Raithe

No matter what happens, you have to admit, the majority of the game was quite good. The way some of it wove together, and how things could totally change depending on those earlier choices. Tuchanka and the Krogan being one of the serious examples. If Wrex had died before, and Wreav was in charge, you know the Krogan's can't be trusted in the future, and without Maelon's data to ensure Eve's survival, she can't balance things out.. so there's a damn good reason to take the sabotage options. But if Wrex is alive, and Eve is there to help support the resurgence of Krogan's beyond warfare and bloodshed... Then it actually makes sense to tell the Dalatress to take a hike and make sure the genophage cure actually works. Much the same way that Tali / Legion relationship can pan out in different ways.. Sure, some of it might be taking the "easy emotional buttons", but they're usually well-crafted emotional buttons regardless. It's just a shame you have that sudden reversal for that final 10 minutes.

The slideshow endings can be a nice, short way to show how companions move on, and how they're affected by things you did during the game.. It can add a certain sense to things having mattered beyond whatever "final boss" encounter was there beforehand.. They weren't the first to do it, but they did proceed to use it with a fairly decent attempt at not just having "one automatic response" regardless of how things played out.

And for the stellar phenomenae folks.. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120306-dark-matter-galaxies-mystery-space-science/ There could be more then one type of Dark Matter.. just to confuse matters..

Also for the whole Collectors vs Dreadnoughts argument.. Think about the number of dreadnoughts in the galaxy. The human alliance has..7? in total. The Asari have around 12, and the Turians have about 27? Rough numbers are like that.. Since they're divided up between the various fleets that are dealing with Reapers directly.. I don't think the Collectors would have that much issue in avoiding them to take swipes at the various colony worlds...

Ah, if you have a really high number of War Assets.. And I believe it's only if you choose the Destroy option..

Hm, made it to Act 3 for my Smuggler. This time it was actually noticable that the war had broken out once more between the Republic and Imperials.. Seriously, it didn't seem to crop up as any announcement in the Sith Inquisitor story.. maybe I was too focused on the whole.. internal sith politics and one of the Dark Lords trying to killl me..

Of course, I'm not gaining huge amounts of weight.. but then I have rather bad habit of getting into a set of one actual "proper" meal for dinner, no breakfast, and some kind of light snack rather then lunch.. along with pints and pints of tea drunk throughout the day..

Gee, if only I could stabilise my sleep to stop bouncing those odd weeks of insomnia....

Hm, in my life so far I've gone through three hamsters, one guinea pig (struck by lightning - I do not lie), one dog that was the families and went out with cancer, and one dog that whilst technically was my sister's I was the one that actually took it for walks and who it spent the most time with. Currently juggling a persian cat that's blind in one eye, an overenthusiastic (and not totally coordinated) alsatian that's just over a year old, and a ****er spaniel that originally came from an abusive home and is now learning to bark again. Again, technically they're my sister's.. but since I'm pretty much the active person at home during the day...

Hm, that depends on several perspectives. Having the comparison between EDI and the Reapers as both are examples of unshackled AI's might not be a glaring "This is majorly important to the Plot!" marks, but it's very good storytelling. It adds to the sense of the world, and you couldn't build that in if it was all crammed into ME3. By establishing EDI and exactly how she came to be unshackled in ME2, it lets them weave in a more fully fledge part of the backstroy for ME3. Vital to the plot? Maybe not, but vital to the sense of character and background? I'd say so. Also, for the plot related notes, EDI's presence, unshackled nature, and attachement to both Joker and Shepard are what allows Normandy to be there to pick up Shepard on Earth at the beginning. If EDI and Joker hadn't hijacked the ship from where the Alliance were remodelling it, getting Shep off planet and back to the ship would have been a whole nother mess of things.

Heh, And with the new Saints Row DLC coming out (The Trouble With Clones), they're doing the "Remember, if you paid for the Season Pass, you'll get the DLC free!" .. Um, no. If you got the season pass that was paying the price of three dlc's, with a small discount, a year before they were all out. That doesn't mean you get the dlc's free.. it means you already paid for them...

You need EDI's presence in ME2 to have established that rapport with Joker, and to have an unshackled AI that you can contrast with the horrors of the Reapers. Thus making EDI's potential journey into an awareness of what it means to be "alive" a nice background note to all of the horrors of war that's happening during ME3.

Not to get too outrightly finnicky, but the SR2 is based off of the original Normandy, but has a whole bunch of upgrades compared to it. That's why it's about twice the size of the original Normandy, and that's before you do any of the character driven upgrades available. I still tend to view the Collectors as a nasty behind the lines types. They have better sensors, and probably stealth systems (since they have that whole mysterious reputation as slavers and the like).. so getting in close to a planet and dropping a few shuttle loads of their paralyzing bugs, or some other type of biological/nanotech virus across populations? Who needs to face serious defences when you can bypass them like that?

