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

[Xondoure]

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.

I like to think she approached Adams about it first and got shouted out of the engine room with orders to stay out.

[Zorg]

thanks for the writeup Psyren - stuff like #1 is what I'm hoping to get out of the DLC myself.

My current headcanon is that only the Sol relay went kablooie (since it's the only one we see explicitly explode), so everyone can just FTL to Palaven and relay jump home from there. And the citadel bits restabilise themselves with retro thrusters to avoid plunging into the earth.

[Derthric]

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.

Interesting note but the FTL of ME is far more efficenet than that of Cochrane's design. It's justa fuel guzzler and you need to discharge it.

The problem with the relay destruction is that its destroying any semblance of soceity with it. They are so dependent upon it for travel and communication that to lose them is akin to making all petroleum products disappear from our modern world. Yeah we might be able to come up with something else in a short time but to mass produce and distribute it seamlessly in a single generation would be bordering on impossible.

It feels like they made the choice and never thought people could take it in any other way but a positive and were surprised that people could hypothesize anything but what they intended.

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.

During my first playthrough I did not have a problem with Leng. He annoyed me in game and I was riding the story fine. I disliked how the fights played out but I took that frustration and channeled it into wanting to rend all of Cerberus apart with my bare hands.

Actually no point prior to the endings was my suspension of disbelief broken. Its why I loathe them in their entirety. They broke what was otherwise a seamless story experience for me. Not flawless, but seamless.

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.

I like Ash, she's my canonShep's LI. And its not just because I like badass b****es with bigass guns, I swear. I took her to end up along the same track as Pressley. These aliens are, well, alien they are unknown quantities. But they prove themselves 10 times over and I do not doubt that she would have done anything for her squadmates, alien or otherwise.

In fact I like all the characters, some not as much at first. For example, Jack was someone I just had a knee jerk reaction to that was negative. But that was superficial judgement, underneath there was a compelling story and pretty awesome character there. The only draw back was that you had to romance her to get to it. My Shepard's are loyal dang it.

Now the character's are not without flaws. The sexualization of Ash in this game. Miranda's "im too perfect" whineyness detracts, but does not ruin, from her compelling "I want to control my own destiny" arc. Jack thinking a belt was a top. Mordin thinking I was hitting on him, because I wasn't I swear.......nope......no.

Bioware's PAX East Panel from yesterday was recorded:

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."

That would have been nice to know beforehand, you know at anytime beforehand.

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.

Retcons, like tropes, are not all bad. This is no big deal on my part, the collectors looked nothing like those statues and the excuse is a good one.

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.

Silence got you this mess, silence amplified it, silence will not save you now Bioware.

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)

Javik, jerk was just gonna kill himself anyway, for the greater good buddy. For the greater good.

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?)

Great I can see how there would be tales of a great and mysterious planet of all blue space babes who will be tricked by your technology into thinking its magic and worshiping you like gods. And 1000 fanfics were born.

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.)

I thought it worked. Besides they can at least "ingest" together without the hangups of different amino acids.

The question I would like to hear an answer to is:
"What were we supposed to be speculating about?"

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'.

I thought Liara looked quite good in her armor options as did Ash. Like I said Badass B****es with Bigass guns are a weakness.

[Landis963]

I... you... what? I think you may have misunderstood that conversation.

It comes out of nowhere, is only one line, and is blink-and-you'll-miss-it. Besides, it's not a given that Shepard picks up on it, or even that Anderson means a biological connection rather than a "you're like a son to me." regardless, it is incidental to the Reaper threat and is quickly shoved aside in favor of the darn starchild.

[Dienekes]

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.

Tali is a civilian engineer from a non-militant society which is viewed largely as a joke militarily from every other race. The Turian and Krogan are from 2 very militant and aggressive races who are getting a front row seat in the organization and command structures of alliance vessels. Yeah, simple regulation and military thought should say be careful of them. And Ash, brings it up, which is really what she should do. Bringing up potential problems to the attention of her superior and then when told to back down, she does. That's just good soldiering.

[Fawkes]

When asked why that content wasn't included in the game at launch, the dev team stood by the release in the core product. "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."

When asked why that content wasn't included in the game at launch, the dev team shuffled around awkwardly. "We're very bad at our jobs."

[chiasaur11]

It comes out of nowhere, is only one line, and is blink-and-you'll-miss-it. Besides, it's not a given that Shepard picks up on it, or even that Anderson means a biological connection rather than a "you're like a son to me." regardless, it is incidental to the Reaper threat and is quickly shoved aside in favor of the darn starchild.

