Grab your emergency induction port, get a glass of ryncol and start calibrating your giant gun because it’s N7 day!
What’s your favorite Mass Effect memory? Who do you love to romance (Tali!) who have you never romanced? (Jacob!) are you an Indoctrination Theory person or not?
To this day, Mass Effect 2 is the only game I’ve ever played that once I beat the game I immediately restarted it to play again. That’s a pretty big deal for me who is normally an one and done type player.
Mass Effect is my favorite game series of all time. The story was great, I loved how it was a quasi-FPS RPG with a great cover system and squad rules, the game world was amazing… I feel like it was one of those rare gems of a game series that stood out for being exceptional and it’ll be hard to surpass.
If anyone has an Xbox One X, they’re releasing a patch of some sort to Andromeda. Granted, that means you have to actually OWN and PLAY the game, but it’s there nonetheless.
I didn’t hate Andromeda. It wasn’t as good as the original trilogy but was still better than a lot of other games I’ve played. Sadly I have an Xbox One (not a One X, and Microsoft seriously needs to fire the team picking these idiotic names for their consoles).
I love Mass Effect. From the original trilogy, I’m in the minority insofar as Mass Effect 3 was my favourite (I liked the emotional resonance it had for me, and I liked all of the callbacks to the previous games) and Mass Effect 2 was my least favourite (I thought the Collectors were an uninteresting and pointless addition, I thought forcing Shepard to work with Cerberus felt forced, and I was indifferent to the new companions – Miranda and Jack were okay, I guess).
Which character have I never romanced? That would be the drell guy who is so unmemorable to me that I can’t even remember his name…(looks it up)…Thane. Best romance? Joker and EDI. (I’m only half kidding.)
I’ve played through 2 and 3 at least 5 times; I try to do it once per year or so. The games haven’t grown old yet. They’re among my favorite games of all time, and one of my favorite game worlds.
Favorite moments? The entire Shadow Broker DLC is solid gold, with the fight on top of the SB’s ship still the single most visually beautiful scene I’ve ever seen in a video game. I also love the final assault on London in 3, and while they don’t totally nail the ending, they still do better than the vast majority of science fiction series, whether game, TV show, movie or book. Ending a SF series is hard.
As for romance… I’m a Liara guy, through and through, although I’ve been known to dally with Miranda on occasion.
[spoiler]The ending was so fucking bad it made it possible to travel through time and taint everything that had gone before. Not only was it so on the rails that player choice (one of it’s most hyped aspects) ended up not mattering much at all, but the ending results in a fucking genocide of unheard of proportions. Your character, however you played it through 3 games, ends up being nothing but a Hitler on a universal scale, blowing up solar systems and killing everyone you ever met, saved or even talked to.
And even worse, the ending just took everything you and I loved about the first games and basically gave it the middle finger. No chance to find a peaceful solution. No chance to save the organic lifelines in the Reapers. No chance to save anyone. And nothing I did in the prior 40 hours of gameplay did anything to change the awful result. So playing it through 5 more times would just emphasize how disappointing the series ending is. So I donated all the games and never, ever want anything to do with Mass Effect again.[/spoiler]
Not this argument again.
Let’s just agree that the ending was poorly presented and can be understood in a number of ways. I didn’t see it the same way you did, but I understand how you could have seen it that way.
Loved these games.
I felt real pride when I was able to thread the needle and make peace between the Geth and the Quarian.
The same when I was able to get the best possible ending for the Krogans through hard work (yeah it’s a game but you know what I mean:))
I felt a real sense of loss when Jacob died in Mass Effect 2.
The universe they built felt alive and entertaining.
And no I did not like the ending. It made me feel like all my accomplishments in the three games mean nothing.
I would grudgingly call ME2 my #1 game of all time. It could have been ME3 all the way through London, but that failed with the “push a button to end the game” (DX:HR, I’m looking at you…) that drives me crazy after an awesome game with real choices and story impact.
I do have an X, and will probably give ME:A another run, but while it had interesting moments, I did not feel as attached to the team as I did in every game prior to it. I got it post-patch, so I missed the really horrific bugs. It felt “smaller” for lack of a better word.
