MASS EFFECT 3 PLAYTHROUGH WITH SPOILERS!

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That's a cop out in itself though because you spend most of the game mustering military strength, and you only see a couple dozen or so reapers in ME3 while they're invading. They'd already played with the numbers (and to a lesser extent, Reaper strength), at various points in the series. They could have easily gone the route of needing to arm the fleets with more advanced technology as a means of fighting back too. But that makes the fleets and military strategy the key to success, and therefore not the player/Shepard.

The most likely reason for the McGuffin was simply because it enables Shepard to be the crux of everything. Find the One Ring and the armies don't matter any more, it's all about the push of a single button.

It's a lame plot device, but probably seemed necessary to keep the game's focus on single actions shape the galaxy.

Shepard can still be the crux of everything without the McGuffin. It's not like you have to shoot your way to the final boss. You're making 3 choices, that's it. You could do 3 strategic choices as well, and this leading to a different end result of the war. For example, maybe you can decide in which order to save Earth, the Turian and the Asari Homeworld, and depending on your military strength, these planets are devestated and its population killed to different degrees - which in turn leads to a different "post-game" scenario, with different races being in a strong position. (And this may lead to yet another different decision for you - for example, how do establish human's role. If it's powerful, you can try to assert human dominance, if it's weak, you can try to subvert the power of the stronger ones in some way.)

Maybe there could be some "minor" McGuffins along the way - special super-weapons you need to find to beat the Reapers, and the last one requires you to hunt down Harbinger "personally" on Earth. They are just war asset boosts, not the "final solution to the Reaper" problem.

[Vigilance]

Shepard can still be the crux of everything without the McGuffin. It's not like you have to shoot your way to the final boss. You're making 3 choices, that's it. You could do 3 strategic choices as well, and this leading to a different end result of the war. For example, maybe you can decide in which order to save Earth, the Turian and the Asari Homeworld, and depending on your military strength, these planets are devestated and its population killed to different degrees - which in turn leads to a different "post-game" scenario, with different races being in a strong position. (And this may lead to yet another different decision for you - for example, how do establish human's role. If it's powerful, you can try to assert human dominance, if it's weak, you can try to subvert the power of the stronger ones in some way.)

Maybe there could be some "minor" McGuffins along the way - special super-weapons you need to find to beat the Reapers, and the last one requires you to hunt down Harbinger "personally" on Earth. They are just war asset boosts, not the "final solution to the Reaper" problem.

You could even just use EMS as a sliding scale.

The higher EMS you have, the fewer lesser Reapers Shepard and his team have to personally face as they carry out critical special ops in the battle for Earth.

Fighting Banshees and Brutes is a LOT easier when they aren't accompanied by waves of Marauders and Cannibals.

[Vurt]

You could even just use EMS as a sliding scale.

The higher EMS you have, the fewer lesser Reapers Shepard and his team have to personally face as they carry out critical special ops in the battle for Earth.

Fighting Banshees and Brutes is a LOT easier when they aren't accompanied by waves of Marauders and Cannibals.

I like this idea but I think it might be difficult to balance. You wouldn't want the final push to be anticlimactic to the point of boredom, and you wouldn't want folks with low EMS to face a herculean task to finish (because presumably they're less practiced with the game) and quit.

In between those two endpoints, would there be enough variability in monster populations that you would even notice? Especially given that if what's thrown at you just isn't to your taste, you can already resort to changing the game's difficulty, which is basically doing the same thing.

I think I'd go a slightly different route. With more War Assets (and more importantly, with the appropriate War Assets), you get more opportunities to shortcut the monsters in the field--more heavy weapons are lying on the ground, possibly you have the opportunity to call in asari gunships, or a team of krogans as shock troops to storm a front, salarian engineers to bring down a building, etc. Ultimately I like the idea of seeing my War Assets in action, not just as a score on a terminal.

Now that it's over, I'd really like for Bioware to open up their ME games to mods. I think with all this clamoring for changes to the ending, if given the opportunity, you might see some really brilliant (and conversely, some truly awful) endings from all the folks who just can't let go. Of course, in this day and age, you don't want to do anything to jeopardize the DLC money train so I'm not actually holding my breath, but it would be nice.

[Vigilance]

I like this idea but I think it might be difficult to balance. You wouldn't want the final push to be anticlimactic to the point of boredom, and you wouldn't want folks with low EMS to face a herculean task to finish (because presumably they're less practiced with the game) and quit.

In between those two endpoints, would there be enough variability in monster populations that you would even notice? Especially given that if what's thrown at you just isn't to your taste, you can already resort to changing the game's difficulty, which is basically doing the same thing.

