EA Announces Mass Effect Legendary Edition

I can complete ME1 with DLC and every assignment in 18-20 hours. It would take close to 30 if I listened to all the dialog instead of just reading it or otherwise skipping it since I've gone through the story a hundred times. ME2 takes me 32-35. I have not played through ME3 since the first two times I did when the game first came out, so I never experienced any of its DLC.

The only Mass Effect game I skip the dialog while playing is Andromeda. You have such massive exposition dumps in that and some characters dialog can be upwards of 20 minutes long at a time. The Director Tan is the best example of this.
 
If this is anything like Crysis Remastered, they can keep it.
That is such a fucking disappointment

I think it will be better than that. We already know what it is for the most part. Mass Effect 1's changes and how good they'll be really aren't known. We know what some of them are but how that game will play is up in the air. However, ME2 and ME3 are basically just texture and lighting system upgrades. That's all. To be fair, that's largely what the Crysis Remaster was. However, I think expectations about what the Crysis remaster was going to be and what we are getting with the Legendary Edition are vastly different. We expected Crysis to be brought closer to modern standards and the port was absolutely lazy. They took a console build with more limited controls and missing features, used that as their base and then just released it. It was missing a mission and it didn't support multi-threaded CPU's. They didn't touch the engine, so it runs like ass even on the most modern of CPU's.

In other words, we have a game that looks only a little better than the original release and runs like hammered dog shit. On that note, the game wasn't even really all that good in my opinion. People have a fondness for it, because it punished systems. The reality is that most people at the time hated the second half, which was a forgettable and very linear sci-fi shooter. The first half was amazing, the game had amazing physics, etc. but ultimately, the experience in total wasn't fantastic. But, it looked great and punished high end hardware for generations. Mass Effect Legendary Edition is based on games that were actually good and won't run like shit. The visual upgrades aren't huge, but I think it will be good in that we will have a more unified experience playing this version of it. The graphics upgrades are minor, and just a bonus. It also corrects the fact that ME3's textures were egregiously bad even at the time of release.
 
Mass Effect: Lens Flare Edition

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Not the biggest deal in the world but looks a bit over done.

Honestly, and this comes from a formerly professional 3D artist, the older screenshot looks MUCH better. it's easier to read, the world has more depth, and your boundaries are much more obvious.

The texture quality seems identical, there is added cabling and geometry, but its muddy and merely there to increase polycount. The environment time-of-day is completely different, which is neither here-nor-there however if it is NOT a real-time time-of-day system and this is an artistic change, its a pretty poor one. Sunsets are great for establishing a mood but are often super cliché for ammeter artists to always make their worlds in sunset because they look pretty. For gameplay, they create long, hard-to-follow shadows with little-to-no ambient sky-light to fill in the shaded areas, thus making areas in shadow COMPLETELY black, without a secondary lightsource to compensate, this just makes the space more confusing. also, its just not what the original world looked like, like I said, if this isn't a real-time day/night cycle, then its just completely changing the artistic direction of a game that obviously resonated with it's audience. [/B]
Have to completely disagree. The vehicle on the bridge pic, the new version looks much better.
1st, in the old pic, no shadows.. can easily see under the vehicle? Everything is a preset amount of illumination. Typical 90's graphics tech.
The new screenshot there is smoke, way more realistic lighting.

And none of those impressions have anything to do with textures which are likely a big part of the makeover.

Never played these games and not sure when I will have time, but $60 for 3 isn't bad.
 
Eh, some people are really upset that they don't get to have a random camera angle focusing on Miranda's butt anymore.

If only there were some way to see butts on the internet, perhaps their rage might be quelled!
 
I can't understand why anyone who played the original series would pay even $20 for these enhanced versions. There's no new content or assets, just sheen of graphical polish. It's like rebuying a game you played at high settings so you can replay it at ultra-high.

For people who never played the series, by all means.
 
No thanks, played all 3 already and heard they changed a few things to make it more PC and woke.

So far, the only thing they changed were the camera angles focusing on Miranda's ass. (As far as we know.) They mentioned a couple other camera changes but essentially, ME2 and ME3 are unchanged. ME1 is a partial remake with the game being altered significantly in places to put it more in line with ME2 and ME3 in terms of interface, gun play etc.
 
I can't understand why anyone who played the original series would pay even $20 for these enhanced versions.

personally, I’m interested because I’ve been wanting to play through them all again and my only option is the Xbox 360 releases. Being able to play through them all again, in the same place, with some quality of life fixes, is more appealing than going back and trying to play the original releases.

I will be waiting for a sale though. I haven’t paid full price for a game in years.
 
No no no, we have to be really mad about the last 15 minutes and ignore the 40+ hours that preceded it.
You can be whatever you want, but those 15 minutes where kinda critical.

Its like going on a date, things going great, having a wonderful time, she invites you in at the end of the night and as you get up on that you realize she's a he.
 
personally, I’m interested because I’ve been wanting to play through them all again and my only option is the Xbox 360 releases. Being able to play through them all again, in the same place, with some quality of life fixes, is more appealing than going back and trying to play the original releases.

I will be waiting for a sale though. I haven’t paid full price for a game in years.
Couldn't wait, currently playing through on PC. I never completed the trilogy on PC. Tempted to pull out the PS3 to finally play it there, too :cat:.
 
You can be whatever you want, but those 15 minutes where kinda critical.
FWIW, I think the reaction to the ending is also really over blown. Especially inside of the context of the Leviathan DLC.
Its like going on a date, things going great, having a wonderful time, she invites you in at the end of the night and as you get up on that you realize she's a he.
I think that's an incredibly absurd characterization of the game. It essentially purports that it doesn't matter how good everything is, it could've been GOTY, 10/10, bug free, perfect gameplay and had a "so-so" ending and therefore it's 0/10. And that's precisely the type of attitude that I think is basically not helpful, clearly not objectively accurate, and useless from a criticism perspective.

To me this is way closer to the other internet meme of looking at ridiculously gorgeous women and then stating: "Has weird knees, would not bang."
 
FWIW, I think the reaction to the ending is also really over blown. Especially inside of the context of the Leviathan DLC.

They patched it to fix it, never played the patched version.