To quote our favorite space drunk

"That makes no sense."

He's a surrogate father figure, yes. But in 66% of all backgrounds, Shep's family is accounted for.

Colonist, they're deader than disco. Murdered by batarians with everyone else Shep knew before the Alliance.

Spacer, Hannah would kinda mention Anderson with that kind of relationship.

Even ignoring that and his claims of not having kids in the extended conversation, Anderson would have had to sire Shepard at 17.

[Alex Knight]

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.

My post was more a mocking of Mass Effect 3's "artistic vision" then a commentary on Deus Ex. DE makes it look like the ME3 writers phoned it in.

[LordShotGun]

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."

Would have been nice to know that in game.....even just a quick sentence from anderson about picking up radio transmissions and saying "My god shepard, there are people still alive on here..."

[Marnath]

*snip* 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.

That's my problem with Saren at his base in the first game. You pull out your pistol and fire three shots and then just give up and stare at him when his shields don't go down. And then he kicks your ass and almost throws you off a high ledge.

Tali is a civilian engineer from a non-militant society which is viewed largely as a joke militarily from every other race. The Turian and Krogan are from 2 very militant and aggressive races who are getting a front row seat in the organization and command structures of alliance vessels. Yeah, simple regulation and military thought should say be careful of them. And Ash, brings it up, which is really what she should do. Bringing up potential problems to the attention of her superior and then when told to back down, she does. That's just good soldiering.

But as I've mentioned before, that's not the real problem. The problem is that she's worried about them having free reign on the alliance's most advanced ship, while at the same time she's whining about that a person who actually has the know-how and motivation to steal the Normandy's advanced secrets is sitting in engineering staring at the highly secret experimental drive core. Garrus doesn't need to steal the secrets since Turians helped build Normandy in the first place, and Wrex is a Krogan.

If Ashley mentioned that Garrus and Wrex were a risk because they're dangerous, she'd have a point. She didn't say anything about that. As it stands all she proved was that she's an irrational bigot.

[Psyren]

I honestly don't think Ashley was meant to be a bigot, it's just that she was poorly-written.

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'.

Miranda has black armor (and a golden Sentry Interface - yay sentinels!) in DLC. Jacob probably would have gotten armor too, except he was likely too unpopular for DLC. But, he does have Barrier so it's not like he's totally unprotected.

[Dienekes]

But as I've mentioned before, that's not the real problem. The problem is that she's worried about them having free reign on the alliance's most advanced ship, while at the same time she's whining about that a person who actually has the know-how and motivation to steal the Normandy's advanced secrets is sitting in engineering staring at the highly secret experimental drive core. Garrus doesn't need to steal the secrets since Turians helped build Normandy in the first place, and Wrex is a Krogan.

If Ashley mentioned that Garrus and Wrex were a risk because they're dangerous, she'd have a point. She didn't say anything about that. As it stands all she proved was that she's an irrational bigot.

There are more secrets than technology. Hell I didn't even mention the technology in my post. I mentioned command structures and organization. Never underestimate the power of understanding how your enemy runs their camps. Learning how the enemy thinks through earlier alliances only to use that information to outplay them is a time honored military tradition. The most preliminary understanding of the American Revolutionary War can be seen as the most obvious example, while Napoleon's conquest (particularly in Prussia) are probably the most successful examples. It is simply stupid to give this sort of information to your opponent.

[Marnath]

There are more secrets than technology. Hell I didn't even mention the technology in my post. I mentioned command structures and organization. Never underestimate the power of understanding how your enemy runs their camps. Learning how the enemy thinks through earlier alliances only to use that information to outplay them is a time honored military tradition. The most preliminary understanding of the American Revolutionary War can be seen as the most obvious example, while Napoleon's conquest (particularly in Prussia) are probably the most successful examples. It is simply stupid to give this sort of information to your opponent.

The Turians already know how humans structure their command hierarchy because they would have to have brought that to the drawing board when it was being decided what elements from each culture's combat philosophy would be used on Normandy. Assuming that the Alliance isn't like our own military, in which case the schematics would be available on the Extranet, lol. The Krogan are, well, Krogan. There's only so much adjustment you can make to a frontal assault strategy which is basically the only thing they ever seem to try. They don't have a navy capable of threatening Alliance ships in any event.

[Beowulf DW]

The Turians already know how humans structure their command hierarchy because they would have to have brought that to the drawing board when it was being decided what elements from each culture's combat philosophy would be used on Normandy. Assuming that the Alliance isn't like our own military, in which case the schematics would be available on the Extranet, lol. The Krogan are, well, Krogan. There's only so much adjustment you can make to a frontal assault strategy which is basically the only thing they ever seem to try. They don't have a navy capable of threatening Alliance ships in any event.