I think I'd go a slightly different route. With more War Assets (and more importantly, with the appropriate War Assets), you get more opportunities to shortcut the monsters in the field--more heavy weapons are lying on the ground, possibly you have the opportunity to call in asari gunships, or a team of krogans as shock troops to storm a front, salarian engineers to bring down a building, etc. Ultimately I like the idea of seeing my War Assets in action, not just as a score on a terminal.

I like that idea as well.

Though I'd also point out that folks who are "bad at the game" could also compensate by turning the difficulty down.

I experimented with easy and it's *almost* impossible to die.

Certainly you could make it to the end of the game.

But I do like the idea of airstrikes on a cool down as well.

[Dark Jezter]

I think I'd go a slightly different route. With more War Assets (and more importantly, with the appropriate War Assets), you get more opportunities to shortcut the monsters in the field--more heavy weapons are lying on the ground, possibly you have the opportunity to call in asari gunships, or a team of krogans as shock troops to storm a front, salarian engineers to bring down a building, etc. Ultimately I like the idea of seeing my War Assets in action, not just as a score on a terminal.

Fuck yeah, I would have loved to see something like this. Dragon Age: Origins did something similar during the final quest where you could summon reinforcements that you'd recruited over the course of the game, ME3 could have made such a concept even cooler in action.

[Tabloid Believer]

Fuck yeah, I would have loved to see something like this. Dragon Age: Origins did something similar during the final quest where you could summon reinforcements that you'd recruited over the course of the game, ME3 could have made such a concept even cooler in action.

Yes. That would have been totally awesome.

All I was hoping for was something like they had in Mass Effect 2, which was having certain crew members live or die. Maybe have a few, very quick cutscenes where you see particular fleets get wiped out or survive. Etc. What I'm talking about would not be that hard to do, really.

Which make me believe that that part of the game was rushed. It's possible that it wasn't, but....

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I like this idea but I think it might be difficult to balance. You wouldn't want the final push to be anticlimactic to the point of boredom, and you wouldn't want folks with low EMS to face a herculean task to finish (because presumably they're less practiced with the game) and quit.

In between those two endpoints, would there be enough variability in monster populations that you would even notice? Especially given that if what's thrown at you just isn't to your taste, you can already resort to changing the game's difficulty, which is basically doing the same thing.

I think I'd go a slightly different route. With more War Assets (and more importantly, with the appropriate War Assets), you get more opportunities to shortcut the monsters in the field--more heavy weapons are lying on the ground, possibly you have the opportunity to call in asari gunships, or a team of krogans as shock troops to storm a front, salarian engineers to bring down a building, etc. Ultimately I like the idea of seeing my War Assets in action, not just as a score on a terminal.

Now that it's over, I'd really like for Bioware to open up their ME games to mods. I think with all this clamoring for changes to the ending, if given the opportunity, you might see some really brilliant (and conversely, some truly awful) endings from all the folks who just can't let go. Of course, in this day and age, you don't want to do anything to jeopardize the DLC money train so I'm not actually holding my breath, but it would be nice.

From a gameplay point of view, I think it would be questionable to have "story decisions" like this significantly ease up the game. It makes sense from a story-telling point of view, but just because you're a completist doesn't mean you wouldn't want challenging combat. I think ME2 did this rather well - not having loyal companions didn't really affect the difficulty, but your story decisions affected the story outcome, e.g. people were dying in cut scenes.

Though on the other hand, having additional assets like air strikes and the like would make its own, interesting gameplay element. But if it's your choice to use them or not, an extreme hardcore player may simply chose not to use these assets. (Maybe there would even be an achievement for completing an insane level without assets.)

[Vurt]

Though on the other hand, having additional assets like air strikes and the like would make its own, interesting gameplay element. But if it's your choice to use them or not, an extreme hardcore player may simply chose not to use these assets. (Maybe there would even be an achievement for completing an insane level without assets.)

Yeah, the way I would do it is you would always have the option whether or not to deploy the element. It would also be even cooler if there were multiple places you could deploy, but a chance that if you do, there's a possibility that the asset is too chewed up by the opposition to be used again.

[JC]

JC's knee-jerk white-knighting of BioWare would be endearing, if it weren't so pathetic.

DJ's brainless reactions and sad trolling about everything in geek culture would be amusing if it weren't so tired, spiteful and reeked of boorish, knuckle dragging idiocy.

Oh look! DJ made another joke about 3 colors and Mass Effect 3's ending! Yay for him! Something tells me I'm going to need a medium that he can actually understand where I'm coming from on this one:

[JC]

I think I'd go a slightly different route. With more War Assets (and more importantly, with the appropriate War Assets), you get more opportunities to shortcut the monsters in the field--more heavy weapons are lying on the ground, possibly you have the opportunity to call in asari gunships, or a team of krogans as shock troops to storm a front, salarian engineers to bring down a building, etc.

