Mass Effect 3.5B: Taste the Rainbow (Story and Ending Discussion; Spoilers!)

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Originally Posted by Alex Knight

Someone pointed out the following endings for Deus Ex:

1.) Crash the global telecommunications Grid

2.) Merge with the AI Helios

3.) Rule the world alongside the Illuminati

Somehow, those choices seem....familiar.

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Difference being these were built upon, the consequences were explained, and the ideas the endings ran on had been themes that had been there all along throughout the game.

ME3's endings... weren't. Consequences are glossed over, they come out of absolutely nowhere with zero buildup, and the main theme is one that the game has spent a not trivial amount of time stomping upon and disagreeing with.

To those of you who are making the argument that the game was great other than the ending, I agree with you.

HOWEVER, no matter how great the story might be, when it ends in the implied destruction/starvation of every system with a Mass Relay, everything that happened up to that point suddenly becomes utterly pointless. Would you still think that Lord of the Rings was good if the hobbits got buried under a rock slide on their way back to the Shire?

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Originally Posted by Dienekes

Others disagree for some reason.

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Me personally, my reason is that I have yet to start my second playthrough. I played through 1 and 2 twice, back to back, no pause. I wanted to see the story through both ParaMeer and Halegade goggles and fully explore as many possible branches as possible. I have no desire to do that with 3. That ending flat out killed my desire to replay the other games, too. I can't get as excited about the Virmire decision, the suicide mission, Tuchanka or Ranoch knowing that it all winds up so pointless. (Please don't go into how the three decisions don't negate anything--they undermine everything worked for across all three games for no reason.) The ending robs future playthroughs of importance and meaning, just like it robs decisions already made of the same things.

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Originally Posted by Beowulf DW

To those of you who are making the argument that the game was great other than the ending, I agree with you.

HOWEVER, no matter how great the story might be, when it ends in the implied destruction/starvation of every system with a Mass Relay, everything that happened up to that point suddenly becomes utterly pointless. Would you still think that Lord of the Rings was good if the hobbits got buried under a rock slide on their way back to the Shire?

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I think everyone saying the ending was the only bad part are either liars or traumatised by the endings so much they forgot other bits.

Like Kai Leng, the murdering of fan favourite characters in emails, the numerous bugs, and the Origin requirement. :smallannoyed:

That's not really a fair thing to say. The other things were annoying to a varying degree, but they didn't detract from the quality of the rest of the game for a lot of people, myself included.

I'm not saying they're game ruining, I'm saying they are also bad. :smallannoyed:

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Originally Posted by Opperhapsen

I think everyone saying the ending was the only bad part are either liars or traumatised by the endings so much they forgot other bits.

Like Kai Leng, the murdering of fan favourite characters in emails, the numerous bugs, and the Origin requirement. :smallannoyed:

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I never said the ending was the only bad part.

Personally, I didn't see all that many bugs pop up, and even when I do, I tend to take those in stride. I can say that about any game, really. As long as the bugs don't detract from gameplay or the story, I don't really care.

Though I do think that Bioware gives way too much focus to Liara. Personally, I find Ashley Williams far more interesting.

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Originally Posted by Beowulf DW

To those of you who are making the argument that the game was great other than the ending, I agree with you.

HOWEVER, no matter how great the story might be, when it ends in the implied destruction/starvation of every system with a Mass Relay, everything that happened up to that point suddenly becomes utterly pointless. Would you still think that Lord of the Rings was good if the hobbits got buried under a rock slide on their way back to the Shire?

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It would be less good, but it would be still good, because... well, yeah, the four main character hobbits suffered a stupid pointless death, but hey, at least the rest of the world was saved. In ME3 the thing is that what seemingly renders everything pointless is how you have to doom not just a few main characters, but basically everyone else.

Sad endings are no problem. Complete downer endings, on the other hand, screw that.

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Originally Posted by Beowulf DW

I never said the ending was the only bad part.

Personally, I didn't see all that many bugs pop up, and even when I do, I tend to take those in stride. I can say that about any game, really. As long as the bugs don't detract from gameplay or the story, I don't really care.

