Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

[Kiero]

This is a timely thread, I'm musing on whether or not I should attempt my first repeat game in ME1. I've played it through exactly twice: once with male and once with female characters. Mostly I'd like to change my Virmire choice from last time around, along with my romance partner. What's it like starting at level 50? Is everything scaled up in difficulty?

I actually think the 3rd was the strongest, up until those last 10 minutes.

That's rather generous, ME3 started taking a nose-dive from Thessia onwards, and there were problematic elements even from the beginning.

[Psyren]

On reflection, can we start using spoiler tags? Mark Hall and a couple of others haven't played ME3 yet.

@ Zevox:

Spoiler

Show

Does her replacement still commit suicide in that case, though? Because that's still a bit of an issue if so.

Raan blows her brains out instead of cliff-diving but yeah, both will an hero if you side with the Geth.

[LibraryOgre]

On reflection, can we start using spoiler tags? Mark Hall and a couple of others haven't played ME3 yet.

Unofficially, I don't mind spoilers. I'm also of the opinion that, if the game has been out for 2 years, you're kind of on your own regarding spoilers. I tend to go with Scalzi's rules on this, and count games as movies... give people a year to play and be surprised, but, after that, they're on their own.

'Cause I have seriously seen someone, in the 21st century, get mad about Empire Strikes Back spoilers, and that's just silly.

If y'all want to use spoilers, go right ahead, but I'm not going to come down on anyone for failing to.

[Calemyr]

This is a timely thread, I'm musing on whether or not I should attempt my first repeat game in ME1. I've played it through exactly twice: once with male and once with female characters. Mostly I'd like to change my Virmire choice from last time around, along with my romance partner. What's it like starting at level 50? Is everything scaled up in difficulty?

ME1 was a fantastic game for its time, but for all its good story the gameplay is quite tedious. I can't bring myself to play it anymore, especially not up to level 60 with all the applicable missions done and such. I usually just go to Mass Effect Saves, pick one that matches what I want, then use a save editor to modify the name to suit me.

That's rather generous, ME3 started taking a nose-dive from Thessia onwards, and there were problematic elements even from the beginning.

As much as I loathe Kai Leng for his cut scene godhood, I can more or less forgive it for one reason: it builds up to an epic smackdown where you thwomp both him and his reinforcements while verbally dismantling the jackass and ultimately leaving him a bloody lump on the floor. Then, when he thinks you've spared him and tries to go for the kill, you destroy his sword and run him through, telling him as he dies that that was in the name of whoever he'd managed to kill. The more you hate him by that point, the more satisfying the conclusion, I imagine, so they went all out to make you hate him. They just did it wrong, because he barely manages to earn any antipathy while the writers invite it all for themselves by blatantly cheating.

The last ten minutes, on the other hand, are very hard to justify. Had Leviathan been part of the actual game rather than a far-too-late DLC, I would have had a far easier time accepting the ending, because in light of Leviathan the ending actually makes some level of sense. But there's no payoff for the frustration and storyteller fiat at the end of the game and there's no feeling of closure or a sense of the ramifications of your final choice until Extended Cut was released. It came out of nowhere, was completely disconnected with the franchise to that point, and reduced a rich tapestry of narrative to a choice of color with an arbitrary consequence attached to it. "Or you could choose Yellow, in which case I'll, uh, kill your robot dog or something. You care for F1D0, right? Yeah, so, pick Yellow and you save the universe but your puppy dies!"

[Jayngfet]

As much as I loathe Kai Leng for his cut scene godhood, I can more or less forgive it for one reason: it builds up to an epic smackdown where you thwomp both him and his reinforcements while verbally dismantling the jackass and ultimately leaving him a bloody lump on the floor. Then, when he thinks you've spared him and tries to go for the kill, you destroy his sword and run him through, telling him as he dies that that was in the name of whoever he'd managed to kill. The more you hate him by that point, the more satisfying the conclusion, I imagine, so they went all out to make you hate him. They just did it wrong, because he barely manages to earn any antipathy while the writers invite it all for themselves by blatantly cheating.

