I suspect that a renegade control Shepard would lean that way, someone who killed the Council to promote an all-human Council is not someone you want controlling Reapers.
In ME2 that was due to the Reaper Identify Friend/Foe system being installed, EDI needed to be unshackled to handle it. On Palaven it was because EDI was busy installing herself into her sexbot form.
Certainly is, you’ll need Legion and Tali alive though (you might need to have completed their loyalty missions in 2, don’t quote me on that though). Make sure you do every other Rannoch mission before that one taking on the Reaper - the game gives you little clue that there’s an order you’re supposed to play them in. Allow Legion to upload the code, then use an interrupt to wake up the quarians. “You are welcome to return to Rannoch, Admiral Raan. With us.” The bad news is that Legion always dies.
There’s a few scenes with Miranda in ME2 & 3 where she’s adamant that it is Shepard who was brought back, not impaired in any way (the Illusive Man wanted a control chip, Miranda opposed for this reason). Shepard himself can wonder aloud if he’s an advanced VI that thinks it’s Commander Shepard. I had Liara with me, she said she knew it was Shepard the first time they touched.
Critical mission failure. Do not stick your dick in the sex vampire. Bad idea to keep her alive at all; in ME3 you get an extra mission and resources with Samara, with Morinth she just sends an email then turns up as a banshee on Earth.
There are a few real jerkass moments as fully renegade Shep, betraying Tali is right up there. ME3 ups how much of an asshole fully renShep can be; the highlights being executing Legion as he tries to save his people, shooting Mordin and watching him pitifully crawling towards the genophage cure console and shooting Ash and hearing that she hopes the Reapers send you to Hell.
Destroy for me, every time. Forcing a choice on every living thing on the galaxy without their knowledge or consent didn’t sit right with me. Destroy the Reapers, that was your job since you found out about them. At least then we can rebuild on our terms without the Reapers and husks still hanging about. Besides which, Starchild is full of crap; ‘final evolution’…‘new DNA’, gimme a break. When asked whether there would be peace he merely replies that the ‘cycle with end’; which is also true of the other two endings Die with your lies.
You should have seen the original shitstorm where the first thing you saw after the ending that stank more than a cat shit on a frying pan was a message plugging more DLC. That said ME2 DLC was very good, specifically Overlord and Lair of the Shadow Broker. Citadel looks to be the best of the ME3 DLC.
All right, I’ve convinced myself to get the Citadel DLC and play through the game again, despite the cost, and despite having to go through EA’s site to do it. I’m such a sucker for that franchise.
I’m wondering if the Leviathan or Omega DLC’s are considered to be worthwhile by any 'Dopers. I’m thinking not, but I would rather pick those up now if someone wants to convince me that they’re worth it.
Nobody asks to be born the way they are but monsters still need to be put down. Had she escaped and refrained from having sex you’d have an argument. Instead she chose to kill people. Only she knows how many.
To be honest that reads like fan fiction. I prefer that the consequence to being with her is death rather than fan service.
I don’t think I have Leviathan. Omega is interesting but you don’t get to bring any of your usual teammates along (you get temporary ones for the adventure), so I’d say it’s skippable unless you want more about Aria.
You can play Citadel with an older save game. Just load a save game nearish to the end of your game and you’ll get a new E-mail about something important.
I’m one of the few folks who loved the ending (yes, even the original version), so take my opinion as you will.
Leviathan: Pretty awesome, although I suspect YMMV depending on how you feel about the ending of the game.
Omega: Disappointing from a story perspective, but the running and gunning is as solid as ever.
Citadel: Up there with “Lair of the Shadow Broker” as the best DLC I’ve ever played.
By the way, for those of you who may not have played all the ME2 DLC - make sure you grab “Overlord.” It’s a stand-alone side quest that doesn’t get as much attention as “Shadow Broker” since it doesn’t feed into the greater mythology of the series, but it’s one of the best side stories in the entire series.
EA has said they are going to continue makign game sint he MAss Effect Universe, but haven’t said much of anything else yet.
Do you think they’ll explore the past, perhaps the original human - Turian wars? Or will they pick an ending as the “official” lore ending and put the story long after Shepard?
Not unless you’re a pro-human chauvinist like The Illusive Man definitely! And I surprised myself at how tempting I found the thought to be when I considered it, even having BFF Garrus and my other plucky alien comrades running around.
Yes, I must have mis-intrepreted that scene, I thought it suggested that Harbringer had hacked EDI’s systems with Reaper code and it was going to cause problems later. An emplaced time-bomb in-case of Collector defeat.