Again, I say to you, it's her job to worry about this kind of stuff. And she gets over it pretty damn quickly.

[Morty]

Honestly, I think people are blowing Ashley's prejudice towards aliens out of proportion. No, she doesn't trust them. No, it's not a positive trait. But it's not like she's a blathering bigot. And negative traits such as prejudice make for well-rounded characters.

[chiasaur11]

Honestly, I think people are blowing Ashley's prejudice towards aliens out of proportion. No, she doesn't trust them. No, it's not a positive trait. But it's not like she's a blathering bigot. And negative traits such as prejudice make for well-rounded characters.

Also, she's willing to make friends with them.

See: Tali.

[VanBuren]

She's concerned about classified information being leaked to foreign agents, which is a legitimate concern and for which I would severely question her competence if she didn't voice said concern at least once.

And her other concern is that she's cynical and expects that when it comes down to the wire, other species will always take care of their own and hang other races out to dry, which is the reason you have to go through most of Mass Effect 3. So she's not too far off on this one.

Then there's also the fact that she, by necessity, would have had to adopt stronger pro-human/anti-alien attitudes than those around her simply by virtue of the stigma attached to her family name.

Naturally, being the blathering racist she is, Ashley should love Cerberus and Terra Firma. Of course, she explicitly doesn't, so I'm not sure the straight-up analysis of her being a bigot is true.

[Dienekes]

The Turians already know how humans structure their command hierarchy because they would have to have brought that to the drawing board when it was being decided what elements from each culture's combat philosophy would be used on Normandy. Assuming that the Alliance isn't like our own military, in which case the schematics would be available on the Extranet, lol. The Krogan are, well, Krogan. There's only so much adjustment you can make to a frontal assault strategy which is basically the only thing they ever seem to try. They don't have a navy capable of threatening Alliance ships in any event.

That's making a rather large assumption there that just because they discussed how to build a ship with the Turians that they divulged all the inner workings of living on an Alliance vehicle and command structures. This is not necessarily true. And Wrex is one very intelligent Krogan, that Ash even recognizes. Honestly if there was any Krogan in the entire game who would have a chance of using such information to develop his own strategies and advance the Krogan military machine it would have been Wrex.

Simply you're straight up assuming that the information wouldn't matter, and she straight up assumes it will. Brought up her concern to her commanding officer as she should, and when told to drop them does so.

Coupled with, as VanBuren points out, that she appears to be the most opposed to racist organizations out of your entire squad, and I think that the idea of her being racist herself is pretty much bunked.

[Luzahn]

Hmm. So the Controllers saved the Citadel? Lousy ambiguities. That dlc can't come fast enough.

I do recall Ashley comparing aliens to dogs once in mass effect 1, though that is out of context.

I did prefer Kaiden to Ashley though; Ashley felt like a generic soldier, while Kaiden had some background to him, with the whole Jump Zero thing.

So Tali and Garrus hook up for everyone else? No wonder he seems a bit peeved with my Shepard who romanced her.

[Beowulf DW]

Hmm. So the Controllers saved the Citadel? Lousy ambiguities. That dlc can't come fast enough.

I do recall Ashley comparing aliens to dogs once in mass effect 1, though that is out of context.

I did prefer Kaiden to Ashley though; Ashley felt like a generic soldier, while Kaiden had some background to him, with the whole Jump Zero thing.

So Tali and Garrus hook up for everyone else? No wonder he seems a bit peeved with my Shepard who romanced her.

Ashley compared no one to a dog. She made a point that members of their species will always care more about their own species.

[Marnath]

Ashley compared no one to a dog. She made a point that members of their species will always care more about their own species.

If anything, humans are the dog in that little scenario. Here's that conversation, if anyone is interested.

[Zevox]

Okay, a couple people said this, but you said it the most and I feel I failed to convey my point. The Catalyst doesn't say that synthetic life will always rise up against organic life. It says the 'created always destroy the creator'. It may not seem like a difference, but there is. The second statement doesn't tell you why the created always destroy the creator, because in all actuality there could be lots of reasons.

Actually, you're misremembering his words. He said "The created will always rebel against their creators." That definitely specifies that it's the synthetics who are the aggressors in the scenario he believes to be the case.

Besides, it's not as if he'd have a better argument if he weren't claiming that. Without the concern that synthetics inherently go genocidal towards organics, we're left with just a race of creatures that happens to be synthetic. Them getting into conflicts becomes no different from organics doing so - he was may as well have been worried about an organic race during each cycle inevitably becoming powerful enough to wipe out the others in that case. It would make just as much, or rather just as little, sense.