Kai Leng's boss fight is running around in an awkward and out of place stance, slow enough to hit repeatedly with no trouble. Hell, his death blow is done in a quick time event that plays out in mostly the same way even if you don't press the button.

Kai Leng has literally no redeeming features and is probably weaker than the actual ending. The ending is something you can ignore by shutting off the game when you kill TIM. Kai Leng just hangs over the whole game like a quasi-racist mist.

[Psyren]

I did like that they customized the dialogue for killing him.

"That was for Thane/Miranda/Kirrahe, you sonuvab****!"

[Rodin]

I did like that they customized the dialogue for killing him.

"That was for Thane/Miranda/Kirrahe, you sonuvab****!"

You get the best one if he doesn't kill any of those folks.

"No gunship this time, you sonuva..."

Very Ahnold.

[Psyren]

You get the best one if he doesn't kill any of those folks.

"No gunship this time, you sonuva..."

Very Ahnold.

I was wondering about that. Of course, to get that dialogue everyone has to already be dead.

[Rodin]

I was wondering about that. Of course, to get that dialogue everyone has to already be dead.

Not neccessarily. Miranda can still be alive. The others...not so much.

[Talderas]

Nearly every game in creation does this, it's hardly a unique sin of ME. Why couldn't we Phoenix Down/Life3 Aeris?

That is one of the worst examples that you can use. Phoenix Down and Life 2 or any of those spells clear the KO (knocked out) status which means knocked out not dead. That's the way it's always been. Aeris was dead and not KO'd she had her entrails mangled and cut by Sephiroth.

Not neccessarily. Miranda can still be alive. The others...not so much.

Kirrahe can be killed in ME1. Thane and Miranda can be killed in ME2. Miranda can be saved from Kai in ME3.

[Psyren]

That is one of the worst examples that you can use. Phoenix Down and Life 2 or any of those spells clear the KO (knocked out) status which means knocked out not dead. That's the way it's always been. Aeris was dead and not KO'd she had her entrails mangled and cut by Sephiroth.

Ahh, so when Odin uses Zantetsuken in FF4 and decapitates your party, or in FFV when you get wiped with L5 Doom, they were just knocked out... gotcha.

Kirrahe can be killed in ME1. Thane and Miranda can be killed in ME2. Miranda can be saved from Kai in ME3.

I think he means "Miranda can be alive and still get the gunship dialogue" which makes sense. If Kirrahe and Thane are dead before ME3, Kai Leng never killed them, and if you save Miranda, Kai Leng never killed her either, so you end up with the gunship as the only thing to be truly pissed out.

[Talderas]

FailShep's not something I made up, just something the fandom has done for a long time. It's basically just a Shepard who makes all the worst possible choices and gets as many people killed as possible. So, mainly a renegade Shep, with Grunt and Kaiden/Ash dead in 1, all but two companions dead in the Suicide Mission (I went with Morinth and Thane as the survivors - one terminally ill, the other an evil space-succubus, and both doomed in 3 anyway), and no good outcomes in 3.

Though thinking about it, that'll leave me with a conundrum when I finally take mine through 3. My pick for worst outcome of Rannoch would be siding with the Quarians by default, but that means missing the chance to get Tali killed by siding with the Geth. Hm. Oh well, not doing that anytime too soon, so I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Failshep isn't about killing as many people as possible. Failshep is about stopping the reavers and leaving the worst possible galaxy while attempting to kill as many of your squadmates as you can.

In ME1 three characters die on Virmire, Kirrahe, Wrex, and either Kaidan or Ashley. You also do not save the Destiny's Ascension.

In ME2 you choices for characters to live through the suicide missions are Thane (dies in 3, although I caution against keeping him), Legion (dies in 3), Tali (suicide in 3 when you side with the Geth), Mordin (dies attempting to fix the Genophage that you helped sabotage), Miranda (Kai Leng kills her if you don't warn her), or Jack (she gets turned into a phantom you kill if you don't do her mission fast enough). A couple others might be valid options as well but I don't remember off hand. You can also kill Zaeed during his loyalty mission. Thanks to arrival(?) DLC the Batarians are basically boned.

