Mass Effect 3 - Jumping the Shark?

Although Mass Effect 3 is not released yet, I'm filing this editorial from Gameranx here. The author thinks the ending to ME2 was really bad and thus refuses to have anthing to do with the ME3 games - end spoilers to ME2 abound, so read at your own risk. The author does not like the ending and feels this way about the ME universe:

Given this total thematic collapse of the franchise, I lost all interest in any further games. I may have enjoyed some of the individual episodes, but the endgame and overarching plot Mass Effect 2 presented was just so outrageously bad and so horribly clashing with the rest of the series, that I’m not even sure if it wasn’t just the writers trolling. And that just denies me the possibility of ever taking Mass Effect serious again.

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Do you agree with the author?
In other ME3 news, Bioware has released the Take Earth Back trailer seen in The Walking Dead show last night. You can watch it here.
More information.

At least one point is, imho, not well thought through:


Of course, it's still valid not to like the boss fight and the plot, but at least the sizes don't have to be a plot hole.

My beef with the plot of Mass Effect 2 is that it structurally botches its role as the middle part of a trilogy. For contrast, look at the shift between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. In the sequel the stakes and scale go up. The forces of good struck a major blow against the bad guys but didn't destroy them, and now it's payback time. If the rebels had failed in Star Wars they would have lost their base of operations and the Empire would have had a powerful new weapon; if they had failed in Empire it would have been the end of the rebellion, period.

Now look as Mass Effect. In the first installment the good guys strike a major blow against the bad guys but don't destroy them — so far so good. But in ME2 the stakes and scale go down, not up. Failure in the first game would have meant the Reapers coming through the Citadel Relay and the immediate fall of galactic civilization. Failure in the second would have meant… what? A few more human colonies vanishing and the construction of a new Reaper, when we already know there are hundreds if not thousands of them out there? The only epic thing here is the scale of the dramatic shrinkage.

The second part of a trilogy is supposed to up the ante, show what the bad guys can do once their ire is truly aroused and set the stage for an epic final throw-down in the conclusion. Mass Effect 2 failed to do any of these things. It frittered away the dramatic potential of the original in exchange for nothing.

ME2 just felt like a side missions game and lost focus.

ME1 was the better game because the story was solid but it also had one of the best end games I have seen.

I somewhat agree - the overall plot in ME2 really makes no sense at all. The rest of the game is great though, but it lowered my expectations. After the great ending of ME1, I expected something like this:
- ME1: Prevent the initial assault of the Reapers.
- ME2: Prepare for the Reaper attack by finding out more about them, laying traps and what not. Finally learning more about what the Reapers are, why they do what they do, and where they come from.
- ME3: The final battle with the Reapers, which is won due to all the crafty preparations you made in ME2.

Instead, they completely botched it in my opinion. From the looks of it, the galaxy is still completely unprepared for the Reaper assault, so what was the point of ME2?
The ending of ME2 just falls apart, too few answers are presented and the player is left guessing what the point of it all was. It definitely didn't do a good enough job of building a good foundation for ME3. In fact, the foundation from ME1 is significantly better and more important for what happens in ME3 than anything in ME2.

What I didn't like about ME 2 was it's primary focus was building a team to fight the reapers. The collectors were just a side note, in terms of story and game content. So that would have been fine if you carried your team over to ME3, but I'm betting you won't. You'll have to start from scratch. So what was the purpose of doing all that?

If you played all three games one after the other it would be hard to see ME2 as contributing anything at all to the trilogy.

Bioware said the ME3 ending will make many people pissed. I decided not to play ME3. If even Bioware itself says it, it must be really shitty.

No thanks.

elikal said:

Bioware said the ME3 ending will make many people pissed. I decided not to play ME3. If even Bioware itself says it, it must be really shitty.

No thanks.

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You have three choices and the best one is not the best to pick. I'll enjoy the outrage when it's released.

Couchpotato said:

You have three choices and the best one is not the best to pick. I'll enjoy the outrage when it's released.

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Wow, you already know the ME3 ending? Can you PM me please?

ME2's story was complete drivel. If you perform even basic literary critique, it fails miserably. It is almost comical how nonsensical and contrived the story is. This is what confuses me about BioWare. ME1 was totally awesome. The story was fantastic, and as said the end game was so insanely good. How can people create such an amazing story and then create utter rubbish? Even better question, how can the masses not even realize? Sigh...I despair...