Idk, when your ending to one of the most hyped and successful franchises ever is little more than disconnecting two component cables by accident, and is so horrifically thought out that any future continuations are totally fucked for a starting point... I think the reaction was pretty spot on.

That ending was literal horse shit, epic level trolling.
 
I think that's an incredibly absurd characterization of the game. It essentially purports that it doesn't matter how good everything is, it could've been GOTY, 10/10, bug free, perfect gameplay and had a "so-so" ending and therefore it's 0/10. And that's precisely the type of attitude that I think is basically not helpful, clearly not objectively accurate, and useless from a criticism perspective.

To me this is way closer to the other internet meme of looking at ridiculously gorgeous women and then stating: "Has weird knees, would not bang."

The ending was literally that critical, your argument is that it wasn't for you, but we can see that it was that critical given the reaction and reconned ending in the dlc.

I don't understand your sides argument, the ending was so low effort as to be insulting, the studio reaction was insulting to the intellegence of their customers, they got beaten into retconning it with a dlc, and it made setup for ME4 so difficult they had to go to another galaxy. Off the top of my head I cannot think of a worse ending that another major franchise had that did such catastrophic damage.
 
No no no, we have to be really mad about the last 15 minutes and ignore the 40+ hours that preceded it.

If this were any other type of game than a fully story and characten driven RPG then yes, I would agree with the sentiment. But no, a very shitty ending can definetly ruin an RPG just like it could ruin a book and make you not want to read it ever again even if it were interesting up to that point. A bad ending can definetly make everything that precedes it feel meaningless.

As a person who experienced the vanilla ending with no patches and DLC's, after a short moment of disbelief and denial, I was furious. After playing ME1 and 2 for roughly 10 times each with different possible characters and choices (and maybe couple of times with same characters because the games were simply good) I only played ME3 ONCE. That is, before the patches and DLC's came along and sort of saved it. Not perfectly but made it a bit easier to digest. That added extra 2 times of full playthroughs.
 
They patched it to fix it, never played the patched version.
I played both. Both were fine.
Idk, when your ending to one of the most hyped and successful franchises ever is little more than disconnecting two component cables by accident, and is so horrifically thought out that any future continuations are totally fucked for a starting point... I think the reaction was pretty spot on.
I think you don't understand the story then. Because the Citadel was the Catalyst. The Citadel, again for clarity if you don't remember was a construct created by the Reapers in order to guide galactic technological growth every cycle. The ending simply shows that the Citadel also harbors the AI waiting for the solution of what to do with the repeated, continued, event horizon of problematic artificial intelligence and was waiting for a cycle that had come up with a better solution than the Reapers and a galactic extinction level event. Again, like I said this all makes a lot of sense when considering what the Reapers actually are (an entity to preserve DNA/life as machines and to destroy sentient AI that will inevitably turn on their creators) and the origin of the Reapers in the Leviathan DLC. It also has great continuinity with the idea that it's impossible for the races/species to defeat the Reapers in a conventional war as they have been in this business for at least 5-6 cycles implying at least 250,000-300,000 years (meaning that a solution to the Reaper threat had to be beyond the technology of what any cycle could construct).

You may not like or care about any of those things, but to say it wasn't thought through is inaccurate.

I would say what is more accurate is that people wanted an ending that felt more grounded and they felt the catalyst ending pulled them from the emotional pieces of story that preceded before. And that was the basis for the reaction: "It's just sci-fi, deus ex machina, bullshit." Mass Effect for the most part was grounded sci-fi and there was a turn to cerebral high-minded sci-fi and the people who really liked the grounded stuff didn't like the change.
That ending was literal horse shit,
It was "literally" code and graphics.
epic level trolling.
I don't think Casey Hudson's goal at all was to troll anyone - and that's a pretty cynical view of him and Bioware in general. Especially in the light of that affecting the entire team at Bioware, RPG's, and gaming. It has created a big stigma for him and the team.
The ending was literally that critical, your argument is that it wasn't for you, but we can see that it was that critical given the reaction and reconned ending in the dlc.
It wasn't "retconned" at all. It was expanded upon to give a more verbose explanation but it wasn't altered in the sense of being entirely different. They just added more scenes of what happened in the aftermath of Shepard's choice.

MaZa
 
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Didn't NWN 2 literally do a "rocks fall; everybody dies"?

I remember playing the game through once but I do not remember anything about the game other than the sarcastic asshole mage and there was a betrayal thing near the end that revolved around him. It must have been fully unremarkable game, ending included, because I do not remember ANYTHING else from it. And I can almost remember everything from KOTOR, BG2 and the like so its not like my memory is bad. 😅
 
Didn't NWN 2 literally do a "rocks fall; everybody dies"
Yes, but different game and scope of game.
I played both. Both were fine.

I think you don't understand the story then. Because the Citadel was the Catalyst. The Citadel, again for clarity if you don't remember was a construct created by the Reapers in order to guide galactic technological growth every cycle. The ending simply shows that the Citadel also harbors the AI waiting for the solution of what to do with the repeated, continued, event horizon of problematic artificial intelligence and was waiting for a cycle that had come up with a better solution than the Reapers and a galactic extinction level event. Again, like I said this all makes a lot of sense when considering what the Reapers actually are (an entity to preserve DNA/life as machines and to destroy sentient AI that will inevitably turn on their creators) and the origin of the Reapers in the Leviathan DLC. It also has great continuinity with the idea that it's impossible for the races/species to defeat the Reapers in a conventional war as they have been in this business for at least 5-6 cycles implying at least 250,000-300,000 years.

You may not like or care about any of those things, but to say it wasn't thought through is inaccurate.

I would say what is more accurate is that people wanted an ending that felt more grounded and they felt the catalyst ending pulled them from the emotional pieces of story that preceded before. And that was the basis for the reaction: "It's just sci-fi, deus ex machina, bullshit." Mass Effect for the most part was grounded sci-fi and there was a turn to cerebral high-minded sci-fi and the people who really liked the grounded stuff didn't like the change.

It was "literally" code and graphics.

I don't think Casey Hudson's goal at all was to troll anyone - and that's a pretty cynical view of him and Bioware in general. Especially in the light of that affecting the entire team at Bioware and gaming in general. It has created a big stigma for him and the team.