Though I do think that Bioware gives way too much focus to Liara. Personally, I find Ashley Williams far more interesting.

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Ashley lost most of her appeal in ME3 for me.
I think the writer that replaced her original didn't really get the character, and the buttock revealing miniskirt symbolizes this for me.

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Originally Posted by Opperhapsen

I think everyone saying the ending was the only bad part are either liars or traumatised by the endings so much they forgot other bits.

Like Kai Leng, the murdering of fan favourite characters in emails, the numerous bugs, and the Origin requirement. :smallannoyed:

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First of all a vast majority of players don't understand the Origin complaint. At all. I myself don't give a damn.

I have not started the game yet, so I can't argue about Kai Leng, but isn't that just one fight?

As for our favorite reporter... It would have been more fun if she was the one on the Normandy with you, instead of the person Bioware used to bribe IGN into siding with them in the controversy with, but I honestly did not feel too bad that she died off camera. After all, 99,99% of all humans died off camera and didn't get to even Twitter about it. She, at least, did that.

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Originally Posted by Opperhapsen

Ashley lost most of her appeal in ME3 for me.
I think the writer that replaced her original didn't really get the character, and the buttock revealing miniskirt symbolizes this for me.

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Why? Because she used to be military?

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Originally Posted by Callos_DeTerran

*snip*

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Once again we run into the problem of the reapers 'subtly encouraging' these conflicts. Then the reapers make synthetics capable of tactical awareness (non-husk reaper forces) and subterfuge (ME2, where the Collectors make deals, double cross, and otherwise don't act like wild animals). These are perfectly loyal and we don't see them ever moving against the reapers.

And these are synthetics, everything that might lead to organic ways of thought was, as Mordin put it "replaced by tech."

Then there's the matter that galactic civilization was made in the mold the Reapers wanted. I guess the destroy options counts? Sure, that COULD finally happen, but only after the Reapers show up and force trillions of beings to die and become goo and start screaming how they're saving us with insane troll logic. That's really not the scientific rigor needed to have people believe their theory.

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Originally Posted by Avilan the Grey

I have not started the game yet, so I can't argue about Kai Leng, but isn't that just one fight?

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Kai Leng first shows up at the Citadel, where he first just acts like a moron then kills Thane with OMG NINJA SKILLZ. He then uses magic cutscene power to jump onto your moving flying car and causes it to crash.

Next time you see him is the first fight you have with it. He's a complete pushover that can't beat you even with the help of a gunship. Unfortunately most of the time he just stands there breaking how the universe's shield mechanics work. Then, more cutscene, and he turns into some crazy Mary Sue... again.

Finally, when you do get to kill him, Leng uses more magic abilities and summons troops that have a better chance of hurting you than him. But because he's SO BADASS, he gets to survive a Widow through the face when his shields are down.

And he looks so bad in a 'trying to hard to be badass' way that you want to punch a kitten each time he's on camera.

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Originally Posted by Opperhapsen

Ashley lost most of her appeal in ME3 for me.
I think the writer that replaced her original didn't really get the character, and the buttock revealing miniskirt symbolizes this for me.

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:smallredface:

Umm...Well, yes, the miniskirt was clearly fan service, and I know that it compromises the character somewhat. But I'm a guy, so I didn't have as much of a problem with it as I should have.

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Originally Posted by Avilan the Grey

First of all a vast majority of players don't understand the Origin complaint. At all. I myself don't give a damn.

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Origin is spyware.
There is no other way of putting it.

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I have not started the game yet, so I can't argue about Kai Leng, but isn't that just one fight?

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Kai Leng is shoved in your face for about half the game, and he is the supremely worst character in a bioware game to date.
He's a magic Chinese space ninja wearing a mask with slanted eye slits with two boss fights. (One of which you lose because screw you)

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Why? Because she used to be military?