I was annoyed that I couldn’t save both but it was one of those moral questions that the series was so good at, I had difficulty choosing to save the Quarians or the Geth. The Geth deserved a chance but it was worrying how quickly and easily their entire civilisation could change policies.
I thought it was the other way around, Miranda wanted a control chip but The Illusive Man over-ruled her? And thats odd re Liara because I had her in my team (usually Garrus and Liara on most missions) when watching the vids as well and I don’t think she said that.
And I don’t recall the extra mission and resources with Samara! Maybe I missed that plot-path.
Oh yes, I genuinely felt uncomfortable watching the Krogan tell Shepard what a great person she was after she’d betrayed them, Wrex turning up later in a killing-rage was fully justified.
After the bloody massacre of Mass Effect 2 when Dark Shepard made it out with only Jacob from the collector base Mordin was replaced with Wiks (who was a very fun character) and yes watching him desperately try to activate the cure was heart breaking. I refused to let Ash join the Normandy after she asked so maybe I missed that last scene.
There were a couple of reasons why I didn’t go for the ‘Destroy’ ending, I didn’t want to wipe out the Geth and I thought the Starchild was hinting that all higher technology would be destroyed, although civilisation would recover it would be pretty devasting in itself. In addition if it was right and conflict was always inevitable over galactic time-scales then this might be the one and only time in history where it would be possible to try something else. But yes it definitely didn’t sit well with me taking that choice out of everyone elses hands.
In addition although they didn’t go into it much I thought it was interesting that the Reapers were a form of galactic renewal, giving new upcoming species a chance that would never have the opportunity in an already extant galactic society. Iain Banks had a similar but much more benign mechanism in his Culture story-universe where older species and civilisations ‘sublime’ away into a different level of existence opening up they playing field for younger species. They could have hammered this point a bit more to have more reason to pause and consider your actions.
What was the original ending?
You can sympathise with and understand a person but still agree that they need to be stopped, which is exactly what my main Shepard did, and that’s what I would do in that scenario.
Her evil alter-ego spared her though, and I don’t think Morinth coming onto her on the Normandy was merely a predatory means to kill her, I think she meant what she said, after all she wasn’t stupid and killing the Captain of a heavily armed starship while en-route would be a good means to get ejected out of the nearest convenient air-lock.
Like most of the characters in the trilogy Morinth was not merely a one-dimensional cipher, she was a bad person certainly but her motivations were understandable,
I would argue however that Aria was a worse person than her, and on both my Good Shepard and Dark Shepard playthroughs I allied with her to gain her help against the Reapers, which was the ‘compromising my morals’ I mentioned above.
Fan service? Perhaps, I would rather call it a consideration of her character though.
I’m not sure to be honest, as much as I loved the series I’m a bit Mass Effected out for the time being, a prequel with humanity discovering the wider galactic civilisation could be interesting. I have to say I liked the depiction of the other species, different enough to be interesting but similar enough to be understandable and with plenty of variation in individuals.
I thought the depiction of humanity was plausible as well, as a species we just turn up, throw our collective feet on the table and say, “Hey, nice place you’ve got here, mind if we move in?”
One of my favourite bits of the series was when Shepard attends the bar and asks the barman what’s up, “I’m a barman, I serve drinks, if you want to know whats going on then watch the news…mutters I’ll never understand why humans keep asking me that…”, it was just one of those cultural quirks that you can really see confusing aliens.
After you’ve saved the galaxy I don’t know where you can go from there. I don’t think going to the past is a great idea and they probably shouldn’t try to repeat such an epic storyline for any future sequel.
As much as I’d like there to be more Mass Effect, this is pretty much the thought I have whenever I read something about another title in the franchise.
I vaguely recall some talk about a likely prequel. There’s certainly enough lore to be explored there, and some good storylines that could be fleshed out about early human expansion and struggles. However, the plotting of the game would suffer from a) being on a much smaller scale (fighting just a few races vs. fighting a universal threat, and also having less tech and less biotics at your team’s disposal), and b) having the scope of the Reaper threat looming in the distance putting a giant shadow over the relatively petty squabbles a prequel could allow for.
If these were movies, or novels, it could be done by a skilled hand. As a game, however, I feel that it would have to be something beyond my imagination to overcome the disparity of scale.
Sequels would suffer from some of the same problems, but only some. You’d have to take a risk in shifting the tone of the franchise, IMO. You’d have to come up with an overarching conflict that carried the same level of meaning as the Reaper threat, but in some new way that doesn’t try to simply repeat the threat. Maybe something incorporating the idea that, before, we (all of the species of the known universe, past and present) were led and guided and constrained by the Reapers plan, and now we must face all of the problems in the universe with no one to guide us but ourselves. A coming of age story, on a grand scale.