It wasn't "retconned" at all. It was expanded upon to give a more verbose explanation but it wasn't altered in the sense of being entirely different.

MaZa

Great, so we have established you do not personally have issue with either ending. You cannot deny that many others did, TO THE POINT that they had to add more in the DLC, unplanned and only done due to the outrage. So that is proof that their was significant backlash.

I understand the story perfectly fine, it doesn't fix the horse shit ending of RGB lighting where your choices literally didn't matter after years of marketing that your choices matter. Hell even having a proper end battle and boss prior to that scene would have done something, but what we got was entirely anti-climatic both for a stand alone game, but in particular for a story heavy, choices matter, RPG trilogy.

It has nothing to do with grounded sci-fi, it has everything to do with sloppy and poor execution of the concept they had. The final battle was a jarring gameplay shift to a on rails exposition segment with little to no interaction, building pressure up to the final boss (Marauder Shields) that was a huge let down, then led into a heady but sloppily written dialogue with star child AI, and a choice that had little actual impact on the ending sequence except to look like you had accidentally unplugged some component cables. If you stand back and just look at it from a technical stand point, the execution is a mess, the dialogue seems to be a draft, the ending movie thrown together with massive holes, and no thought was given at all to a potential in universe sequel. The DLC fills some of those holes in, which just proves the ending was a sloppy rush job.

It wasn't an intentional troll, but it did end up being a troll. Casey Hudson's its art line in particular hammered that home. covering sloppy, rushed work, with the excuse of being art.

You cannot deny the mess that it made of the ME franchise, or the backlash, you can only say you didn't have issue with it, you cannot say other shouldn't or that its overblown, that isn't your decision to make.
 
If this were any other type of game than a fully story and characten driven RPG then yes, I would agree with the sentiment. But no, a very shitty ending can definetly ruin an RPG just like it could ruin a book and make you not want to read it ever again even if it were interesting up to that point. A bad ending can definetly make everything that precedes it feel meaningless.

As a person who experienced the vanilla ending with no patches and DLC's, after a short moment of disbelief and denial, I was furious. After playing ME1 and 2 for roughly 10 times each with different possible characters and choices (and maybe couple of times with same characters because the games were simply good) I only played ME3 ONCE. That is, before the patches and DLC's came along and sort of saved it. Not perfectly but made it a bit easier to digest. That added extra 2 times of full playthroughs.

You did better than me, the ending was so souring I walked from ME3 and have no interest in touching it again. I did go back and play 2 afterwards just to rinse my mouth out.

I enjoyed MEA, it had potential that was largely squandered and now Bioware is just about to be put down by EA for good... speaking of which, wasn't an anthem announcement due shortly?
 
Yes, but different game and scope of game.


Great, so we have established you do not personally have issue with either ending. You cannot deny that many others did, TO THE POINT that they had to add more in the DLC, unplanned and only done due to the outrage.
Again, ME3 stands just fine on its own without DLC.
So that is proof that their was significant backlash.
I think that is a broad mis-characterization of anything and possibly everything I've said. I never denied that the general populous has a problem with the ending. Only that the reaction is unjustified.
I understand the story perfectly fine, it doesn't fix the horse shit ending of RGB lighting where your choices literally didn't matter after years of marketing that your choices matter. Hell even having a proper end battle and boss prior to that scene would have done something, but what we got was entirely anti-climatic both for a stand alone game, but in particular for a story heavy, choices matter, RPG trilogy.
It's a very interesting thing that, because I also considered having a discussion about that aspect of the game(s) and the endings as well.
Choice in ME was an illusion all along - and I think the great irony is that only after the ending is that "lack of choice" placed at the forefront of the games. The truth is that to make a game like this, unless you're going to have years and years worth of code you're going to have to have reverse forks. And all of those came to a head in ME3. To ME's fault in general they should never have listed "player choice" as being an important aspect of the series because from a programming perspective it just wasn't something that they could ever deliver.
As a side note this all could have ended up very differently had ME3's script not leaked and then the game being written drastically different.
It has nothing to do with grounded sci-fi, it has everything to do with sloppy and poor execution of the concept they had. The final battle was a jarring gameplay shift to a on rails exposition segment with little to no interaction, building pressure up to the final boss (Marauder Shields) that was a huge let down, then led into a heady but sloppily written dialogue with star child AI, and a choice that had little actual impact on the ending sequence except to look like you had accidentally unplugged some component cables. If you stand back and just look at it from a technical stand point, the execution is a mess, the dialogue seems to be a draft, the ending movie thrown together with massive holes,
You're expanding the topic of this conversation to areas that I didn't really care to address. Now you're just discussing the technical and getting into issues that you had with mechanics. But FWIW I also don't think that most had a problem with any of the final parts of the game except of course the Catalyst "Child" AI, the resulting choices, and the endings that come from the choices. For the sake of staying at least on the "off-topic"ness of the ME trilogy ending in general that we're already in, I don't care to increase the scope or have the conversation drift further.
and no thought was given at all to a potential in universe sequel.
To me that's a good thing. Good movies, good anime, good games, good art - in general give closure and have definitive endings. This is why John Wick is purely for those that want to just see some guy do "cool kills" - because we know at this point the story will end up exactly where it started and nothing of real value is every accomplished (John Wick 3 more or less didn't even bother to hide this fact).
But also I would argue that there is a problem if the ME universe is so weak that it can't come up with another story to tell outside of the Reapers. That to me is exemplified in another boring "botched" franchise, the Star Wars universe - how many movies do you really want to watch about an empire and rebels? A story has done well when it knows when to finish and leaves people wanting a little more without overstaying its welcome.

In other words, as "edgy" as it might sound, I'm totally okay if another ME game never comes out and they leave the legacy as is. I can easily forget about ME:A.
The DLC fills some of those holes in, which just proves the ending was a sloppy rush job.
You've made this argument again, and it's not true. ME3 stands up just fine on its own in its vanilla state (yes we know, you disagree).