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Because she is military.
They kept four basic facts about Ashley: She likes Tennyson, she loves her family, she dislikes aliens, and she mistrusts you because of Cerberus.
She refers to you differently, speaks to you differently, they ignore her ME2 email, and apart from the drunk scene (Which worked, but it's existence is not so justified) she never gets into the semi-serious semi-playful mood she had in ME1.
Plus she talked negatively about sexualization of women on several occasions, and they give her a miniskirt that is too short.

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Originally Posted by thegurullamen

Me personally, my reason is that I have yet to start my second playthrough. I played through 1 and 2 twice, back to back, no pause. I wanted to see the story through both ParaMeer and Halegade goggles and fully explore as many possible branches as possible. I have no desire to do that with 3. That ending flat out killed my desire to replay the other games, too. I can't get as excited about the Virmire decision, the suicide mission, Tuchanka or Ranoch knowing that it all winds up so pointless. (Please don't go into how the three decisions don't negate anything--they undermine everything worked for across all three games for no reason.) The ending robs future playthroughs of importance and meaning, just like it robs decisions already made of the same things.

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Can you explain how the ending robs the meaning from them? I'm sorry if that sounds stupid but I'm trying to understand the mindset. My Shepard proved the Catalyst wrong at Rannoch, and because of that he's going to control the Reapers, bring everyone home, and then send them into the nearest sun. My Shepard ended the Genophage and gave the Krogan back their culture, the ending does not make Mordin's sacrifice any less meaningful. Hell, even if every krogan dies on Earth, they still are there rebuilding with Eve. I also can't help but think that Wrex would find it somewhat appropriate that he would die fighting the greatest opponent of all time. Mind you I never got excited about the Virmire decision after I made it, because Ashley is in my opinion the demonstration that a character does not have to have a ridiculously crazy backstory to be just as interesting as anyone else (Hell I like her the best of all the human companions and she probably has the least special backstory of any character in the game). Getting her to stand down because I had built her trust in my Shepard despite my ties to Cerberus was a great moment for me. The ending doesn't make the satisfaction of stabbing Kai Leng in his gut any less. [As a complete aside I don't understand what peoples problems are with him. He did his job very well, giving you a villain that you absolutely hate, he's like Joffrey from Game of Thrones you just want to murder him, and he did that role very well. Hell, you even call him out on his **** in the game "I'm slow because I'm not running" speech is one of the most appropriate pieces of combat dialogue I can think of] So I really do wonder how they undermine everything.

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Originally Posted by Dienekes

Can you explain how the ending robs the meaning from them? I'm sorry if that sounds stupid but I'm trying to understand the mindset. My Shepard proved the Catalyst wrong at Rannoch, and because of that he's going to control the Reapers, bring everyone home, and then send them into the nearest sun. My Shepard ended the Genophage and gave the Krogan back their culture, the ending does not make Mordin's sacrifice any less meaningful. Hell, even if every krogan dies on Earth, they still are there rebuilding with Eve. I also can't help but think that Wrex would find it somewhat appropriate that he would die fighting the greatest opponent of all time. Mind you I never got excited about the Virmire decision after I made it, because Ashley is in my opinion the demonstration that a character does not have to have a ridiculously crazy backstory to be just as interesting as anyone else (Hell I like her the best of all the human companions and she probably has the least special backstory of any character in the game). Getting her to stand down because I had built her trust in my Shepard despite my ties to Cerberus was a great moment for me. The ending doesn't make the satisfaction of stabbing Kai Leng in his gut any less. [As a complete aside I don't understand what peoples problems are with him. He did his job very well, giving you a villain that you absolutely hate, he's like Joffrey from Game of Thrones you just want to murder him, and he did that role very well. Hell, you even call him out on his **** in the game "I'm slow because I'm not running" speech is one of the most appropriate pieces of combat dialogue I can think of] So I really do wonder how they undermine everything.

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It's implied destruction that occurs. If you work your whole life to make the world a better place, then have a big asteroid come out of nowhere to destroy the world, your actions are now rendered pointless, because they don't matter in the end.

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Originally Posted by Opperhapsen

Plus she talked negatively about sexualization of women on several occasions, and they give her a miniskirt that is too short.