Zevox

[Psyren]

She did make a comment on the citadel in ME1 about being "unable to tell the aliens from the animals" that I found a bit off-color.

I do think claims of her racism are overblown though.

I did prefer Kaiden to Ashley though; Ashley felt like a generic soldier, while Kaiden had some background to him, with the whole Jump Zero thing.

He's also much more agreeable about the whole Horizon thing. In the hospital, Ashley didn't apologize once.

[Luzahn]

She did make a comment on the citadel in ME1 about being "unable to tell the aliens from the animals" that I found a bit off-color.

I do think claims of her racism are overblown though.



He's also much more agreeable about the whole Horizon thing. In the hospital, Ashley didn't apologize once.

My first playthrough I accidentally saved Ashley, as I didn't realize one squadmate was always lost, and I assumed Kirrahe could keep him alive. My "canon" Shepard has saved him, but I'm not done with ME1 yet. Should be interesting, not to mention conducive to being a barrier-wielding vanguard.

[Psyren]

Patrick Weekes (one of the main writers behind Rannoch and Tuchanka) answered some questions from a fan at PAX. Said fan then posted the answers on the Bioware forums. Here you go:

Spoiler

Show

Okay, here is what I asked Patrick Weekes, and his answers as best as I can remember them. I've paraphrased but I'm doing my best to stick to what he said rather than introduce any interpretation.

THESE ARE NOT DIRECT QUOTES.

-Is there still a setting to explore after the ending? Is everything ruined?

The setting is definitely not ruined. We still have a big, lively galaxy.

-Will long-distance superluminal travel still be possible post-Ending? (will Tali or Wrex or Garrus see their homeworlds again? Will everyone starve?)

Galactic civilization will rebuild. The mass relays were not necessary for interstellar flight. Remember, what does it say in the Codex about the speed of ships? That's right, 12 lightyears per (day? hour? minute?). And that's only the cruising speed, not the maximum speed.

People have never needed to research basic FTL improvements before because they have mass relays. With the relays gone, new technology will increase that speed. Additionally, the element zero cores of the dead/controlled Reapers can be used to improve FTL drives. Starflight will continue using conventional FTL.

-Why did Joker leave Shep behind?

Joker would never abandon Shep without a good reason. Hopefully this will be clear in the Expanded Cut.

-Why can EDI survive the Destroy ending?

(We argued a lot about this, I said that she was made of Reapertech and should therefore be destroyed, but (unclear, don't remember - wish I'd been able to ask a followup as his response doesn't make much sense))

-Did anyone on the Citadel survive?

Yes. We would never, ever do anything that made the player feel, on replay, that it would be better for everyone on the Citadel if they just died. The Citadel has emergency shelters and kinetic barriers - even if it blows up, millions might survive. You should assume that everyone plot-important on the Citadel survived.

-Is it better for Kelly Chambers if we talk her into suicide?

No, see above.

-Who wrote the death of Joker's sister?

I did! We intentionally did not connect the dots. We were very interested to see how fast gamers figured it out.

-Whose idea was it to make the Rayya fall out of the sky if you destroy the Quarian fleet?

Someone in the audio department, it was brilliant.

-Did the mass relays pull an Arrival and go supernova?

No, they didn't. (i'm paraphrasing here, please don't interpret this too hard) They overloaded, they didn't rupture. We really didn't mean to imply that the whole galaxy had been destroyed. People interpreted the ending in ways we really didn't expect.

(Mr. Weekes dropped a lot of hints that he really didn't like the ending. He also said something that was almost 100% verbatim from the Penny Arcade Forum post often attributed to him)

-Why did Legion pull a 180 from his Mass Effect 2 philosophy?

He and the Geth were backed into a corner. They'd been made a lot dumber by the attack on the Dyson swarm. There was no other choice for Geth survival.

-What was up with the Rachni story? Why did we get railroaded?

Welcome to game development. In some games (Alpha Protocol) they make a bold choice where some decisions can knock entire missions out of the story. At BioWare, we never want people to be locked out of content due to a decision several games ago. We just didn't have the resources to do an alternate for the Rachni mission, so we decided that the Rachni mission could occur whether or not players saved the Queen.

-Why didn't (X squadmate from ME2) return?

There was a very ugly month of development where we fought out who would return. We knew we had to have a smaller cast so we could fit in more squad banter. Eventually we decided to bring Garrus and Tali back, so they could be squadmates in all three games. We also knew we'd have Vega in order for new players to have someone dumber than they were.