And as a side note, it's not as if the DLC wasn't in development when the game launched. All DLC is planned and takes a long time to develop. You're making it sound as if stuff was just tacked on. When it wasn't and isn't for any game where DLC is concerned.
It wasn't an intentional troll, but it did end up being a troll. Casey Hudson's its art line in particular hammered that home. covering sloppy, rushed work, with the excuse of being art.
Well it was art. It was just art that you didn't appreciate. To a certain degree this is the best kind of art because it created a visceral reaction. If ME's ending was: "it was fine", ME wouldn't have been memorable. The fact that it had such a divisive ending keeps this game getting talked about 10 years later by proponents and opponents. The best thing you can say about any art piece is that it made you feel something - whether good or bad. The worst thing to say about a piece of art was "that it was fine" and/or you had no reaction.
You cannot deny the mess that it made of the ME franchise, or the backlash,
Again, show me where I ever said that...
you can only say you didn't have issue with it,
Sure. But as has been clearly stated and shown though it is "opinion" it's not as if it isn't clearly backed by a good amount of evidence. Again, as much as you disagree with my arguments - the irony of you saying "it has nothing to do with grounded sci-fi" but then immediately jumping into how you hated the star child and unplugging component cables is that those are the things I directly addressed. The things people have a problem with have been pounded into the dirt. And it's basically just an emotional response. To that end though you really didn't address the idea of grounded sci-fi versus high-concept/cerebral sci-fi.
you cannot say other shouldn't or that its overblown, that isn't your decision to make.
I absolutely can. Just as people can absolutely choose to have their reaction to it. There is nothing stopping me at all from saying the reaction was overblown, because it was. And you're just as welcome to state the opposite and continue to have that 'overblown' reaction.
 
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Great, so we are at an impasse.

I disagree with your opinion, you disagree with mine.

You claim it stands up just fine, but you cannot prove that, I claim it doesn't, but cannot prove that (except the DLC does but you don't want it too).

Most people have a problem with the ending sequence, its why Marauder Shields was memed so heavily.

But critically, we have a major impasse at what makes a good story, you like the mystery box being opened to bring closure to your entertainment. I do not, in fact opening the mystery box is almost always a disappointment and self indulgent of the writers.

Anyway, this impasse won't change. G'day.
 
Actually, we do know that the core storyline was sort of rushed. The original script which Drew Karpyshyn, the actual brains of original Mass Effect story, wrote got leaked. It was the one which ME2 was hinting at (the dark energy stuff making stars go bad etc) and which was never talked about again in ME3. Instead of standing their ground and knowing that true fans won't read the leak before playing the game Bioware got a brilliant idea of rewriting the game and it kinda shows in how the vanilla game story was executed, most glaringly in the ending, compared to what ME1 and ME2 were building at.

Now, even Drew apparently was not exactly happy with the original Dark Energy script but at least it would have had some continuity to the ME2 instead of the sudden AI singularity stuff which honestly came out of nowhere from Hudsons pen.

Marauder Shields, never forget...
 
Great, so we are at an impasse.

I disagree with your opinion, you disagree with mine.
That's where we started. The point is the discussion. Because rarely if ever do people change their minds. The idea is to hopefully at least give understanding of position.
You claim it stands up just fine, but you cannot prove that, I claim it doesn't, but cannot prove that (except the DLC does but you don't want it too).
It depends on what your goal is. If it's just about being right or wrong then sure. But to your "point" about the DLC, I don't think you've really even stated how any of the DLC effectively patched the ending of the game when it didn't. There was the Extended Cut that was added by the team - but even that was just an expansion of ideas that were already there. And as yourself have stated, you haven't even seen, yet feel like you're qualified to comment on.

Citadel
From Ashes
Leviathan
Omega

All had nothing really to do with the ending of the game. Leviathan gets the closest to having an effect on the end, but really it just expands on the lore of ME. And not really the end of ME per se.
Most people have a problem with the ending sequence, its why Marauder Shields was memed so heavily.
I had to look this up. Glad I wasn't a part of that particular piece of toxic fandom.
But critically, we have a major impasse at what makes a good story, you like the mystery box being opened to bring closure to your entertainment. I do not, in fact opening the mystery box is almost always a disappointment and
Again, this was addressed in my points about specifically peoples issue with 'deus-ex machina' as it appears in art in general. To your point there are other methods for doing things - yes they could've left everything regarding the Reapers ambiguous - but then we're going to have to figure out an entirely different method to stopping/surviving the Reaper threat.
self indulgent of the writers.
If you're an artist you have to do things for yourself. If you're creating for other people then you end up with compromised garbage. The best directors and writers fight for their stories against studio heads and interference. Interference is often when the worst things are made.
Blade Runner Theatrical release versus Directors Cut. From basically a movie I consider absolutely terrible and unwatchable to my favorite Sci-Fi movie of all time.

But I suppose by your opinion then you're not an appreciator of auteurs in general. As in you're not a fan of people like Scorsese, Tarantino, Kubrick, or Coppola? All very different directors but all directors clearly with a very particular bent and an unflinching desire to make films their particular way.
Anyway, this impasse won't change. G'day.
It never was. Hope you enjoy the Legendary Edition more, provided that it doesn't get Star Wars special editioned - we shall see on launch review day. But based upon what has been said so far, I don't think there are any ending changes coming and you hate the games now anyway at this point it seems. We end where we started, 15 minutes is enough to sour 40 hours.
 
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But I suppose by your opinion then you're not an appreciator of auteurs in general. As in you're not a fan of people like Scorsese, Tarantino, Kubrick, or Coppola? All very different directors but all directors clearly with a very particular bent and an unflinching desire to make films their particular way.

what does that have to do with anything? most auteurs understand what a mystery is and why/when to open one. i am amused you put ME3 on such a pedestal.

You cannot claim this was an unflinching desire to make it a certain way, they literally changed everything because the script leaked.

I've watched the extended cut on youtube before. All I see from you is a smarmy wanna be auteur, all I'm really getting at is the ending got all the scorn it deserves.