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Maybe she's just a hypocrit. :smalltongue:

Adding more characterization to video games by misconstruing actions since 1990. I'll be here all century, folks.

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Originally Posted by Beowulf DW

It's implied destruction that occurs. If you work your whole life to make the world a better place, then have a big asteroid come out of nowhere to destroy the world, your actions are now rendered pointless, because they don't matter in the end.

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Although if futility in changing fate and leaving the world a better place were a theme, and there were mentions of this asteroid earlier in the story, it would have made sense.

When you get to the Starchild, where is Shepard? That zombie staring blankly accepting everything it says isn't Shepard. Shepard gives the middle finger to destiny every change he/she gets. Instead Shep goes 'okay star-kid. I'm going to go hit one of these three switches based on premises I've seen are false without calling you out on it'.



edit- as for Ashley, I've always hated both her and Kaiden. The latter since he was all but devoid of personality. Ashley herself stayed on the ship because of the idiocy that spewed from her mouth at every opportunity. Simply put, she sounds a lot like the worst sort of person that I could actually run into where I am. Then in the conversations she doesn't put out the hate, it's either daddy issues or me not particularly caring about her religious views.

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Originally Posted by Kinslayer

Maybe she's just a hypocrit. :smalltongue:

Adding more characterization to video games by misconstruing actions since 1990. I'll be here all century, folks.

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That's a very awkward type of hypocrisy.
It implies she secretly wants everyone to look at her bum. Which makes her sniping pose/clothing make a heck of a lot more sense, but also means I have someone on my team who eschews armour in favour of indulging in her exhibitionism.
I guess Ashley is a pervert. :smallfrown:

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Originally Posted by Beowulf DW

Though I do think that Bioware gives way too much focus to Liara.=

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That is not possible, I mean how can you not love this face:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r...ara_tanked.jpg

:smallcool:


Something interesting from an interview Kotaku did at PAX with a BioWare rep:

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"Much of the focus of the Extended Cut is to expand on the variety of consequences of player choices and degrees of success," the spokesperson said, "so, with the new content, the player's choices should result in a much more varied experience."

The new ending content will be woven into the game and should be accessible seamlessly. We were told that players "should be able to grab a save file before the endgame and experience the new content from there."

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My take is that 'no new ending' is shooting down the Indoctrination Theory, or talk of removing the catalyst scene etc. Hopefully they give a couple of extra options at the end there.

Something somewhat more stupid from BioWare at PAX (via Kotaku):

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"When asked why that content wasn't included in the game at launch, the dev team stood by the release in the core product."We're very proud of it," they said. "It was important though, for us to listen to the community, and community feedback obviously didn't come until the game came out. We couldn't have included it in the game because we didn't know there was a huge demand for it."

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It being things like a resolution and closure :smallconfused:

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Originally Posted by Zorg

It being things like a resolution and closure :smallconfused:

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It supports the theory that the ending was written outside of the normal editorial structure.

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Originally Posted by Opperhapsen

That's a very awkward type of hypocrisy.
It implies she secretly wants everyone to look at her bum. Which makes her sniping pose/clothing make a heck of a lot more sense, but also means I have someone on my team who eschews armour in favour of indulging in her exhibitionism.
I guess Ashley is a pervert. :smallfrown:

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Samara, Miranda, Jacob, you realize the rest of the team wears stuff like hardsuits and armor right?

But we're potential love interests...
*facepalm*

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Originally Posted by MCerberus

edit- as for Ashley, I've always hated both her and Kaiden. The latter since he was all but devoid of personality. Ashley herself stayed on the ship because of the idiocy that spewed from her mouth at every opportunity. Simply put, she sounds a lot like the worst sort of person that I could actually run into where I am. Then in the conversations she doesn't put out the hate, it's either daddy issues or me not particularly caring about her religious views.

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Personally, I thought that her stance on aliens is justified. She doesn't hate aliens. She fights alongside them. She trusts her life to Garrus, Tali, Liara and Wrex. But she is an Alliance soldier. It's her job to look out for humanity, and she has every right to not be comfortable with Wrex and Garrus, because she doesn't like the idea of potential enemies gathering intel on the Alliance. My cousin's a U.S. marine and I can guarantee that he wouldn't be comfortable with foreign soldiers wandering around the base he's stationed on. Because that's his job.