For ME3 you had ideally avoided saving Thane and Kirrahe which causes Kai Leng to kill the Salarian counciler. You save the Geth, which kills the Quarians and induces suicide in Tali. During the Cerberus attack you shoot Kaiden or Ashley (whoever is still alive) You will have a limited number of companions available after this to you James, EDI, Javik, and Liara. You can can Javik by never waking him up. His pod will run out of energy soon and he'll die. You will go for the bare minimum war score so that the two companions you take with you are killed rather than evacuated by the Normandy so you take James and Liara. Finally you choose the Destroy ending which kills off the Geth and EDI. Other notable decisions. Kasumi needs to die in ME2 otherwise you can save the drell/hanar and the salarian Specter agent. You want the drell/hanar to die because numbers. You let the bomb on Tuchanka explode.

There's other decisions to be made but I provided a cross section of some of them.

Ahh, so when Odin uses Zantetsuken in FF4 and decapitates your party, or in FFV when you get wiped with L5 Doom, they were just knocked out... gotcha

Pretty much.

[Calemyr]

Final Fantasy V has the party desperately using every healing item they have trying revive the grandfather of one of the characters, suggesting it was a situation where it usually works, but the circumstances made phoenix down ineffective. It was kinda cool that they tried, though.

The other way to look at it is that cutscene deaths are fated and can't be reversed. Unless you're in Final Fantasy IV where virtually everybody survives dying horrible deaths somehow.

[Rodin]

I think the optimal two for "Shepard is a psycopath" would be Samara (so you can have her commit suicide and then kill her daughter anyway) and Mordin (so you can shoot him in the back), although I'm torn on whether he or Tali is the more tragic.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Final Fantasy V has the party desperately using every healing item they have trying revive the grandfather of one of the characters, suggesting it was a situation where it usually works, but the circumstances made phoenix down ineffective. It was kinda cool that they tried, though.

The other way to look at it is that cutscene deaths are fated and can't be reversed. Unless you're in Final Fantasy IV where virtually everybody survives dying horrible deaths somehow.

If memory serves, Galuf kept fighting for like five minutes after getting knocked to 0 HP, and it was awesome. I think that might have something to do with it.

And I think Kai Leng is slightly alleviated by the fact that literally no one takes him seriously, plot armor aside. Even TIM disses him to his face.

[KillianHawkeye]

Final Fantasy V has the party desperately using every healing item they have trying revive the grandfather of one of the characters, suggesting it was a situation where it usually works, but the circumstances made phoenix down ineffective. It was kinda cool that they tried, though.

The other way to look at it is that cutscene deaths are fated and can't be reversed. Unless you're in Final Fantasy IV where virtually everybody survives dying horrible deaths somehow.

If memory serves, Galuf kept fighting for like five minutes after getting knocked to 0 HP, and it was awesome. I think that might have something to do with it.

Another pre-Aeris example of this occurred in Final Fantasy 6. In that game, the primary motivation of one of the earliest main characters is to find the mythical Phoenix esper in order to bring his dead girlfriend back to life, and even when he finally does, she only comes back to life for like 2 minutes (just enough for a proper farewell).

[Psyren]

Galuf I can understand. The guy was basically at --bajillion with nothing keeping him going aside from his massive bollocks. When he finally snuffed it, it would bave probably taken Life9 just to get him back to 0 HP.

In any event, my broader point was - gameplay/story segregation, it's sort of a thing.

[Avilan the Grey]

I just wish the mix-and-match armor pieces mattered more than the all-in-one sets.

???

Are you talking about the special armors? Because they have always been both uglier and worse than the mix max sets. Both in 2 and especially in 3.
Or are you talking about having every piece of armor from the same manufacturer? In that case I also disagree rather strongly.