The impasse is, like many people, you are unable to see the other side through your bias. If the ending had not been sloppy and rushed, I wouldn't have cared, its not the plot points that got me, it was how terrible the execution was. jarring interruption of gameplay loop leading up to a non-finale (no boss), followed by a large verbal sequence that; 1 Completely ruins the Illusive Man, 2 has terribly scripted dialogue with Star Child, 3 opens the mystery box ruining the mystery (I made synths to kill you so synths wouldn't kill you), 4 gives you three varied endings that show next to nothing without the extended ending (which is why the ending in OG is rubbish, DLC version slightly better I suppose from Youtube).

I agree, you liked the game and love the ending, you think its art.

They rushed it, they changed it because of a leak, and overall its a sloppy, ill thought out, poorly scripted ending.

Enjoy legendary edition, I'm not interested in another EA rehash. I played 1 and 2 multiple times, and have no desire to play 3 again.
 
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I think Cyberpunk 2077's ending is worse than Mass Effect3, so there is at least one.
 
what does that have to do with anything? most auteurs understand what a mystery is and why/when to open one. i am amused you put ME3 on such a pedestal.
Not everything is about mystery. In sci-fi it's mostly about explaining something about humanity at the present by juxtaposing it with future technology. In the case of Mass Effect a majority of what it's about is our conflicts with other people (aliens), politics, and the idea of uniting around the idea of a common enemy.

Whether it deserves to be on a pedestal or not is another discussion entirely. But love it or hate it clearly it has left a huge mark on gaming enough to be discussed 10 years later with such disdain and also to warrant a Legendary Edition that will undoubtedly be a cash cow for EA even with limited changes. Few games in general, and even fewer PC games in particular are capable of doing that.
You cannot claim this was an unflinching desire to make it a certain way, they literally changed everything because the script leaked.
They changed some things because the script leaked.
I've watched the extended cut on youtube before. All I see from you is a smarmy wanna be auteur, all I'm really getting at is the ending got all the scorn it deserves.
I didn't think it was necessary to target me per se, but even with your personal attack it seems to me that you prefer rabid toxic fandom that agrees with you rather than any opposing viewpoint. I highly doubt you've looked at any of my work. And even to that end even if you have, you don't have even close enough information to have a discussion about my thoughts or decision making as an artist (argumentum ad hominem).
The impasse is, like many people, you are unable to see the other side through your bias.
The thing is you're putting in such a great effort to get me, one dissenter, to agree with you, when I'm sure if we took a poll 90%+ of people would likely already agree with you. Hence your bringing up memes like the so-called "Marauder Shields" meme and trying to invalidate my position by stating in previous posts that to paraphrase stated: it had an ending that "all these people hated" and therefore "I couldn't say the reaction to the ending was overblown" (argumentum ad populum).
I would say if it's one of us that has a greater problem with bias that it's you whom have a problem with viewing the other side and as you noted in this quote and the one above it ("all I'm really getting at is the ending got the scorn it deserves"). I am WELL aware of your position. I don't think there is anyone whom has played the ME trilogy and then read anything online about the games that ISN'T aware of your position (or heck hasn't played the games and read anything online about the games that doesn't know your position). There is a big difference between understanding and agreeing. I understand your position, I don't agree with it - for the plethora of reasons stated. And you, presumably vice versa (I'll extend that courtesy of understanding to you - though apparently you have zero interest in giving that to me).
If the ending had not been sloppy and rushed, I wouldn't have cared, its not the plot points that got me, it was how terrible the execution was. jarring interruption of gameplay loop leading up to a non-finale (no boss), followed by a large verbal sequence that; 1 Completely ruins the Illusive Man, 2 has terribly scripted dialogue with Star Child, 3 opens the mystery box ruining the mystery (I made synths to kill you so synths wouldn't kill you), 4 gives you three varied endings that show next to nothing without the extended ending (which is why the ending in OG is rubbish, DLC version slightly better I suppose from Youtube).
Again, I see those objections really differently, but we know at this point you're not interested in opinions that differ from your own.
I agree, you liked the game and love the ending, you think its art. I think it has the artistic integrity of lighting a bag on fire and ringing a doorbell.
I think Andy Warhol might like that particular imagery. It is art, it's just not art you like. I think it has a lot of integrity because of the fact that it deliberately went where it did despite it being a very polarizing way to do things (including a cerebral "non-fight" which was an intentional design choice that actually has been discussed by the devs). But you are contradicting yourself. You state on the one hand you have no problem with the plot just the execution and then in the same breath attack its artistic integrity, which at least in my mind is a direct attack against its plot.
They rushed it, they changed it because of a leak, and overall its a sloppy, ill thought out, poorly scripted ending.
That's not something we can really ever know short of the design and writing team actually stating what was changed and what wasn't. Being rushed is something we can maybe draw more reasonable conclusions of - but again that's an execution issue and not a writing issue per se.
Enjoy legendary edition, I'm not interested in another EA rehash. I played 1 and 2 multiple times, and have no desire to play 3 again.
Cool. I have a wait and see attitude about it. If they don't mess it up and I don't have to use Origin, I'll pick it up. If they Star Wars: Special Edition it, or otherwise mess with a bunch of stuff, I'm okay with passing.
 
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I am in the minority as I loved ME and hated ME:2. I didn't bother with ME:3 and I doubt I will give the dumpster fire of a studio any more chances.
 
I think this right here is a lot of really interesting stuff to explore.
Actually, we do know that the core storyline was sort of rushed. The original script which Drew Karpyshyn, the actual brains of original Mass Effect story, wrote got leaked. It was the one which ME2 was hinting at (the dark energy stuff making stars go bad etc) and which was never talked about again in ME3.
For all my knowledge about the games this apparently plot point alludes me. Refresh my memory?
Instead of standing their ground and knowing that true fans won't read the leak before playing the game Bioware got a brilliant idea of rewriting the game and it kinda shows in how the vanilla game story was executed, most glaringly in the ending, compared to what ME1 and ME2 were building at.
Welllll, I wouldn't go as far as to say that "true fans" will act any sort of way. I mean, tons of "true fans" read the books before they see the movie as it were. But to your point, even in that case Bioware could've and maybe perhaps should've stayed their original course - because "true fans" that have already read the script will still be interested in the finished product.
But to that end I don't necessarily see that ME1 and ME2 were necessarily building towards something else. In fact I consider ME2 to be the weakest in the series from a story perspective because it more or less was a giant stall of a game. You couldn't play with any of your crew from ME1 (a way to preserve them and get around all of the "choice" forks - hence giving the illusion of choice without actually having to program for it). The Reaper threat was put on ice in favor of a new side threat, the Collectors, which of course had to be killed/dealt with. And we more or less had to wait until 3 to get anything that really affected the central story line.