Her family was made into a scapegoat, and she has every right to have issues about it. I certainly would.

As for her religion...It's not like she's a religious nut-case, but she puts a great deal of faith in her religious beliefs. She came off as a little self-conscious about to me.

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Originally Posted by Beowulf DW

Personally, I thought that her stance on aliens is justified. She doesn't hate aliens. She fights alongside them. She trusts her life to Garrus, Tali, Liara and Wrex. But she is an Alliance soldier. It's her job to look out for humanity, and she has every right to not be comfortable with Wrex and Garrus, because she doesn't like the idea of potential enemies gathering intel on the Alliance. My cousin's a U.S. marine and I can guarantee that he wouldn't be comfortable with foreign soldiers wandering around the base he's stationed on. Because that's his job.

Her family was made into a scapegoat, and she has every right to have issues about it. I certainly would.

As for her religion...It's not like she's a religious nut-case, but she puts a great deal of faith in her religious beliefs. She came off as a little self-conscious about to me.

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The alien thing is more sensitive to me, because I live in a rural area a half hour away from the city proper. The xenophobia comes off as racism because I can still hear blatantly racists things said out in the open like it's acceptable. Her religious views were just something she made into a big confession while Shep was just looking confused going "...okay?" followed by "You need to break up with your girlfriend."

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Originally Posted by MCerberus

Samara, Miranda, Jacob, you realize the rest of the team wears stuff like hardsuits and armor right?

But we're potential love interests...
*facepalm*

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Those are all handwaved.
Jacob is wearing a uniform, Miranda purposefully chose a distracting outfit, and Samara doesn't need armour.

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Originally Posted by MCerberus

edit- as for Ashley, I've always hated both her and Kaiden. The latter since he was all but devoid of personality. Ashley herself stayed on the ship because of the idiocy that spewed from her mouth at every opportunity. Simply put, she sounds a lot like the worst sort of person that I could actually run into where I am. Then in the conversations she doesn't put out the hate, it's either daddy issues or me not particularly caring about her religious views.

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She mentions her theism exactly once.
As for her "Hate", her feelings on aliens is perfectly justified and she's shown to be right over and over.
She even says she doesn't dislike them, she just doesn't trust them to put the needs of other species in front of their own. (And mentions that humanity does the same)

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Originally Posted by Dienekes

The ending doesn't make the satisfaction of stabbing Kai Leng in his gut any less. [As a complete aside I don't understand what peoples problems are with him. He did his job very well, giving you a villain that you absolutely hate, he's like Joffrey from Game of Thrones you just want to murder him, and he did that role very well. Hell, you even call him out on his **** in the game "I'm slow because I'm not running" speech is one of the most appropriate pieces of combat dialogue I can think of]

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Because I found myself annoyed at the writers as much as I hated Leng.

Leng could have been a good "man, what an effective 'I wanna murder this guy gruesomely'" running boss if he'd been presented as either a genuinely tough fight or as using cheap tricks to achieve his objectives (and, in character, thinking this made him totally awesome). Instead he uses cheap tricks that in-game are presented as if they're him being badass. When he shows up on the Citadel or Thessia, you're unable to take him out because Magical Cutscene Effects scale your competence way down and you pull out a pistol you can't hit with or flail around ineffectively while he kicks everyone's ass. You're stymied by his shield/barrier/whatsit because you're using the weakest available weapon instead of any of the better approaches available to you. You get tossed around on Thessia while he swaggers about as if earthquakes and collapsing floors can't touch him. Imagine that he had never actually stood and faced you, had always used some distraction or backup to keep you from getting a proper chance to put a Widow round through his face, until the final fight where you mopped the floor with him - he could still have achieved his objectives and thwarted you, and sent taunting emails and so on, but I wouldn't have felt like the writers agreed with his bull. That's the problem I had - he won because the writers said he did, despite a dozen ways Shepard should have been able to beat him.

