Mass Effect discussion thread

Nah said:

....so I beat Mass Effect 3 (the other day).

I can see why people weren't exactly fond of the (original) ending.

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What happens in the ending?

El Héroe Oscuro said:

What happens in the ending?

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Essentially when you make it to the very end, the game presents you with 3 choices, and you pick one of them. One of the complaints in regards to the ending is that "the choices are all the same". It sort of seems that way at first since the resulting cutscene after making your choice looks nearly identical for all 3. They aren't truly the same though; the game explains to you beforehand what each of of the choices results in.

The real problem is that you don't get to see the results of your choice. Making decisions that effect the storyline and how the game goes isn't unique to Mass Effect--plenty of other RPGs do this--but what is unique to the series (as far as I know anyway) is that your choices affect the future games, you have to deal with the long-term impacts you might not have foreseen at the time. This has always been a major part of the franchise. Given that this is the end of trilogy, there is no next game to see what happens, so the logical thing to do would be to provide a few scenes after making your final choice to see what happens to the galaxy.....yet they didn't do this in the original ending. You're left wondering "what happened to my friends on the Normandy?", "what exactly does galactic society do after the war?", "did I really make the right choice?". There's no closure really.

The new ending, the "Extended Cut" as they call it, remedies that to some degree, as it shows and talks about some of what happens after you make your choice (although it seems not as much as I was hoping for). It also provides a 4th ending where you refuse the 3 other choices and leave, as well as some extra dialogue and changes to some of the original dialogue in the final room to try and clarify, since the game pulls a slight twist (which is something I think was a good part about the ending in general) when you get there and it can be slightly confusing at first.

There is one personal, and so subjective, gripe I have with the ending that both versions share, which is


A few other small issues with game, but still a good experience. Now I just have to decide what to do about DLC for 3, and when I should do another playthrough of the trilogy.

Well theres a bit more to it than "Not getting to see your choices." As to why the ending sucks and still does.

The endings are for the most part the same (at least before Ext Cut, idk about after) with the major difference being the color of explosion and whether or not people are glowy, plus a _little_ dialog.

One of the huge gripes though, is the game tossing out the established antagonist and introducing a new one all within the last 5 minutes of the game. It doesnt make sense. It's a "straight out of left field" type of situation. "Where'd you come from? Who are you? Why do I care about you where is the bad guy I've been fighting for 2-3 games?!" Taking a tactical nuke to the already established and understood plot is not the way to make a twist.

If they really wanted to fix the ending they needed to remove said annoying character and the whole scene and let us defeat the antagonist that has been set up for 2-3 games.

Of course all the threads left hanging are another problem entirely. Like Nah said, the game leaves you wondering what happened to your friend. What happened to the galaxy's inhabitants. For all you know so much destruction was done that society collapsed a few years later.

All-in-all, Mass Effect 3's ending always leaves me with a terrible sinking feeling in my gut and an air of disbelief. What happened? This can't be how it ends I expect more from the series! Etc etc



The Citadel DLC is a much better story in ME3 and shows what the full game could have been like. Maybe in a different galaxy... Oh wait...

Since I have Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3, these are all the DLCs I have gotten for each one:

Mass Effect DLC:
Bring Down The Sky
Pinnacle Station

Mass Effect 2 DLC:
Cerberus Network
Normandy Crash Site
Zaeed - The Price of Revenge
Cerberus Weapon and Armor
Arc Projector
Firewalker Pack
Alternate Appearance Pack 1
Kasumi - Stolen Memory
Equalizer Pack
Overlord
Aegis Pack
Firepower Pack
Lair of the Shadow Broker
Alternate Appearance Pack 2
Arrival

Mass Effect 3 DLC:
(Single Player)
Mass Effect 3 From Ashes
Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut
Mass Effect 3 Firefight Pack
Mass Effect 3 Leviathan
Mass Effect 3 Groundside Resistance Pack
Alternate Appearance Pack 1
Mass Effect 3 Omega
Mass Effect 3 Citadel
(Multiplayer)
Online Pass
Mass Effect 3 Resurgence Pack
Mass Effect 3 Rebellion Pack
Mass Effect 3 Earth
Mass Effect 3 Retaliation
Mass Effect 3 Reckoning

Now for DLCs I did not get are Genesis and Genesis 2 since I have all three of those games so it is redundant to get the two Genesis DLCs.

Just saw this interesting video about Andromeda's animation, and what might be the cause of the problems it had:

Without watching the video, I can already tell you Bioware's former animator already answered that question. It's a complex process for a game the size of a Mass Effect Game

Short version is a program reads the dialog and animated everyone needed with basic ugly animations (It's a computer after all it cant interpret how the animations work.) After that all interactions are supposed to be classified in importance to be edited by hand to make them more human. You have Main quest interactions, romance, etc etc in one category, side missions and whatnot in another and misc in the last. But the former animator thinks they decided to try and hand edit all of the scenes, and ran out of time due to the sheer amount of work that is. This explains why the animations in the game inhabit both polar opposites, really good and mechanical. It also shows why it is so easy for them to go and fix a lot of the animations like they have in the latest patch.

He also goes on about how much harder it is to animate something like Mass Effect compared to what he works on now (uncharted). Uncharted is linear and you can animate in a straight line, Mass Effect has billions (not literally) of possibilities and outcomes that many people won't even see.

Finally, I see Witcher 3 in the preview, so I'll just say no, Mass Effect Andromedia doesn't have as good animations as a game with double it's budget.