ME:2 was rife with side stories and character moments. Which was more or less the highlights from that game. I think people liked it a lot because of the gameplay and character moments. But from a story perspective if it hadn't ever existed it wouldn't really change the plot of the ME series much. (In short the collectors were a genetically modified race, the original Protheans, that the Reapers now use to harvest civilizations as they continue to wipe out species every cycle... none of those things are "necessary" to move forward the story - it could've just as easily been the Reapers themselves, indoctrinated current species (eg: Saren/followers), or species they co-opt such as the Geth - all of which were already established in ME1).
It also, if we're going to criticize plot points in the story, killed off Shepard in the opening moments of the game writting in an unnecessary, implausible reanimation plot-point as a setup to having him/her work with the Illusive Man and Cerberus. They went out of their way to say, "let's kill Shepard" and can we "mess with the player and get them to work with the villains of humanity" just essentially to do it. Which in a lot of ways is far more ridiculous than things that happen in 3 (but we all have our opinions).

Again, as controvertial as it may seem, I think ME3 was the best in the series, followed by 1, and lastly 2. I enjoy all the games, so don't take my ordering as meaning that I think any of them are terrible - but as a dude that likes plot, character development, etc more than perhaps caring as much about every piece of gameplay - that's the order I place the games in (I still think ME1 plays great, despite apparently a lot of people thinking its clunky). For all of 3's failings (which I clearly think there are less of than the collective internet), it got a lot right with closings moments for all its characters and plots from the first two games.
Now, even Drew apparently was not exactly happy with the original Dark Energy script but at least it would have had some continuity to the ME2 instead of the sudden AI singularity stuff which honestly came out of nowhere from Hudsons pen.
I question that really. I think there was a lot of cool things that lined up with the Geth and the Reapers. That the Reapers distained the Geth, knowing what they were (a sentient AI) but of course used them to help with harvesting. And I think a lot of the things regarding harvesting and of course the fact that the Reapers are clearly sentient machines were explored pretty well from the reveal in ME1 to basically a majority of the plot in ME2.

If you have more info on this though or have links I'd love to read whatever there is - as long as it's stuff from the devs and not fan theories.
Marauder Shields, never forget...
This isn't directed at that meme per se, but I find my life goes a lot better when I forget all the stuff I hate and focus on things I love. Perhaps that's too heady a thing to say at what's more than likely "just jokes" on the interwebs.net
 
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Hmm.

My two cents on the ending - I don't mind that Bioware made the choices that they did for how it all turned out. I actually liked the idea that the ending choices came down to the same kind of "Red/Green/Blue" choices that had been available in dialogs throughout the game (Paragon, Renegage, and whatever was in between).

For me my gripe was that all of the things being worked towards in the game were reduced to the "war score" and then your choices only affected three things: whether or not Earth survives, whether or not the Normandy survives, and in just one option, whether or not Shepard survives.

With all of the various choices to be made throughout the series, how things could turn out with different huge plotlines like the Genophage, the Rachni, and the Quarians & Geth, it just felt like none of them really mattered in the end. It was just whether or not you made enough right choices to get the score high enough, instead of seeing how all of these individual decisions really turned out in the long run over the course of three games.

That said, after ME2 I thought that the games were building to some kind of massive, "unfathomable" conflict between the Reapers, an ancient AI race, and the Geth, a new AI race. And that the third game was going to be about trying to find a way to diffuse or survive that conflict. All of Sovereign's cryptic talk in the first game would have been one of those things where the rest of the races were all huddled together trying to keep out of the way of two giants who might not have been concerned about kicking over a few anthills. Of course we couldn't understand.

Alas, it did not go that way. /shrug.
 
Wake me up when we are done talking about how terrible me3 ended. I haven't played me3 so I'm blissfully ignorant of the terribleness so long as I keep skipping posts that look like they will talk about the ending. Hoping that things might be better for legendary edition and I won't ever know the pain
 
I was going to reply directly to people, but the conversation got so convoluted I'll just make a few points:
  1. I agree the story we ended up with was extremely bad. The prior two games had some ridiculous things in it, but was still based in it (notice I did not say grounded). The story of the third game up to and including the ending basically threw out the entire premise of trying to have their fantasy based on some real science. This is what ultimately led to the bad taste in my mouth, much the same way newer Star Trek series did when they abandoned science.
  2. Despite the story being bad, the game was really fun. It was a further refinement of the gameplay overhaul from the second game and I quite enjoyed it. The ending of the game did not ruin the experience of the trilogy or the game for me. For the record, I felt the same way about Andromeda.
  3. The fact that BioWare, in their extreme arrogance, tossed Karpyshyn under the bus along with his story before he had the chance to refine and finish it really pisses me off.
  4. Along with the above, I hate the fact that BioWare felt the need to rewrite the entire story from scratch just because of a leak of an early transcript of Karpyshyn's script. Leaks happen all the time and most creatives don't abandon their vision just because of a leak. When it happened in this case, as with other games or movies I am interested in, I completely ignore them. I am sure I am not alone in that.
  5. With the rewrite came a cop out to a simply scifi story trope when BioWare took the easy way out as they were running out of time to reach their deadline. The writing was lazy and insulting. Ironically, they made the same exact mistakes with Andromeda where I feel that game could have truly been great had they had a good writer or writers on board like Karpyshyn.
  6. The rewrite also completely destroyed one of the more interesting characters to come out of the second game: The Illusive Man. He had a lot of depth and was discarded as a generic bad guy in the third game.
  7. Character stories and interactions with other established characters were still successful, in my opinion. The romance story lines, in particular, were generally more mature
When it comes down to it, the story in ME3 did not spoil my enjoyment of the series and I am looking forward to experiencing the trilogy again with the Legendary Edition.
 