And in the actual fight with him on Thessia, you can mop the floor with him despite his inexplicably powerful shield - that somehow regenerates under fire and faster than you can damage it - and invisible gunship support. But then the cutscene starts and the rest is history.

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Originally Posted by kamikasei

This, a lot.

It's really coming off to me that either they're rolling back what they originally intended to imply - large-scale death, destruction and hardship - while pretending it's what they meant all along, or else they went for destroying the relays without actually thinking about the implications in order to set up something entirely separate, which just means they half-assed the ending of the trilogy in order to serve some larger goal with the franchise, which I'm not okay with. I simply don't buy that they felt the need to have the relays destroyed no matter what but somehow this doesn't result in any of the starvation or disconnection it logically ought to and this was motivated by artistic vision in any sense.

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I disagree. Throughout the series, the Mass Effect relays are arguably the most iconic image in the game. When you travel between systems, it plays the same animation over and over. The destruction of the Mass Relays can be considered a symbol that the old series is over and a new beginning will be created in their place.

It is eminently conceivable that the creators think that rebuilding the Mass Relays will be relatively easy. Many scientists were involved with the construction of the Catalyst, which are of ancient/Prothean technology and probably share many characteristics with the Mass Relays. Similarly, we don't know how much of the Mass Relays are left and how salvageable they are. Finally, with the Mass Relays gone, maybe a Zephram Cochrane type figure will invent a better FTL drive.

So, the third option is as the creators intended: that the destruction of the Mass Relays may cause some initial hardship, but it isn't the thousand year dark ages that some players have theorized. Bonus points, if the dev team lets the war readiness impact the restoration of interstellar space travel.

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Originally Posted by MCerberus

edit- as for Ashley, I've always hated both her and Kaiden. The latter since he was all but devoid of personality. Ashley herself stayed on the ship because of the idiocy that spewed from her mouth at every opportunity. Simply put, she sounds a lot like the worst sort of person that I could actually run into where I am. Then in the conversations she doesn't put out the hate, it's either daddy issues or me not particularly caring about her religious views.

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Ashley turned out to be my favorite ME1 character, with Wrex as close second and Garrus as a close third. Liara bored me to death and Tali just annoyed me, but I had to bring her everywhere to hack stuff.

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Originally Posted by kamikasei

Because I found myself annoyed at the writers as much as I hated Leng.

Leng could have been a good "man, what an effective 'I wanna murder this guy gruesomely'" running boss if he'd been presented as either a genuinely tough fight or as using cheap tricks to achieve his objectives (and, in character, thinking this made him totally awesome). Instead he uses cheap tricks that in-game are presented as if they're him being badass. When he shows up on the Citadel or Thessia, you're unable to take him out because Magical Cutscene Effects scale your competence way down and you pull out a pistol you can't hit with or flail around ineffectively while he kicks everyone's ass. You're stymied by his shield/barrier/whatsit because you're using the weakest available weapon instead of any of the better approaches available to you. You get tossed around on Thessia while he swaggers about as if earthquakes and collapsing floors can't touch him. Imagine that he had never actually stood and faced you, had always used some distraction or backup to keep you from getting a proper chance to put a Widow round through his face, until the final fight where you mopped the floor with him - he could still have achieved his objectives and thwarted you, and sent taunting emails and so on, but I wouldn't have felt like the writers agreed with his bull. That's the problem I had - he won because the writers said he did, despite a dozen ways Shepard should have been able to beat him.

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You see I never got that. I got that he was using cheap tricks and thinking that made him awesome. Using obvious Reaper tech to restore his shields when I blasted him down just made me think he was relying too much on his technological superiority. Having a freaking gunship as an ally doesn't make him a better fighter, it just means he had air support.

I didn't get that the writer's agreed with him, because of Shepard's taunts during the final fight are accurate, Kai Leng for all his arrogance runs from Shepard, twice, and calls upon allies because he can't take him down be it a battalion of Cerberus soldiers or a gunship.