[GloatingSwine]

And I think Kai Leng is slightly alleviated by the fact that literally no one takes him seriously, plot armor aside. Even TIM disses him to his face.

That's actually even worse. Y'see the problem with Kai Leng is that the player is made to hate him without the characters having a sound reason to. And you hate him because he wins in bull**** cutscenes and flaunts the rules of combat ("I will stand in the open and regenerate my shields ps now I am inwincible!".

[Psyren]

???

Are you talking about the special armors? Because they have always been both uglier and worse than the mix max sets. Both in 2 and especially in 3.
Or are you talking about having every piece of armor from the same manufacturer? In that case I also disagree rather strongly.

They have higher stat pools than the custom sets. If you want max cooldown and damage for instance, Inferno beats Rosenkov + Serrice every time.

I don't agree that they're uglier. Inferno looked great on my engineer, the mask matched the omnitool quite well. In addition, for the airless missions the all-in-one suits don't force you to wear that sh***y breather helmet with it's unnoticeable health buff.

[Avilan the Grey]

I have forgiven Bioware for the ending of the game. Admittedly I have never played the game without Extended cut despite preordering it (I waited to install it) and only once without Leviathan installed.

Yes, Leviathan should have been base game. But nevertheless, I think that the ending at it stands now is better than average, for a video game.

[Anteros]

I've never played anything except the extended cut, and I still consider it to be a giant bag of terrible that overshadows what is otherwise the greatest game series of all time.

[Zevox]

I've never played anything except the extended cut, and I still consider it to be a giant bag of terrible that overshadows what is otherwise the greatest game series of all time.

Wouldn't go quite so extreme on either description, but yeah, I don't think that either the Extended Cut or Leviathan (especially Leviathan) did anything to really make the ending better as a piece of writing. The Extended Cut helped make it less abrupt and lacking in closure, but that's about it.

[Jayngfet]

I also jumped in with only EC and I also say it's not even a mediocre ending. Anyone who says otherwise is basically just compromising after a certain point.

[Rodin]

It's personal opinion. I still say that I loved the ending (with EC) and found very little wrong with it - my only real sticking point on my first playthrough was that there's no way to save Anderson. My only sticking point on subsequent playthroughs were budgetary (would have liked more variation of the cinematics).

But we've all been around this block so many times that there's a deep groove in the road, so I'm not going to get drawn into another argument about it. You like what you like.

[Psyren]

It's personal opinion. I still say that I loved the ending (with EC) and found very little wrong with it - my only real sticking point on my first playthrough was that there's no way to save Anderson. My only sticking point on subsequent playthroughs were budgetary (would have liked more variation of the cinematics).

But we've all been around this block so many times that there's a deep groove in the road, so I'm not going to get drawn into another argument about it. You like what you like.

Ditto on all counts.

I'm hoping that DAI's extra time will prevent them having to do an "extended cut" of that game too. My fear though is that if DAI does better ending-wise, Bioware will attribute that to a higher level of attachment to Shepard specifically, and thus we will get no more trilogies with a single protagonist as a result.

[Anteros]

I also jumped in with only EC and I also say it's not even a mediocre ending. Anyone who says otherwise is basically just compromising after a certain point.

I feel like the only people who really enjoyed the EC were the ones who experienced the original ending, which was apparently so terrible that it makes the EC look good in comparison.

[Dienekes]

I feel like the only people who really enjoyed the EC were the ones who experienced the original ending, which was apparently so terrible that it makes the EC look good in comparison.

I generally see two claims when it comes to the ME3 ending.

Claim 1: It didn't let me end with my Shepard on a beach with blue babies
Claim 2: The ending was bad because the starkid was idiotic.

Honestly, I have nothing but a mild disdain for claim 1. Oh no, your character going through a war of extinction didn't get a perfect ride into the sunset. The horror.

