I don’t think anything. Some dialogue options and maybe less war assets.
Although NOT giving him the ship and having Miranda in your squad produces excellent dialogue. The game just keeps giving and giving.
If you save the Collector base in ME2, the Illusive Man is using the human Reaper head as a computer; if you destroy it, he is using the Reaper heart as a power source. You get more war assets from the head compared to the heart.
I did actually see that clip and it was great. When I met Miranda in ME3, she referenced quitting Cerberus, but we never saw it on screen in my game.
I can’t imagine anyone seeing every dialogue happen in these games. They put so many characters together and gave them unique conversations, it’s truly astounding.
I am still thinking about putting together some final thoughts on the series, but I am confident that my ranking of the three games as separate entities is:
- ME2
- ME3
- ME1
However, I was fortunate enough to play them as one long game and would give it rave reviews as a whole. I liked ME3 a lot more than some people. I think EDI is right up there with my favorite characters, specifically her in her body.
I agree with you, with the small caveat that I wish they hadn’t caved to the whiners and created the over-literalized Extended Cut stuff. I really appreciated how the game didn’t just do the usual Big Crazy Boss Fight climax, but aimed for something more thoughtful, more thematically ambitious and almost abstract, more… artful, for lack of a better word. It can be criticized for execution, but (and here is a very strong opinion) I firmly believe that dismissing it for its intention is deeply misguided and reveals more about someone’s demands for a game experience than it does about the game itself succeeding or failing.
As I said upthread, the players’ demands for “lots of plot endings” are thoroughly paid off throughout the entire game. The actual climax goes past that and aims for something higher and more interesting.
It’s even better than that. If you interact with him in just the right way through the three games, and also check off a few other pre-requisites, Conrad Verner delivers an jaw-dropping payoff moment that is simultaneously pure fanservice while also being completely awesome. I’d wager fewer than one player in a hundred has earned that moment organically.
The new playthrough I’m working on in the LE is my eleventh or twelfth run at the complete trilogy (I’ve lost count). Over my last five or six plays, I was consciously making choices in the first game that I knew would have effects down the road, deliberately creating combinations of narrative to see how far I could push the edges of the story and explore just how many permutations the designers had included.
And I’ll say this: In my just-concluded ME1 run, I managed to see something I’ve never seen before in any prior run. That’s how much stuff there is to discover in this series. It’s awe-inspiring.
100% agreed. We had a massive fight out on the streets, but no final boss like ME2 and ME1 did. I was very satisfied. I mean, what kind of final boss could they have had? They made the right decision to let it play out without one.
Hey, do you have a youtube clip of it? I failed the Conrad mission in game 1 and it’s basically gone forever once you mess it up.
I believe you. This isn’t a game series you can really 100% in terms of seeing everything. I tried really hard to take my time and listen in on conversations and participate in as many as I could. I’m sure I missed a ton of content along the way.
I just watched a “things you didn’t know” video about ME and was impressed to learn that Joker’s sister is indeed resolved as being killed. You can learn it by overhearing Asari discuss what happened to her.
I’m hearing rumors that a Mass Effect 4 may be made and that the trailer showed Liara? Wow, do I ever hope they don’t got back to this storyline and these characters. I was very satisfied with how everyone ended and don’t want any sequel involving them.
I certainly hope they never attempt a “Shepard is still alive” sequel, at least not with the ending I just got. It was very clear to me Shepard died and is gone.
I love at the end that they put a memorial plaque for Shepard on the wall in the Normandy and it just says “Commander Shepard” instead of putting the first name I typed in as her first name.
Note: There was a good gag in the third game with Doctor Chakwas. She told me her first name and allowed me to call her by her first name. I encouraged her to call me by my first name and she laughed it off, saying it would feel weird. Nice hang-the-lantern joke about the fact NO ONE calls Shepard by his/her first name since you get to pick that.
Post-game random thought: I don’t think Mass Effect will go down as the greatest game I’ve played, but I do think that I will always consider many of these characters as some of my favorite video game characters. Tali, Liara, EDI, Joker, etc. I loved every second interacting with all of them.
Here you go. I’ll detail the prerequisites afterward.
So in order to get this, you have to have treated Conrad nicely (obviously), but you also helped Hossle retrieve his data on Feros, you found all the Matriarch-writing collectibles, and you bought the Elkoss Combine license. And for the second part, you need to have convinced Chellik to extract Jenna from Chora’s Den. All of that in place, and this is what happens.
The first part is true, yes, and I absolutely agree with you. It goes back to what I said above about a clamorous subset of players demanding a specific type of indulgent game experience: I fervently hope Bioware didn’t oversteer after the failure of Andromeda and Anthem, and backslide into nakedly catering to that troublesome demographic.
However, consider that asari live for a thousand years. It’s entirely possible that we’re in a far-future timeline where the primary characters are long gone and the practical effects of this storyline have mostly faded away, short of a few offhand references. That’s just speculative, though.
Next time you go through the trilogy, you should try playing as a Vanguard. I absolutely love biotically teleporting and charging at enemies, hitting them with the remainder of my shield power in a big blast, and doing it again and again.