They need to hire whoever was in charge of naming consoles for Sega. Genesis…Dreamcast…3DS…so cool.
That is definitely a new take on the trilogy! Although I watched some Youtube retrospective a while back about the games and they basically said as much about ME2 that for as brilliant a game it is from a character perspective, as a story-building part of the trilogy it was crap. Working for Cerberus had no impact and didn’t make sense thematically, the Collectors were just kinda…there, and aside from the multiplayer they don’t even show up in the third game.
You couldn’t remember Thane? He was so cool!
Shadow Broker is definitely my favorite DLC of any game. Although I did love The Citadel party scene…THAT was a callback scene if there ever was one. I loved how the Shadow Broker called out whichever teammate you brought with you and when you see tha Yahg in 3 you say “There goes the next shadow broker”. Love it.
One of my favorite ways to play through the game is to romance Liara because she’s the only one you can romance from start to finish. I like to think of a relationship surviving all that hell and still staying intact.
One of my (sadder, but needed in retrospect) memories of the series was accidentlaly killing Mordin in the final mission of 2. I audibly yelled “No!” when he died and vowed to make sure it didn’t happen when I restarted. I killed Legion too, but I didn’t know who he or the geth were at that point so it didn’t really matter to me.
Other notable parts:
In 2 when Mordin sings and talks about the STD that’s on board that only come from Varren
I had reach, she had flexibility
When Tali is on Haestrom and says in her notes “I wish Shepard were here”
Also, in 3, on the geth ship, when Tali says you can move through the central venting. The way she says venting pisses me off for some reason. It’s like she has a cold
2 pieces of visual art: 1. When you first get attacked in 3 and there is a dreadnought firing on a reaper. You can watch them fight a bit before the dreadnought eventually blows up. It’s just gorgeous. All of 3 is absolutely gorgeous to look at. 2. My favorite animation of the game is right after your old companion gets their brain bashed in by Dr. Eva. You bring them into the ship and Liara tries talking to you and you keep looking away but she stays in your line of sight. Very well animated.
Last but not least: I always say to myself “I’m going to pick a different ending to be different”. But right before the final assault on London, when you see all your squadmates (past and present) and they all give encouragement to you and basically say “We believe in you, you can do this”, it just breaks my heart to pick anything but destroy. I HAVE to win and kill the reapers…they’re all counting on me…
You want to talk about sad? I accidentally killed *Tali *in ME3. I forgot to do the “memory bank” mission and she threw herself off a cliff once the upgraded Geth started massacring her people.
I did that too! I played 3 without using my previous saves (just to see how it is) and did the same thing…you bet your ass I re-loaded the mission and did it again!
I also accidentally had Tali commit suicide. I thought I could get away with skipping some of the side missions, but…I guess not.
On the other hand, I did one playthrough of ME 1+2+3 (“Jonah Shepard”) where I tried to cause the deaths of as many friendly NPCs as possible (e.g. Kirrahe and Wrex in ME1, everyone but Grunt in ME2, etc.) and other side missions I skipped altogether. It was kind of eerie noticing all of the things missing in ME3 compared to earlier playthroughs.
This is hilarious. How many did you kill in ME2? Could you really kill everyone?
Now I am curious too. I thought if you didn’t have enough you died at the end?
Does it still let you import that save?
“Oh, my Blue Rose of Ilium…” sighs; cries a little bit
You can still pass the suicide mission with one party member left alive; no problems importing that saved game. Note that I didn’t do anyone’s loyalty mission, which means eventual death for everyone except for Grunt. (I didn’t discover this via trial and error – I read it in passing on a Mass Effect wiki somewhere, which inspired me to try an “all death” run in the first place.)
Strange that, of all people, Grunt is the one that’s still alive.
So that’s what happens all the time? Grunt’s impossible to kill?
No, I’m misremembering a bunch of details. Here is a flowchart that explains it. The flowchart says that you need to end up with 2 teammates left alive, but I thought I only had Grunt left.
