Thoughts on Mass Effect 3 after completing it

This is pointless, you're simply not willing to understand that ME - just like most games, movies and books - has a bunch of plot holes.

If you need more info, read the wiki article on Cerberus:
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Cerberus

It clearly states:
"As of 2185, Cerberus consists of 150 operatives organized into three cells. The Illusive Man oversees all projects carried out by the cells personally; consequently, there are never more than a dozen projects active at one time. This degree of micro-management leaves the organization vulnerable should the Illusive Man ever be compromised, though he has been smart enough to avoid detection so far."

And yet they were able to take over Omega, a space station with 7,8 million people, a lot of whom are pro mercenaries:
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Omega

How an organization with 150 people can take over a city with 7,8 million people is simply never explained or explored or anything. It's completely illogical and makes no sense.

When they were fighting C-SEC aboard the Citadel, they were fighting a police force with of over 200.000, which doesn't make any sense either. They should have been obliterated. More on C-SEC here:
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/C-Sec

If you're not even going to trust the wiki, I think we might as well agree to disagree.

Maybe TIM started to do what the ShadowBroker did: Clone Army!

Chancellor Palpatine ?

Maylander said:

This is pointless, you're simply not willing to understand that ME - just like most games, movies and books - has a bunch of plot holes.

If you need more info, read the wiki article on Cerberus:
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Cerberus

It clearly states:
"As of 2185, Cerberus consists of 150 operatives organized into three cells. The Illusive Man oversees all projects carried out by the cells personally; consequently, there are never more than a dozen projects active at one time. This degree of micro-management leaves the organization vulnerable should the Illusive Man ever be compromised, though he has been smart enough to avoid detection so far."

And yet they were able to take over Omega, a space station with 7,8 million people, a lot of whom are pro mercenaries:
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Omega

How an organization with 150 people can take over a city with 7,8 million people is simply never explained or explored or anything. It's completely illogical and makes no sense.

When they were fighting C-SEC aboard the Citadel, they were fighting a police force with of over 200.000, which doesn't make any sense either. They should have been obliterated. More on C-SEC here:
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/C-Sec

If you're not even going to trust the wiki, I think we might as well agree to disagree.

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I never stated that there were no plothole in the ME series. I just stated that the underlined plotholes are not plotholes.

There is nothing to trust here.

Where does the information come from?

From the beginning, it is the same refusal to accept the consequences of wanting to play an exceptional character.

You dont get the feeling of playing an exceptional character by discovering common knowledge. Only by gathering exceptional knowledge.

The bottom line is simple: the information fed on previous episodes is wrong, incomplete etc to let you be the exceptional character who through investigation brings the truth to the galaxy.

It is quite weird that in a game whose theme is to uncover misknown or unknown threats, people try to slip in the idea that the nature of the collectors is well known before Sheppard's contribution, that Cerberus is well known before Sheppard's contribution.

The collectors and Cerberus are unfathomed threats at the start. Knowledge about them is lacunary on purpose at start of the adventure and through progress, you collect the information. As you get closer to the truth, it invalidates every previous information bits which were misinforming.

All you have done is collecting information from previous episodes and claim they should be taken litterally.

Exceptionalism.

The character has to be exceptional and by bringing knowledge unknown to the rest of the galaxy (minus a few entities), the character is exceptional.

No plotholes.
What should be explained? You start to investigate what is thought to be a small organization and you discover it is massive. It is self explanatory.
That is the point to answer.Not providing information from previous episodes.

Simply that the common knowledge on the crucible, reapers, geth, cerberus, collectors is wrong and that you, the player who wants to play exceptional characters, is going to make an exceptional contribution to the galaxy of knowledge.

Classical narrative trick, consequence of wishing to play exceptional characters.

The game is full of stuff like that. Take a look at the Krogan episode, at what you discover. It is not common knowledge, I made the trip with Liara whose former training gives interesting insight, especially that it is an exceptional discovery. Plot hole again? Or same repeat of the narrative trick, making the player feel exceptional by finding exceptional knowledge?