I think you hit the nail directly on the head here. This series is absolutely defined by the character that appear within it. It doesn’t show AS much in ME1, but starting with 2 it is what the series is all about. Any Mass Effect conversation doesn’t start with “Which ending did you pick?” or “What was your favorite gun or class?” It’s always “Who was your favorite character?” or “Who did you romance and why was it Tali?” The characters are what makes the game, they’re who you miss when you’re not playing, and they’re the reason you keep coming back again and again
I’m putting together a longer, retrospective set of thoughts on the whole series. I’ll post later today and am very open and interested in discussion on any aspect of the games.
It’s a joke. Martin Sheen, who voiced the Illusive Man played President Bartlet in the West Wing.
Tali and Garrus are very fun to romance.
Oh, I thought it was because the Illusive Man wanted to build a wall around Alliance space and make the turians pay for it.
If you pretend to cure the genophage in ME3, and Wreav runs the krogan, he’ll never know. In fact, if Eve is dead, you can convince Mordin to go along with the deception peacefully.
But Wrex is too smart to fall for it. You have to kill Mordin, and then Wrex.
I think I’m ready to post some overall thoughts on the series now that I have finished it. I’ll just break it down into good, bad, and OK.
I won’t give the overall game a score because it isn’t the type of experience I can compare to others. “Highly recommended” is the recommendation.
Good:
-
Overall Experience: This is something that is hard to describe, but the gist is that the overall experience and journey of playing Mass Effect is hard to find in any other game. I truly felt like I was playing my own game with my own Shepard. The fact that all my decisions changed the game in minor ways made me feel like I was having my own 80 hour experience. I can’t think of another game that feels so personal to the player playing it. This was my Mass Effect. Watching youtube clips of others is nice, but it doesn’t feel like my game.
-
Characters: Some of the best characters in video game history. I’ll remember Tali, EDI, Joker, and many others for a long time. It’s only been a few days, but I’m nostalgic for them and have fond memories of all the squad(well, almost all). I loved the loyalty missions in ME2, really some of my best character memories.
-
Choices: I’m glad to play a full game where our choices impact the game series. I’m impressed that characters can die early on and the series continues without them. I played a few Telltale games and while you made choices, it never really made that much difference in the end. This game made sure your choices matter and that is amazing.
-
Dialogue: I’m really impressed how much dialogue was recorded for this series, including how much of it will never be heard based on decisions made by each player. I love hearing little conversations happening around the Citadel and other areas. It’s reasonable to say that over 50% of the recorded dialogue for this series was not heard by me and that my play-through was very unique to me.
-
Ending: Yes, I’m putting this in the good column. I think that payoff is often lacking in games and movie series. I feel like all of Mass Effect 3 was payoff and the final payoff was well handled. Instead of a final boss, you fought a Reaver and other tough enemies, said goodbye to your friends, went in and made a final choice. I felt the Synthesis choice I made was appropriate and powerful. I can’t say if the other endings are as good, but I loved mine.
-
Some of the music: There were some great musical moments here and can I ever look at space again without hearing the galaxy-map theme? There were other great musical moments in the series and the major payoff moments throughout had great themes.
-
Resolution to the Genophage and Geth-Quarian storylines: These resolved so well, I loved them. I’ve seen the other endings to these storylines and while devastating, this are actually stronger storylines than the main story in some ways.
OK
-
Gameplay: It’s good, but it does become somewhat of a slog at times. I found that as a soldier, the cover-to-recover and then shoot strategy was good and satisfying, but did wear on me over time. It was a good shooter game, but not a great one. The gameplay is just not what I felt this series was about, though.
-
Some music: Some of the music was just OK. Very generic and forgettable. One little recurring theme in ME2 sounded like a very generic scifi theme and I can’t even tell you when it played in the game.
-
Some characters: Jacob, James, Ashley-Kaiden, the reporter(Diana?) in the third game. Just not very interesting. When Kaiden died, I just kind of shrugged and moved on. When Mordin died, I was moved. If Miranda, EDI, Joker, Tali, or Liara had died in my playthrough, I would have reloaded the game to fix my error(if possible). Like, I was connected to them, but not to Jacob, James, or Kaiden.
Bad :
ME 1’s non-battle gameplay : Too much slow running around and loading while on elevators. I played on a solid-state hard drive and modern machine and I was still annoyed to see how often things had to load. I was also frustrated with how slow Shepard runs. Some of these issues could have been fixed in Legendary.
Planet Scanning – I never enjoyed this. Ever. It was just kind of boring. I’d rather read the side-bar about the planets than scan around for minerals or whatever. I had enough War Assets/Military-Strength in ME3 that I was able to avoid a lot of it in that time. I did a ton in ME2 to get enough resources to upgrade. I would have eliminated all scanning from the game.
In my experience, the Soldier class is by far my least favourite to play in ME 1 and ME 2 because of the lack of interesting active powers to use. Adding frag grenades and beefing up concussive shot for ME 3 was definitely an improvement.
Yes, I do think there is a whole different game out there if I picked a different class.
Arrogance maybe.
He says that line a lot prior to that denouement.
Now that that you have finished the game I’d ask that you watch the video below and let us know your opinion on the indoctrination theory.
I know the video is long but I think you will find it interesting. Of course, you have no obligation to watch it. Up to you.
To be fair this is from before the slightly revised ending you experienced but I think it still holds-up.
SPOILERS in the video below (in case you somehow have followed this thread but not played the game):
My usual playstyle is to stand far back and snipe, so Vanguard is the antithesis of that. But playing one was fracking exhilarating. Charge!