I was going to reply directly to people, but the conversation got so convoluted I'll just make a few points:
  1. I agree the story we ended up with was extremely bad. The prior two games had some ridiculous things in it, but was still based in it (notice I did not say grounded). The story of the third game up to and including the ending basically threw out the entire premise of trying to have their fantasy based on some real science. This is what ultimately led to the bad taste in my mouth, much the same way newer Star Trek series did when they abandoned science.
  2. Despite the story being bad, the game was really fun. It was a further refinement of the gameplay overhaul from the second game and I quite enjoyed it. The ending of the game did not ruin the experience of the trilogy or the game for me. For the record, I felt the same way about Andromeda.
  3. The fact that BioWare, in their extreme arrogance, tossed Karpyshyn under the bus along with his story before he had the chance to refine and finish it really pisses me off.
  4. Along with the above, I hate the fact that BioWare felt the need to rewrite the entire story from scratch just because of a leak of an early transcript of Karpyshyn's script. Leaks happen all the time and most creatives don't abandon their vision just because of a leak. When it happened in this case, as with other games or movies I am interested in, I completely ignore them. I am sure I am not alone in that.
  5. With the rewrite came a cop out to a simply scifi story trope when BioWare took the easy way out as they were running out of time to reach their deadline. The writing was lazy and insulting. Ironically, they made the same exact mistakes with Andromeda where I feel that game could have truly been great had they had a good writer or writers on board like Karpyshyn.
  6. The rewrite also completely destroyed one of the more interesting characters to come out of the second game: The Illusive Man. He had a lot of depth and was discarded as a generic bad guy in the third game.
  7. Character stories and interactions with other established characters were still successful, in my opinion. The romance story lines, in particular, were generally more mature with satisfying conclusions. Despite not liking Miranda in the second game, her romance turned out to have the best conclusion in the third game in my opinon.
When it comes down to it, the story in ME3 did not spoil my enjoyment of the series and I am looking forward to experiencing the trilogy again with the Legendary Edition.
 
I think Cyberpunk 2077's ending is worse than Mass Effect3, so there is at least one.

That's an entirely subjective opinion, so it's hard to argue with that. All I can say is that I couldn't disagree with you more.

I think Andy Warhol might like that particular imagery. It is art, it's just not art you like. I think it has a lot of integrity because of the fact that it deliberately went where it did despite it being a very polarizing way to do things (including a cerebral "non-fight" which was an intentional design choice that actually has been discussed by the devs). But you are contradicting yourself. You state on the one hand you have no problem with the plot just the execution and then in the same breath attack its artistic integrity, which at least in my mind is a direct attack against its plot.

That's not something we can really ever know short of the design and writing team actually stating what was changed and what wasn't. Being rushed is something we can maybe draw more reasonable conclusions of - but again that's an execution issue and not a writing issue per se.
I couldn't disagree more. The endings, especially in their original form do not fit with the tone and style of the rest of the trilogy's story telling. They are poorly written both subjectively and objectively. They are incongruent with the rest of the game and the series and were poorly received for several good reasons. Not just because Shepard died, but primarily because most people reached the same conclusion about the so called "thought provoking" and "speculation for everyone" filled endings. If you are shooting for an open ended ending that's open to interpretation, should it not be interpreted differently by a range of people who experienced it? Well, if that's what they were going for, they failed spectacularly.

The writing was poor in that these led most people to conclude the same things. The Normandy was destroyed (wings and engines missing, holes in the fuselage) with its crew marooned on a primitive planet that would spell certain death for a portion of the crew. The entire Normandy crew effectively got shafted. It also meant the end of the relays and the Mass Effect universe as we knew it. With Turians and Quarians (if the latter weren't wiped out) dying on Earth due to a lack of food. Alternatively, the Geth who you could fight to save could be wiped out as well in the renegade ending. The galaxy Shepard fought so hard to unite was left shattered and it felt like the Reapers largely won with most of the galaxies infrastructure in shambles and billions if not trillions of people left dead or dying. The relays were still considered to be beyond the capabilities of even the Asari to duplicate. Therefore, rebuilding a network like that wasn't possible, and even if it was, without relays, it wouldn't have been possible to build it in a reasonable period of time. There were tons of videos and opinion pieces, forum posts and the like written detailing just how bad a state the galaxy was left in with those endings. What was supposed to be open ended, was in fact anything but.

That's bad writing. Subjectively, you can argue that the choices made by the writers were unpalatable because they were so nihilistic and devoid of hope and without a happy ending for anyone. Fair enough. However, if your goal was to do something that was supposed to be open to interpretation and everyone interprets your ending the same way, you failed. BioWare wanted to cry about artistic integrity as an excuse not to change the endings. However, that's exactly what they did. However, they changed it in ways that they felt allowed them to both save face and do it cheaply. But, the Normandy's damage was scaled back allowing the ship to fly again. EDI was shown to be alive in contrast to what was clearly stated would happen if you chose the "destroy" option. I can go on and on, but basically the slides shown in all versions of the ending after that did in fact change the endings. You can't cry artistic integrity and change the original vision (such as it was) to make it more palatable.

Similarly, you can't treat the trilogy like it's a sacred classic and say you won't fix the endings because "art" and then start changing camera angles for the purpose of being more in line with modern sensibilities. It doesn't work that way. Censorship, no matter how slight flies in the face of such an argument. It's akin to putting underwear on Michelangelo's David. To some degree, what we have here is a Star Wars Special Edition situation. EA/BioWare is pulling a George Lucas and changing the game's in some form to make them commercially viable years after they were released. It's about business and making more money on an existing IP in a cheap and easy way. Nothing more, nothing less.

Art has nothing to do with it, and never did.

Getting back to being objectively bad, the game's writing goes off the deep end from Priority Earth onward as the inconsistencies and rushed designs, poor pacing, and awkward cut scenes and dialog interactions are hamfisted into it. While rules regarding writing and literary works are not necessarily concrete, going outside of them is generally a bad idea and for good reason. Video games are a unique medium given that they are interactive and present certain possibilities that film, television and books do not. That being said, introducing a character in the last 10 minutes of a story is never a good idea. I can't think of a time when this worked well. It was also thematically inconsistent with the game's tone and established lore. It broke the game universe's rules without a good reason to do so and it breaks suspension of disbelief. Not only that, but it undermines and even decimates the characters of Harbinger and Sovereign, which are major antagonists in the games. Worse yet, the Starbrats entire existence even calls into question Reaper sentience and undermines them as villains. It's something that was a bad idea and doesn't work. Even if you enjoyed the "twist", I think these choices are objectively bad and not just subjectively bad.