I was very resentful of Vega at first because I thought he was taking a slot that could've gone to a ME2 character, but he grew on me.

-Why did EDI have cameltoe?

We don't get a lot of feedback from the art department but (unclear, wish I remembered this better )

Lots of discussion about how he was uncomfortable doing Pinocchio stories for both Legion and EDI because 'EDI was fine, she was an AI, she was cool - do we really need her to turn into Commander Data? We had seven seasons of Data, that was enough.'

-Why did you write Pinocchio stories for all the synthetic characters?

See above

-What was up with the Human Reaper in ME2? Why did it look so dumb?

We wanted to use the Suicide Mission to show several steps of the Reaper development process, from human reaper embryo all the way to cuttlefish. But the mission grew too complicated so it was cut for time.

-Do the Reapers really only generate one capital ship per cycle? How do they ever break even?

Well, we never totally pinned that down. But this cycle was really anomalous. They don't normally take any capital-size Reaper losses at all.

-What was up with Kai Leng? How do you feel about him?

We really wanted to have a recurring antagonist for Shep, a 'Darth Maul' (his words). But I feel like there was some definite conflict between cutscene and gameplay there, and I think it's something we have to work on.

'He was a great antagonist in the books' -_-

-Why did we only get top and bottom dialogue choices, no middle?

Part of it was resources. Part of it is that Mass Effect 3 is a war story and it's really hard for Shep to feel middling about the Reapers.

-Why no female (alien X?)

Resource limitations. They have a very strict budget for how many different characters they can use in a given area. Some are basically free - if you have human males you have Batarians because they're humans with funny heads, if you have human females you have asari, etc.

-Where was Harbinger? Can we ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL of him?

I definitely want more closure on Harbinger. That'd be hilarious. Stop punching yourself, Harbinger.

-How did the Reapers storm the Citadel? Why didn't they shut down the relays as per their original plan once they had control?

Originally we planned to have a cutscene of Reapers taking over, Reaper monsters punching buttons, et cetera. But we cut it, partially for resource reasons and partly because it disrupted the pacing.

The Reapers didn't shut down the mass relays because the Keepers interfered with that. (I wish I could've asked a follow-up here, it doesn't make much sense.)

Why don't Ken and Gabby have more dialogue?

They actually have a bunch more on disk, but we somehow introduced a bug where their dialogue is tied to your approval level with Ash. If Ash has low approval, or isn't present, most of Ken and Gabby's dialogue won't play.

Why do you guys do Star Wars style space battles instead of the battles described in the codex?

We want to provide a familiar, compelling visual experience for people who grew up on Star Wars and stuff like that. These are some of our favorite parts of the game.

There you have it, the galaxy isn't over after all, and the "repurpose the Reapers" theory seems to have been canonized.

[thegurullamen]

Stop punching yourself, Harbinger.

Unexpected lol. Just spit Raisin Bran all over my monitor.

[Dienekes]

I did prefer Kaiden to Ashley though; Ashley felt like a generic soldier, while Kaiden had some background to him, with the whole Jump Zero thing.

I've thought that Ash is personality with no backstory and Kaidan is backstory with no personality. Of the two I'd rather have an interesting character and not just an interesting past, so I'd pick Ash. But I can see how someone would prefer the other.

[TheLaughingMan]

There you have it, the galaxy isn't over after all, and the "repurpose the Reapers" theory seems to have been canonized.

:/

I'm not sure if anyone was quite arguing that the galaxy was over, but rather that it take a huge punch to the gut that would take centuries to recover from. In that regard, it's still a pretty big oversight.

And 'Kai Leng was a good villain in the books?' I mean, he was a silly, comically overpowered nuisance, but I'm not quite sure if that's what they were going for.

Otherwise, it's nice to hear from the staff about these things, and I'm glad they didn't opt for more PR nonsense when it came to answering things.

[Fawkes]

He's also much more agreeable about the whole Horizon thing. In the hospital, Ashley didn't apologize once.

If you romanced Miranda, she's downright bitchy. She approves of Tali, though.

[chiasaur11]

I've thought that Ash is personality with no backstory and Kaidan is backstory with no personality. Of the two I'd rather have an interesting character and not just an interesting past, so I'd pick Ash. But I can see how someone would prefer the other.

She's got a decent backstory.

Model soldier who suddenly hits a roadblock due to family history isn't the deepest one, but she's got a family, problems, and guilt to deal with right from the start.

Carries through in interesting ways too.

As for the Weekes interview thing, he's clarified some of the answers on his twitter.