Now my one problem with him is when he kills Thane. All I would have done differently is made Kai try to snipe the Salarian leader only to be interrupted by Thane, fight ensues they tumble into the open Shepard takes a few shots but ultimately Thane gets stabbed and Kai runs away as Shepard tries to engage. Which I think would just flow better so we don't have Shepard just watching during an event.

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Originally Posted by Beowulf DW

Personally, I thought that her stance on aliens is justified. She doesn't hate aliens. She fights alongside them. She trusts her life to Garrus, Tali, Liara and Wrex. But she is an Alliance soldier. It's her job to look out for humanity, and she has every right to not be comfortable with Wrex and Garrus, because she doesn't like the idea of potential enemies gathering intel on the Alliance. My cousin's a U.S. marine and I can guarantee that he wouldn't be comfortable with foreign soldiers wandering around the base he's stationed on. Because that's his job.

Her family was made into a scapegoat, and she has every right to have issues about it. I certainly would.

As for her religion...It's not like she's a religious nut-case, but she puts a great deal of faith in her religious beliefs. She came off as a little self-conscious about to me.

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This pretty much sums her up for me. There's a reason she's the first person to offer to fight with Kirrahe.

Also it turns out she was right. The other races did not help the humans even the ones who were not being attacked by the Reapers, until Shepard did something for them first.

Bioware's PAX East Panel from yesterday was recorded:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Remainder, including Q&A (lower quality)

The final link also covers the first 4 videos, but in worse quality, so I deeplinked it to 33m.

Q&A starts at 45:10 in the final link. I'll try to transcribe it, but it's a bit hard to hear so correct me if I mistype anything.

Q1) What happens to everyone on the Citadel in the endings?
A1) The citadel has emergency seals/kinetic barriers, both in the indoor and outdoor areas, to keep air from escaping. Even if the Citadel is destroyed (they confirm that in "Control" the Citadel actually remains intact), the ward arms still have these emergency barriers and so there will be survivors, even in the endings where the Citadel falls apart. "There's definitely going to be casualties, but there is no reason to believe that everyone is dead."

Q2) The Prothean statues on Ilos: why don't they look like Protheans?
A2) Bioware: "We've actually contradicted ourselves a few times
here." (Laughter at understatement.) They then go on to confirm that those statues were in fact the race that preceded the Protheans.

Q3) {Software question for the Q&A guy}
A3) {Can't hear answer, not important to game plot anyway}

Q4) Will Extended Cut be just cutscenes, or will they be new gameplay sequences also?
A4) We've said all we're going to say about EC for now.

Q5) If you could pick one character to throw into the Synthesis ending instead of Commander Shepard, who would it be? (I think that's what he said...)
A5) "All machines" (raucous laughter)

Q6) If the Protheans hadn't "jump-started" the Asari, would they have been doomed, what with the Ardat-Yakshi worship and all the pure-blood breeding leading to more of them etc.
A6) Don't think they would have been doomed, but they may not have been the first race to discover the Citadel. The Salarians would likely have found it first without the Protheans' help. (I agree with this, after all the Salarians found it totally on their own, didn't they?)

Q7) {Question about Garrus and Tali hooking up}
A7) They've always had a little love-hate friendship/relationship going on (references ME2 "elevators" easter egg.)

Couldn't hear Q8

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Opperhapsen

Those are all handwaved.
Jacob is wearing a uniform, Miranda purposefully chose a distracting outfit, and Samara doesn't need armour.



She mentions her theism exactly once.
As for her "Hate", her feelings on aliens is perfectly justified and she's shown to be right over and over.
She even says she doesn't dislike them, she just doesn't trust them to put the needs of other species in front of their own. (And mentions that humanity does the same)

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Liara has a similar skillset and doesn't seem to mind having armor. For the two Cerberus humans, you'd think Shep would be smart enough to go 'fine, you don't want a hardsuit, I'm not letting you get shot at'.

As it was pointed out some time last thread, Ashley doesn't seem to have a big a problem with the Quarian screwing with the engines than the Turian and Krogan just chilling where she can see them.