While I agree that there were some potential missed opportunities with the War Assets especially compared with what we've seen in other Bioware and Mass Effect games, as others have mentioned, I can't say it would have vastly improved the game or the ending. I've seen those other methods in play and already got their benefits in my game, for the most part. Perhaps having plot result elements in number form was a bad move on their part because anything boiled down to just a number is boring and hollow.

Ultimately I like the idea of seeing my War Assets in action, not just as a score on a terminal.

As I mentioned before, having a number relating directly to anything in a story risks coming off as hollow and opens up conversations just like this where it may have been better to have it represented another way. That said, the WA as a whole certainly did play a big part in how the endgame went down. Try having a barebones readiness score as a result of really low War Assets and see what happens, for example.

What I'm really saying is that I would have loved there to be more to the game in general. I prefer my RPGs long and the playtime to take no less than 40 hours with the assumption that I do nearly all the side quests and other available content. ME3 logged in around 47 hrs for me in the single player game. Looking back, that was around 8 hours less than ME2. I have to think that at least 3 hours of that, likely more, was spent on mega-boring scanning. I don't have my ME1 saves on this PC to easily check but I'm sure those clocked at least 55 hrs, likely much more with all the driving around on random planets. So in all, that would make ME3 the shortest of the 3 experiences and easily the most streamlined.

What that all boils down to is that ME3 *was* a shorter game and I enjoyed what was there so of course more would have been great. But I didn't feel that the War Assets were misused nor did I feel that I needed something like the end of DA:O where in the lead up to the final fight had armies available from factions I had remained friendly with to jump in and assist. Or in my case, just act as somewhat useless canon fodder. War Assets were gained along the way and the major ones had big story points attached to them. Good enough for me and right in line with the urgency of Shepard's mission.

[Dark Jezter]

DJ's brainless reactions and sad trolling about everything in geek culture would be amusing if it weren't so tired, spiteful and reeked of boorish, knuckle dragging idiocy.

Oh look! DJ made another joke about 3 colors and Mass Effect 3's ending! Yay for him! Something tells me I'm going to need a medium that he can actually understand where I'm coming from on this one:

Fuck, took you long enough. Did you have to go digging at 4chan to find a "witty" reply? I saw that macro you linked to at least 3 or 4 years ago.

What are you gonna link to next? A LOLcat? Maybe the Numa Numa guy?

[JC]

Fuck, took you long enough. Did you have to go digging at 4chan ...

The classics are that way for a reason. Helps that it applies to your state of being on many topics.

Fuck, took you long enough. Did you have to go digging at 4chan to find a "witty" reply? I saw that macro you linked to at least 3 or 4 years ago.

What are you gonna link to next? A LOLcat? Maybe the Numa Numa guy?

Yeah, this was about the response I expected. Lots of weaksauce mixed with concentration only on the pretty pictures. I'm actually kinda surprised the response had words at all and not yet another image macro I'm sure you thought was so hilarious and so original.

And no image macro for you in this one, champ. You're gonna have to suss out the meaning all on your own.

[nail bunny]

I see red, blue, and green colors in there... I can't which ending you're giving him.

Is it the happy ending? I like the happy ending.

[JC]

I see red, blue, and green colors in there... I can't which ending you're giving him.

Is it the happy ending? I like the happy ending.

[Dark Jezter]

Here they are, the Extended Cut endings for those who don't feel like playing through the final couple of missions again:

Destroy ending:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgYYYmzr7_A"]Mass Effect 3 Walkthrough - Extended Cut DLC Destroy Ending Let's Play XBOX PS3 PC - YouTube[/ame]

Control ending:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5J-QDTM8Zk"]Mass Effect 3 Walkthrough - Extended Cut DLC Control Ending Let's Play XBOX PS3 PC - YouTube[/ame]

Synthesis ending:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFzrRz6Dc0Y"]Mass Effect 3 Walkthrough - Extended Cut DLC Synthesis Ending Let's Play XBOX PS3 PC - YouTube[/ame]

The new "Rufuse to Choose" ending:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PThzItSAT5c"]Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut | New Refusal Ending - YouTube[/ame]


Short version: The ending is still disappointing (BioWare is still trying hard to make synthesis the most appealing option), and it still has plot holes (how did the ground team get back on the Normandy so quickly?), but at least it's not a complete clusterfuck like it was before. The most interesting part of the Extended Cut is that it confirms what many people have suspected all along: The Starchild is Harbinger.