Also, the endings in their original and new forms are somewhat anti-climactic and calling the "whole game the end" is just an excuse for what amounts to a badly written, poorly thought out and ultimately shitty ending to an otherwise amazing gaming experience. I will say, that in spite of its endings, Mass Effect 3 in particular remains one of the best games I have ever played in my life. That being said, while I generally liked the plot, the ending absolutely falls apart for me. It taints the entire experience and ruins what would otherwise be a perfect 10/10 for me. I will be buying the Legendary Edition, despite the fact that I've never totally forgiven BioWare for their last several missteps. If nothing else, I think I will enjoy the updates to ME1 and ME2. If nothing else, I can bring the updated textures of ME3 into ME3LE.
 
The only Mass Effect game I skip the dialog while playing is Andromeda. You have such massive exposition dumps in that and some characters dialog can be upwards of 20 minutes long at a time. The Director Tan is the best example of this.
Okay, fresh NG without any of the passive upgrades that come with the achievements took me 25 hours listening to all the dialogue and completing all assignments on Veteran. My NG+ playthrough on the same character on Hardcore is on track to be about 20 hours with skipping all dialogue. It probably would have been faster, but I'm still trying to remember the various routes I took through the game originally.
 
I think this right here is a lot of really interesting stuff to explore.

For all my knowledge about the games this apparently plot point alludes me. Refresh my memory?

Welllll, I wouldn't go as far as to say that "true fans" will act any sort of way. I mean, tons of "true fans" read the books before they see the movie as it were. But to your point, even in that case Bioware could've and maybe perhaps should've stayed their original course - because "true fans" that have already read the script will still be interested in the finished product.
But to that end I don't necessarily see that ME1 and ME2 were necessarily building towards something else. In fact I consider ME2 to be the weakest in the series from a story perspective because it more or less was a giant stall of a game. You couldn't play with any of your crew from ME1 (a way to preserve them and get around all of the "choice" forks - hence giving the illusion of choice without actually having to program for it). The Reaper threat was put on ice in favor of a new side threat, the Collectors, which of course had to be killed/dealt with. And we more or less had to wait until 3 to get anything that really affected the central story line.

ME:2 was rife with side stories and character moments. Which was more or less the highlights from that game. I think people liked it a lot because of the gameplay and character moments. But from a story perspective if it hadn't ever existed it wouldn't really change the plot of the ME series much. (In short the collectors were a genetically modified race, the original Protheans, that the Reapers now use to harvest civilizations as they continue to wipe out species every cycle... none of those things are "necessary" to move forward the story - it could've just as easily been the Reapers themselves, indoctrinated current species (eg: Saren/followers), or species they co-opt such as the Geth - all of which were already established in ME1).
It also, if we're going to criticize plot points in the story, killed off Shepard in the opening moments of the game writting in an unnecessary, implausible reanimation plot-point as a setup to having him/her work with the Illusive Man and Cerberus. They went out of their way to say, "let's kill Shepard" and can we "mess with the player and get them to work with the villains of humanity" just essentially to do it. Which in a lot of ways is far more ridiculous than things that happen in 3 (but we all have our opinions).

Again, as controvertial as it may seem, I think ME3 was the best in the series, followed by 1, and lastly 2. I enjoy all the games, so don't take my ordering as meaning that I think any of them are terrible - but as a dude that likes plot, character development, etc more than perhaps caring as much about every piece of gameplay - that's the order I place the games in (I still think ME1 plays great, despite apparently a lot of people thinking its clunky). For all of 3's failings (which I clearly think there are less of than the collective internet), it got a lot right with closings moments for all its characters and plots from the first two games.

I question that really. I think there was a lot of cool things that lined up with the Geth and the Reapers. That the Reapers distained the Geth, knowing what they were (a sentient AI) but of course used them to help with harvesting. And I think a lot of the things regarding harvesting and of course the fact that the Reapers are clearly sentient machines were explored pretty well from the reveal in ME1 to basically a majority of the plot in ME2.

If you have more info on this though or have links I'd love to read whatever there is - as long as it's stuff from the devs and not fan theories.

This isn't directed at that meme per se, but I find my life goes a lot better when I forget all the stuff I hate and focus on things I love. Perhaps that's too heady a thing to say at what's more than likely "just jokes" on the interwebs.net

It was in the Tali's mission, a sun was going bad and radiating so hard that it was scorching the planets in it (you had to stay in the shadows during the mission, shields go haywire the instant you step in sunlight) even though it was still relatively young star and nowhere nearly old enough to be doing stuff like that. HOWEVER I have to pull back my original post because I simply remembered wrong. The dark energy thing was supposed to be a thing at some point, that is a fact, but it was scrapped BEFORE the leaks happened. The leaked version was another script that was done afterwards, which then got scrapped again because of the leak. Drew goes in more detail what the original dark energy script was roughly about. Personally I would have been more interested in this story than the AI Singularity story we have now but it is what it is.
https://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-3-series-former-lead-writer-reveals-original-ending-ideas/

Well, yeah the true fans was a wrong choice of words. But usually people who are actually interested in the game and want to experience it for real usually avoid spoilers like a plague. Rewriting the game was a rather extreme reaction to something like that. But you bring up a good point. ME2 is rife with problems too. The beginning alone with the death and resurrection plot device was so far fetched that it initially hurt my head and stretched my suspension of disbelief to the extreme. Not as bad as the "gasmasks in space" I have to mention, which is a blunder I will never forgive after the grounded Babylon 5-esque hard Scifi space-opera style of ME1 by the way... Anyway, I got over the plot device because it did lead to a good game with really good characters.

Oh, and the Marauder Shields was just a funny meme, lots of good memories when the shitstorm was at its worst and it became a thing. :D
 
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