No, we wouldn't. The collectors had negligible military force (one cruiser, which loses in a pitched fight to a frigate), and thus they never could have really competed that human reaper. They were a non-threat. Well, the Normandy Mrk 2 had a few significant upgrades beyond a standard frigate. And the Collector's ship that we did see was able to spot the Normandy even stealthed, which shows their sensors must be significantly advanced.. Also, who is to say the Collectors would be used as a space navy? Get a shuttle or two loaded with their organic weapons into a planets atmosphere.. boom, handle a serious chunk of population without too much stress. I'd say the Collector's would have made a fairly devcent behind the lines strike force like that.. Plus adds in some Psy-Ops elements..

I still haven't gotten around to trying the DA2 dlc.. hell, I haven't even picked them up yet.. and I'm not in any rush to do so...

The thing is, if you're comparing it to the DX:HR ending.. The ending for that game fit within the story of what had come before, and where it was going. It wasn't a great ending, but it was coherent with everything else, and it suited the game. The ME3 ending just..has that violent reversal from choices mattering. And in fact, it seems geared towards making choices that you had made earlier.. not matter. Throw in that it's not coherent with everything else. And that it directly contravenes everything Bioware had been saying about it before hand... "We won't give you an a, b, or c ending" and you end up having to select button a, b, or c...

They've mashed up the books, John Carter has seriously mad jumping skills, the Therns have super-tech , the City-States are kind of split between two instead of a bunch.. But damn, it catches the spirit of the whole thing. That, and it's just generally fun. It's not too serious, it's not too silly, it has pulpy sci-fi planetary romance swashbuckleryness.

It's supposed to be an automatic thing whenever you reach 10th level. It's usually about 24 hours out of synch, but it's basically a "here's some more basics explained, just in case you hadn't learnt them in-game getting there". Apparently they had a few people get confused about what was happening when they hit 10th and were supposed to head to fleet.

Yeah, that's the IGN retort I mentioned earlier. While the guy has a couple of valid points, the general douchebag attitude, his strange mixture of saying "it's capitalism so they have a right as the seller, but it's art so the fans don't have rights as consumers" and such like tends to take away from any positive aspect of his rant.

I can deal with the whole "sometimes crud happens, no matter what you do." and having dark endings. What I find horrible is the fact that your choices don't actually play into it in anyway, and you get no closure or sense of what happens after the events. If only they'd done one of their epilogues that gave some rough sketches of how people/events shaped because of your choices, even after giving you a blue/orange/green ending.

Ah well. In the endings.. yeah. I can't really say. Hm, the music isn't half-bad for what they're attempting to do. But there's no sense of closure (at least, none that I really picked up) and it pretty much seems to invalidate all the sacrifices you made getting there.

I thought the whole Tuchanka: Shroud mission was really well done. The mix of humour from Wrex, the bittersweet nature of Mordin, the well-paced action sequences between the two moods.. The way they wove in previous squad mates into the story depending on whether they survived/were loyal or not was nicely handled. I might have wished for more, but what was there was quite smoothly done. Dealing with the Quarians and Geth felt quite satisfying. Well, right up until the ending made it feel there was no real point to having done it..

And for those who might have missed it. Casey Hudson's letter to the ME community:

Throwing in a mix of devil's advocate here.. The Collectors were an asset, in that they do genetic profiles of the alien races - They kidnap various creatures and perform experiments on them over the years that the Reaper's are in Dark Space. Thus providing intelligence that the Reapers use to plan their "invasion sweeps". Also highlighting which races are suitable for uplifting to "full Reaper", which to send to the lesser reapers, and which to use just for the various Husk models.. Plus they can act as a form of early "fifth column". Since they had already provided the majority of that data to the Reapers, the only thing you get by wiping them out is stopping their "early collection" of humanity and removing the potential fifth column aspect. It made Shepard a bigger hero to the human alliance, and not even all of them. Half the universe couldn't really be bothered, and how many of them actually heard about it? It's not as if it made the Galactic News, to most people outside the Terminus the Collectors are pretty much an Urban Myth. And for the majority of the game, people thought Cerberus might be behind the missing colonies. Whilst Shep might have been willing to work with them over it, everyone else still saw Cerberus as that shady, terrorist organisation. The team wasn't gathered to fight the Reapers later. They were brought forth as being uniquely skilled, that could potentially be useful on a suicide mission. None of them really expected to make it out alive. So seeing as you likely solved a lot of their personal issues, as well as keeping them alive - They needed time to unwind and figure out where/who they were in the galaxy after it. Combien with Shep most likely dropping them off before he handed himself over to the Alliance. Since pretty much most of the team have criminal pasts and he couldn't be guaranteed they'd be let free on his say so. Although, when you get down to it, each Loyal Crew member who is alive is worth 25 War Assets. Hell, some entire fleet's are only worth a couple of hundred.. I'd say that's going to count for something. Just because their skills might be more useful in not-quite-so-direct ways. Such as Kasumi's technical knowledge helping the Crucible Project (and her ability to find/acquire useful items that might not be shared otherwise). Partly that comes down to more of a roleplaying choice. What type of person your Shepard is. Does he think the shortcut and potential dangers are worth it? Will he put principles first and not worry about whether he can trust the Illusive Man? Although on a strictly numbers game, the Collector base can provide a couple of nice boosts to your War Assets if you saved it. If you don't, you only get access to the.. Reaper Heart I believe, which is about 100 War Assets worth. If you saved it, there's about triple the War Assets in Reaper-tech of some sort.