choices around while leveling your character.
Role-Playing is no simplification, action and story are merged with their two focuses. But it works because it shows BioWare are ahead of the curve in this regard. They literally made a game that can be enjoyed by every type of player.
Move With Purpose
First five minutes, what happens? Reapers show up and start destroying Earth. Mass Effect 3 starts off similarly to Halo 3: boots on the ground, start moving. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 had slower openings, Mass Effect 3 tosses you in the fire and you're moving. And at no point in time are you confused about your objective. It remains from the opening moments: Stop the Reapers.
Mass Effect 2 lost sight of its purpose: the suicide mission, all the freaking time.
Sense of Wonder
That level design? Best in the series. Mass Effect has grand, large levels that you can explore, but they can lack direction. Virmire is an exception, but whatever. Mass Effect 2 has short, narrow, corridors for levels. Mass Effect 3 takes the direction of Mass Effect 2's levels and opens them up a bit. You can explore, but it isn't needlessly large, nor is it stupidly confined. There's enough room to breathe without ever feeling like you have no idea where you're going.
You Know What it is
First five minutes: Earth is attacked. Prologue: Little boy needs to be saved. Brave soldiers get the kid and a bunch of civvies on their shuttle while they stand to fight, facing certain doom. None of the shuttles make it.
It's cheap. There's no attachment to that kid. But it's there, and deep down, on the most basic level, you know you're pissed off. Because if there's one thing I learned about stories over the years, you don't just casually kill women, children or the elderly. And BioWare did it for good reason: the reapers are here to exterminate everyone. Six year old boys included.
Pew-Pew!!!
Combat is much better than in Mass Effect 1 or 2. It's basic, so don't expect it to replace Vanquish or Gears of War or other more accomplished TPS. But it's much better than in ME1's clunky combat and Mass Effect 2's overly simplified gunplay. You'll need to better utilize tactics in combat than in the other two games.
Enemy AI is also the best that the series has seen. I hated that ME2 was basically CoD in space with a dialogue wheel. Mass Effect was cooler, but it ultimately passed on enemy AI when it presented itself with heavier RPG elements than the rest of the series. But ME3 strikes a great balance between sharp combat, capable AI and RPG elements.
That and unlike ME2 the game doesn't have infinitely respawning enemies. An absolute plus.
More than Distractions
Side quests are back, as is the case for many RPGs. In Mass Effect they were extremely dull. Driving around empty planets, searching for bases and artifacts. Not the best time around. In Mass Effect 2, they were better implemented than the first, but they felt really out of place. And you stupidly had to pay for probes (unlimited in ME3). But in Mass Effect 3, they actually exist because of the main story. It reminds me in a way of The Witcher games.
First Impression
The game's wonderful. I didn't expect to be this hooked, but after over 6 hours I can say this is one of the better experiences I've had this year. I figured nothing could come close to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. But if Mass Effect 3 keeps up this pace, it certainly can. I don't think it can surpass it, but I won't know until I beat it.
20 comments
I guess you'll find me among the very few as defenders of the original ending. It sure was far-fetched and absolutely against existing lore but I think it had a lot of interpretation. Sadly which very few bothered to do while many ranted and cried like little kids. :/
FYI, if replays were any indicator of how much I liked a game,then this is how they fare for me :
ME1 -- 8 playthroughs
ME2 -- 2 playthroughs
ME3 -- 4 playthroughs (4th being the one I'm currently playing)
Even if I hate their existence, the "Story" mode is useful for those like me who like playing a number of times just to see the differences brought due to our decisions.
ME3 is the only one i haven't finished but i was still quite entertained up to where i stopped. My backlog took over and because i played it a lot in one sitting i just needed a break.I really should finish it. Once again though, i agree entirely with you.
I thought that too. Then the ending kicked me in the nuts... which is why you will never see Liara-themed psn again.
@psn8214 The ending is the least of my worries. I hated Mass Effect 2. It's a turd. Mass Effect 3 is better in every way.
I've only played the demo, but I still remember that one scene with the boy and the shuttle explosion. To me, it felt like cheap pathos on top of everything else that was going on. It doesn't help that the prologue made it seem like Shepard became motivated by this particular child death and not the millions of other people dying all around him. But I could be wrong since I haven't played the actual game yet.
@FireSpirit117 They mention the child again in a conversation with Garrus but the game doesn't focus on it. It's a cheap grab at people's emotions but other than that its a great game that focuses on the reaper invasion across the galaxy.
I am not too sure I agree with you this time.
I think the term "Mass Appeal" applied throughtout my entire experience of Mass Effect 3 and whether that meant the Michael Bay level of explosions, the condensed conversation dials or the oversexualised female characters - that feeling of adventure and ability to have YOUR Shepard rather Bioware's own canonical Shepard felt lost in translation.
If you play Renegade, Shepard's motives becomes more schizophrenic in Mass Effect 3 than they ever did in either of the previous games - the sense of coherency is lost. And let's not forget that while the opening of Mass Effect 3 does infact have wide-ranging scale, it's set directly after Arrival, a piece of Mass Effect 2 DLC I would never want to spend my money on and yet now I'm missing a chunk of the bridge between 2 and 3 because of this.
No, Mass Effect 3 is entirely a game for the dudebro audience and while 2 could of been called this to some extent, that game atleast had a better understanding of it's universe than Mass Effect 3 ever would.
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I loved Mass Effect 3 until the endgame. Just make sure to download the extended ending so things at least are somewhat possible to have happened. I thought it was hilarious that everyone was still just ******** around when it came to the reapers, especially when I saw on my war assets that they hadn't even rebuilt their fleets after Mass Effect 1 and that everyone is killed by Shepard and Anderson, it was a good starting, I was just laughing through the entire thing. Then I met the new human male character and was just thinking, "really another bland terrible human character." I never cared about Earth though, I don't really like the humans and my Shepard had no real reason to care about the Earth more than any other planet. I would much rather have fought to defend the Turians and Quarians.
"It's cheap. There's no attachment to that kid. But it's there, and deep down, on the most basic level, you know you're pissed off. Because if there's one thing I learned about stories over the years, you don't just casually kill women, children or the elderly. And BioWare did it for good reason: the reapers are here to exterminate everyone. Six year old boys included."
My first reaction was that Shepard was crazy and was seeing imaginary kids. Then I remember the same scene pretty much happening in Gears of War 3 and I was wandering if Bioware just ripped off Gears of War and did an even worse job then they did at the scene.
@Legolas_Katarn Yeah it was kind if cheap. Especially when Shep dreams about the kid burning. It works for Gears as that game has a crap story but whatever.
YAY! I'll probably pick it up eventually since it's only like 30-20$ nows. Main reason slacking off is I need to go through ME2 again, after learning a spoiler for one section where save importing effects, doing everything since I messed up the first time on something that I need to do for save importing, ugh. Did the same thing when ME2 came out since I wanted a 100& ME1 completition to import, except this time said choice is a bit more important, and well, you know, I didn't hate replaying ME1 (I played through it at least 6 times including the highest difficulties, ME2 once....). :P
@TheDuskwalker I might go through the series again knowing that ME3 scenarios will play differently. I just hate the prospect of replaying ME2 in all its dullness.
@Goriza When you escape the Cerberus labs or just the opening cutscene. I'll admit it was cool when they reintroduced the Normandy in that game though.
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