ChienAboyeur said:

The game is full of stuff like that. Take a look at the Krogan episode, at what you discover. It is not common knowledge, I made the trip with Liara whose former training gives interesting insight, especially that it is an exceptional discovery. Plot hole again? Or same repeat of the narrative trick, making the player feel exceptional by finding exceptional knowledge?

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That's just the thing though: There is no discovery. Shepard never goes "wow, I had no idea Cerberus were that big, where do they get all their resources?". The game treats Cerberus as if their growth is somehow natural - noone ever stops to ponder what's going on. That's why it's a plot hole. It wouldn't be a plot hole if Shepard actually discovered some dirty secret that gave Cerberus virtually limited resources all of a sudden.

And yes, we do know for a FACT that they started out as an Alliance black ops cell in Mass Effect 1. Admiral Kahoku clearly states in ME1 that Cerberus is "a black ops cell" and that they "have gone completely rogue, Shepard!" - hence the information we have on the organization in ME1 is very accurate. The Alliance knows everything about them at that point, as they are former Alliance soldiers who betrayed the Alliance.

How they went from being a black ops cell that Admiral Kahoku was investigating to an organization capable of capturing Omega is never explained, discovered or even treated as remotely mysteriously. Shepard doesn't comment it, doesn't pick up clues or hints about it and knows nothing more about it than the wiki explains.

That's why it's a plot hole. If BioWare ever explains it through a DLC, comic, book or whatever it could go from being a plot hole to a narrative technique. Today, it's just a plot hole.

Like I said though: I'm done here. You simply do not know what a plot hole is. For reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_hole

A plot hole, or plothole, is a gap or inconsistency in a storyline that goes against the flow of logic established by the story's plot, or constitutes a blatant omission of relevant information regarding the plot.

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We are lacking relevant information here. Until BioWare explains where Cerberus gets their infinite resources from, it will continue to be a plot hole. Shepard doesn't discover jack squat about the Omega situation - it is only mentioned to him by Aria, and he never even stops to wonder how such a thing could be possible.

What they should have done...

This was interesting … read the comments that follow. I will stress it is alleged with no prove if the Bioware writer did write it. Still interesting. SPOILERS BEWARE!

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/...-writer-allegedly-slams-controversial-ending/

No other writer did, either, except for our lead. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft.

And honestly, it kind of shows.

Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn't need to be peer-reviewed.

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Very interesting. Patrick Weekes used to be a poster here on the Watch too until it got a bit "BioWare unfriendly".

I agree with what he said - the Genophage and Geth quest lines really shine. They span three whole games and reach a very satisfying end in ME3. In fact, I'd say they're among the best story arcs BioWare has written. Hopefully, they can produce more content of such quality in future games.

I wonder what role Patrick had as a writer? He mentioned writing some of the characters (like Mordin!) - did he also write those characters for ME2? What I really want to know is: Is Mordin his creation? I bloody love Mordin as a character, he's fantastic. Also, anyone with a hand in writing the Genophage and Geth story arcs did a really great job as well.

I don't quite understand it … Does it mean that - internally - the work of some people was scrapped in favour to the works of other people ?



Besides, from there :

And the problem is that when he's not checked, he will assume that other people are like him, and will really appreciate an almost completely unemotional intellectual ending.

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Sounds like Asperger to me, fail at/of the "Theory Of Mind", especially.


Edit : Just found this : http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/03/23/mass-effect-3-ending-what-do-game-writers-think/
It's a kind of "round table" on the matter.

Maylander said:

I wonder what role Patrick had as a writer? He mentioned writing some of the characters (like Mordin!) - did he also write those characters for ME2?

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Yeah, he wrote ME2 Mordin too. He also wrote Tali (including her missions, iirc) or a lot of Lair of the Shadowbroker.

I´ve seen some writing credits floating around and, from what I remember, my impression was that the best bits in ME3 came mostly from Weekes (Rannoch, Mordin, Blasto flick or Conrad Verner encounter) or John Dombrow (all things genophage - but The Shroud scene was a joint effort with Weekes, Javik, Garrus, he also wrote Overlord btw), while the worst bits were mostly Mac Walters´ doing (the beginning including introduction of Crucible, the end, Kai Leng, Vega - not particularly bad, but boring, he also wrote Arrival).