To save both the geth and quarians, Tali and Legion have to have both survived the suicide mission. Both loyalty missions must have been completed, I’m pretty sure. Tali cannot have been banished from the Migrant Fleet, because she won’t be able to speak with an admiral’s authority at the critical time. (And if you betrayed her, there’s a good chance she didn’t survive the Suicide Mission anyway-- she’s very squishy holding the line, and if you take her to fight the Reaper/Human larva, she won’t survive).
It makes things much easier if you chose to destroy, rather than rewrite, the geth heretics during Legion’s loyalty mission. Less geth opposition to deal with.
The argument between Tali and Legion after both loyalty missions are completed, must be resolved peacefully. Even if you later regain the loyalty of one of them, it won’t help.
Beating the other Rannoch missions, and saving Admiral Zaal’Koris vas Qwib-Qwib will help your cause (might be necessary, even).
You also have to pass a Reputation check, and have a ton of Paragon or Renegade points.
You can choose either option on the first decision-- allow Legion to upload, or don’t allow him to do so. Then you’re presented with the Reputation check. If you’ve enough Reputation and Paragon/Renegade points, you can warn the fleet or rally the fleet. Either works.
On every ME3 playthrough I’ve done so far, I’ve achieved peace between the geth and quarians. I absolutely do not have the heart to let the quarians die and watch Tali commit suicide, so on my current ME2 playthrough, I chose Tali during the loyalty conflict, to force myself to choose between the geth and quarians next time 'round. I’ll choose the quarians.
I haven’t yet betrayed Wrex, either, but on one of my ME3 playthroughs when Wrex had died, Wreav was in charge and Eve didn’t make it 'cuz I destroyed Maelon’s data, I talked Mordin into faking the genophage cure. Wise decision, I’d say. Wreav is a freaking maniac.
You don’t have to play the whole game again. You can play a new DLC with your last save. The game puts you at a point before the assault on the Cerberus base.
Disclaimer. I didnt play it, that is all just from reading info on it. I’m one of those who waited on purchasing and got put off by all the negativity surrounding the ending, multiplayer and so on.
From the Lets Plays I’ve seen of it, the Prothean and Leviathan DLC add tons of bck story to the lore, and really should have been in the vanilla game.
Not only did I play the whole game again, I started from ME1, just because I felt like it.
It’s a great franchise, and the ending bothers me less and less. It sucked as an ending, yeah, but the rest of the game is still really good.
I find the From Ashes DLC to be quite worthwhile (and the best squadmate rifle in the game comes from there), and Leviathan was pretty good as well, with a nice, unexpected, X-Files feel at the beginning. Citadel was just a ton of fun - there wasn’t anything important lore-wise, but the character interactions were funny and touching.
I don’t know that I can say that the attachments are really worth the price, but if money isn’t tight, and you like the game, at least the above-mentioned DLC are well worth the time.
In other news, I have to rethink my earlier comment about a Mass Effect sequel. I was thinking just about how constrained a prequel would be (but could definitely still be a good game, if done well, and Bioware probably still has what it takes to do that), but a sequel would have to find a way to justify the galaxy-breaking endings that ME3 gave us. Any decisions made there would all too likely dilute the impact of the ending (and not in a good way), and might even re-ignite the flames of people’s opinions of the ending choices.
I could totally go for a Mass Effect prequel concerning the Morning War, Rachni War or Krogan Rebellions. The First Contact War was so short and uneventful (with the Council breaking it up before the turians and humans could annihilate each other) that it’d be hard to make a game out of that, I think.
Post-Shepard-era Mass Effect games would be hard to pull off, but I admit I would love to see Garrus and Tali again, in particular.
Having only recently seen the expanded endings (well, three out of four of them) I do find that there’s still a lot to complain about, but only in the way we also complained about the limited-choice forced endings of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. We are no longer left to assume a galaxy-wide apocalypse has happened, just a number of bitter-sweet endings whose sense of closure I can live with, even if they don’t actually make sense. I mean, if they would at least admit that the AI driving the forced choices was insane almost as soon as it was created, that its explanations for its initial plan didn’t make sense and its subsequent modified choices are based on the fallacies of a warped mind. Otherwise, we are left to conclude that the writers themselves actually believed any of these choices made sense, as uncharitable as that may be.
But, I mean, otherwise much better. They didn’t simply undo in a stroke everything you thought you were working for the whole time, like in Dragon Age 2. I can live with it.