Claim 2 I think has always been more valid. I do think the starkid was handled horrendously poorly. Literally coming right out of nowhere, and we're only ever given a backstory on what it is if you buy an additional dlc, and it's main argument for existing only comes up if you have a companion who isn't part of the base game. That's just poor storytelling. I tend to agree with most of their points. But it doesn't really bother me, or at least not as much as it did when I first beat the game. And it hasn't really dulled my enjoyment of the rest of it.

Though admittedly, ending the game as God Emperor of Dune the Galaxy does put me in a better mood.

[Kiero]

ME1 was a fantastic game for its time, but for all its good story the gameplay is quite tedious. I can't bring myself to play it anymore, especially not up to level 60 with all the applicable missions done and such. I usually just go to Mass Effect Saves, pick one that matches what I want, then use a save editor to modify the name to suit me.

I want a level 60 character to import into ME2, I only had a level 50 character before. I'm playing on XBox, so Mass Effect Saves isn't really an option without a load of hassle.

As much as I loathe Kai Leng for his cut scene godhood, I can more or less forgive it for one reason: it builds up to an epic smackdown where you thwomp both him and his reinforcements while verbally dismantling the jackass and ultimately leaving him a bloody lump on the floor. Then, when he thinks you've spared him and tries to go for the kill, you destroy his sword and run him through, telling him as he dies that that was in the name of whoever he'd managed to kill. The more you hate him by that point, the more satisfying the conclusion, I imagine, so they went all out to make you hate him. They just did it wrong, because he barely manages to earn any antipathy while the writers invite it all for themselves by blatantly cheating.

The last ten minutes, on the other hand, are very hard to justify. Had Leviathan been part of the actual game rather than a far-too-late DLC, I would have had a far easier time accepting the ending, because in light of Leviathan the ending actually makes some level of sense. But there's no payoff for the frustration and storyteller fiat at the end of the game and there's no feeling of closure or a sense of the ramifications of your final choice until Extended Cut was released. It came out of nowhere, was completely disconnected with the franchise to that point, and reduced a rich tapestry of narrative to a choice of color with an arbitrary consequence attached to it. "Or you could choose Yellow, in which case I'll, uh, kill your robot dog or something. You care for F1D0, right? Yeah, so, pick Yellow and you save the universe but your puppy dies!"

He's just symptomatic of the general decline in the quality of writing as the game progresses. It happens long before the stupid ending, which is only a polished turd with the Extended Cut. Especially the addition of the fourth ending, which really showed Bioware didn't get it.

In any case, for me there was no option but Destroy. The Reapers needed to die, their "cycle" had to be ended, synthetic life can be rebuilt.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I generally see two claims when it comes to the ME3 ending.

Claim 1: It didn't let me end with my Shepard on a beach with blue babies
Claim 2: The ending was bad because the starkid was idiotic.

Honestly, I have nothing but a mild disdain for claim 1. Oh no, your character going through a war of extinction didn't get a perfect ride into the sunset. The horror.

Claim 2 I think has always been more valid. I do think the starkid was handled horrendously poorly. Literally coming right out of nowhere, and we're only ever given a backstory on what it is if you buy an additional dlc, and it's main argument for existing only comes up if you have a companion who isn't part of the base game. That's just poor storytelling. I tend to agree with most of their points. But it doesn't really bother me, or at least not as much as it did when I first beat the game. And it hasn't really dulled my enjoyment of the rest of it.

Though admittedly, ending the game as God Emperor of Dune the Galaxy does put me in a better mood.

Stepping in to pretty much agree here. Shepard doesn't survive the ending (unless you jump through hoops and make specific choices) because Mass Effect is the kind of story that ends with the hero either dead or ascended to godhood. It's a Campbellian myth, full stop. Everything about how the ending was presented, though, not just the Starkid, was lazy and out of nowhere. Especially Synthesis. The other two endings were explicable by applying Tim Taylor principles (and potentially Shepard's consciousness) to the Reaper command & control network. Synthesis was just ****ing magic and it took me right out of the story, all ethical concerns aside.