The gameranx info did not surprise me in the least, as after finishing ME3 one of my earliest thoughts was that the authors of genophage or geth/quarians must hate the ending .
If they plan to change/enhance the ending, they better leave Walters out of it and let Dombrow and Weekes do it.

Btw, originally the purpose of Reapers was basically keeping dark energy in check and the human reaper was supposed to be their saving throw in the matter or something (likely tied with the supposed unusual human DNA diversity). This little info doesn´t make it sound any more sensible than what found its way into ME3, but maybe it made more sense in a more elaborated form.
At any rate, it would give ME2´s main plot more meaning and it would make the importance of Earth in ME3 more plausible. Of course, ME2 got even more side tracked by the facts that, stupidly enough, ME3´s endgame lacked a meaty Harbinger encounter (who would imo be much better/more fitting final encounter than the abysmal Catalyst) and that the collector base decision didn´t influence anything.
Aaaand on a yet another by-the-way note, in the script leaked through the demo the Catalyst was Javik .

Another very cool tidbit on the ending … that was foreshadowed all the way back in ME1 and a 2 year old thread on BSN that predicted it:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/105/index/970146/1

From a codex entry in ME1:

Klencory is famously claimed by the eccentric volus
billionaire Kumun Shol. He claims that a vision of a higher being told
him to seek on Klencory the "lost crypts of beings of light." These
entities were supposedly created at the dawn of time to protect organic
life from synthetic "machine devils."

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Link with shots and article: http://loudmouthedgamers.com/blog/2012/03/28/mass-effect-3-ending-was-in-mass-effect-1/

am I the only one that play these games to... PLAY? You guys are discussing all about story. I finished the game a week ago and already forgot much of it. In fact, when I imported my character from ME2 and seeing how he started already at like level 35, I decided to start with a new character. To me gameplay >> story, and not missing those 30+ levels of character development trumped the pieces of story I was going to miss

Well, the writing of ME is its saving grace (setting/characters/story) as far as I'm concerned. If I wanted shooter gameplay, there are many alternatives out there that are significantly better.

As far as Klencory is concerned, I can look that up when I get home from work.

Maylander said:

Well, the writing of ME is its saving grace (setting/characters/story) as far as I'm concerned. If I wanted shooter gameplay, there are many alternatives out there that are significantly better.

As far as Klencory is concerned, I can look that up when I get home from work.

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Then do what I did. Watch the videos on youTube

wolfing said:

Then do what I did. Watch the videos on youTube

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A big part of the reason why I enjoy playing games more than books or movies is because I enjoy a good story where I can affect the outcome. I play the main character, and my choices matter.

It's why I don't like cut-scenes where I lose control of the main character, for example losing a fight he/she would normally win. What's the point of beating the big, beefy guy at the end of chapter 1 in The Witcher 2, if he's just going to win anyway?

Simply watching the cut-scenes won't work at all - you can't control the flow of the conversation if someone else has made the choices for you.

Maylander said:

A big part of the reason why I enjoy playing games more than books or movies is because I enjoy a good story where I can affect the outcome. I play the main character, and my choices matter.

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That's actually one of the reasons why I love writing stories ! :lol:

Alrik Fassbauer said:

That's actually one of the reasons why I love writing stories ! :lol:

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I think I'd enjoy that a lot actually. Unfortunately, I lack the creativity these days. Rather frustrating really, as I used to be somewhat decent at writing during high school. However, after years of working with mathematics and programming, my brain is just one big algorithm.

Yes, yes, I know. Late to the party, again, but I only yesterday finished ME3 and had not read this thread before in fear of spoilers.

* SPOILERS BELOW! * (I guess everyone reading this thread, has already finished ME3 or been already spoiled about the ending, but it never hurts to warn about it anyhow.)