True enough. ME2 was worse and ME3 seems to be the worst, going by the demo. Looks like Bioware abandoned SP aspects, including story and memorable characters to concentrate on MP aspects.

Regarding ME2, apart from the end-game ‘suicide’ mission, I don’t remember any remarkable mission from the whole game. In fact, all I remember otherwise are stacks of metallic boxes and warehouse environments. The game was almost devoid of any “organic” feel and the game vistas consisted mainly of pipes, machines, boxes, strobe lights and confined spaces. Quite bland and boring, overall. Visually, Illium was a massive let-down too..

ME2 was a colossal disappointment in terms of story. Virtually nothing substantial happened throughout the game and the state of galaxy was same at the end of game as it was in the beginning. The end of ME1 showed Reapers were coming, and at the end of ME2, Reapers are still....coming. You discover and wipe out the Collector threat, that’s all ME2's "story" was all about, which is, as someone said above, like an overly stretched side-mission.

Yes, the ME2 end fight was a giant let down. Not the final mission, which was pretty good, just the stupid, anticlimactic boss. But that's just something I tend to ignore, as I like the rest of the story (counting ME1 and ME2 here). It's like the classic Star Wars trilogy, entire legion of Emperor best troops and Ewoks. Gosh, I hate Ewoks, but I love the old Star Wars (and just ignore the furry morons).

As for storyline of ME2, I agree it was much less awesome and cinematic than ME1. First Mass Effect, you had a clear cut danger and mission leading straight into it. Second part, you just go around, gathering allies and building up strength. After all, that was the main focus here, (re)building your team without any direct help from Council and Alliance, the Collectors being just a token enemy. But I found the companions stories to be quite good and engaging, so for me ME2 has just a different format, being a collection of stories rather than one story with clear-cut story arc. Still very good (except for you know what), just different. We can argue whether such a change of pace is good for the middle of the trilogy, but I would like to play ME3 before, so I can judge properly. It may still work
And I do believe you will retain companions (most of them, at least) you gathered in ME2, provided they survived (and if not, I'll be pissed, of course).

While I agree the overarching story in ME2 wasn't as solid as in ME1, I loved the big reveal and the ending. I don't know how the author can think that they threw the ending together, as all the steps along the way lead to the final reveal. It even explains elements of ME1 like the husks and the fate of the Protheans. The ending did beg more questions, such as who created the Reapers and what happened to that race, but I assume we'll get those answers in ME3.

I've ranted before about how much I was disappointed in ME2 and especially its main story (most of the companion stories were pretty good), but I'm going to spare you of my rantings now. Instead, I point you to Shamus Young's site where he goes through the plot of ME2 and details the problems in it much better and more eloquently than I could ever hope to do. I'm agreeing with him (almost) 100% on this. Check it out. It's in three parts, here's the first (with links to the following two at the end of the piece): The link.

Couchpotato said:

Spoiler

You have three choices and the best one is not the best to pick. I'll enjoy the outrage when it's released.

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That's a huge spoiler and without even reading the script, I now know exactly what that choice will be. Thanks.

Thaurin said:

That's a huge spoiler and without even reading the script, I now know exactly what that choice will be. Thanks.

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If it makes you feel any better, after the leaked script affair, Bioware said they would be changing things, so it's possible they've changed the endings.

Zborno said:

If it makes you feel any better, after the leaked script affair, Bioware said they would be changing things, so it's possible they've changed the endings.

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Yeah, okay. I don't care what they'll do, I'm sure I'll enjoy it either way. I've lowered my expectations for most media, because if you analyse everything you consume, the end result is you won't enjoy any of it. Or you'll feel superior for being smarter than everybody else, because you can see why it sucks and the rest of the world does not. So I'm sure I'll enjoy the ride regardless of shitty endings.

The thing is, the 11th Hour (and countless other titles) has the exact same thing; save main thing/person X, lose overall main plot device Y. Classic in horror. Pretty sure that's what was meant. Doesn't matter what X or Y is, still a huge spoiler (even if it's obvious).

I even got The Whispered World spoiled for me, because I read somewhere that the ending is the biggest cliché ever. I'm pretty sure what that is, based on that description alone.

Crap, now I've spoiled two games for everyone else.

What does the term "jumping the shark" actually mean, by the way ? I have a few theories, but no real translation available ...

There you go

The newest term is "nuking the fridge". I'll leave you to suss that out.