The ending. I will not continue to beat on a dead horse, other than to say, yeah, the ending sucked big. Really big. Given that I was prepared for a poor ending, due to the major brouhaha about it, it still managed to surprise me on how bad it was. An achievement in its own right, I guess.

Well, I must write something about, sorry. Do note that I was not expecting a happy ending, nor did I expect Shepard to survive (in fact I was pretty sure he'd die in the end, like he did). These were not the reasons why I think the ending sucked. Nor was it because there was no satisfying uber boss fight in the end or some kind of patriotic flag-waving victory scene. I was, in fact, quite glad there was no end boss fight, as I was really suffering from "Mass Effect fatigue" by the latter quarter of the game and wanted the game to just end already.

So, what was it that irked me so much, that I have to rant about it weeks after others are already done with the subject. Weellll. Many small things contributed to it, but mainly it was the end sequence in the Citadel, the very end of the game, the great and long-awaited grand finale to an epic sci-fi trilogy. Only to have the trilogy fall on its face. The only thing "epic" about it, was how epic fail it was. The ending was so poorly written (these are professional writers?), so poorly made (if something felt half-finished about ME3, this was it), so unbelieveable (even in the realm of space fantasy/epic sci-fi), so inflicted with a very bad case of Deus Ex Machina (hello, star child/god-like figure/whatever), so utterly devoid of any sort of C&C (what were all those War Assests for, again? And, er, sorry to burst your bubble, but I did just manage to broker a truce between the geth and the quarians, ergo, synthetics and organics CAN find common ground), and so unclear (what choice did I just make? What were the results of my actions, really? What's the Normandy escape scene supposed to be? Or the stargazer "hidden" scene?) that it was just not even funny.

I'm surprised nothing's been said about the abysmal forced plot twist and result of the Thessia mission. I can somehow swallow the prothean beacon hidden inside a statue thingy, but the Kai Leng battle and his inevitable success in stealing the prothean VI right under your nose was quite tiresome, expected and juvenile. I mean, here you are, after a long search just about to get your hands on the Holy Grail (so to speak), but lo, right at that very moment your arch enemy, the superbaddie with plot protection (for now), saunters in steals it. Just like that. And you're powerless to stop it. All three of your party. Even if you just kicked his cyber-behind with ease. Riiiight. Railroad much? Chooo, chooo, here comes the Bioware plot-engine! Was pretty tempted to quit ME3 right there.

Oh well, this is enough of a wall of text already. I'll shut up now. ME3 had it's moments, but as a whole, not very satisfying. As said earlier on this thread, the genophage and geth plots were handled well; MOrdin, Tali, etc. were written well; so those salvage what was salvageable of the plot mess. Blah, blah, blah, etc. My end score for ME3 is 3 stars out of 5.

Lurking Grue said:

I'm surprised nothing's been said about the abysmal forced plot twist and result of the Thessia mission. I can somehow swallow the prothean beacon hidden inside a statue thingy, but the Kai Leng battle and his inevitable success in stealing the prothean VI right under your nose was quite tiresome, expected and juvenile. I mean, here you are, after a long search just about to get your hands on the Holy Grail (so to speak), but lo, right at that very moment your arch enemy, the superbaddie with plot protection (for now), saunters in steals it. Just like that. And you're powerless to stop it. All three of your party. Even if you just kicked his cyber-behind with ease. Riiiight. Railroad much? Chooo, chooo, here comes the Bioware plot-engine! Was pretty tempted to quit ME3 right there.

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Overall, I agree with most of what you wrote. I just wanted to pointed out that I have mentioned this, but not this specific scene. Basically, this scene is a perfect example of the frustrating situations I've mentioned where character control is removed, and my character loses a situation I know I would be able to deal with if it had been actual gameplay. Shepard suddenly becomes completely incompetent. It's really annoying. ME3 is hardly the only game to do it though, and I always dislike it. A good example is the fight vs the big guy near the end of chapter 1 in The Witcher 2.

Anyway, 3/5 sounds reasonable. A worthy ending to such a good trilogy would probably make it a 4/5 then? I gave it a 7/10 myself, but I know a proper ending would easily make it an 8/10.