Raithe

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.

Yeah. I don't see tv adverts, I don't listen to the radio, internet news doesn't exactly flash up in advance warning.. Although I have seen a few adverts for the American mother's day..but that's a totally different date to ours. So it kind of crept up on me unaware of the date. And the other 360 odd days of the year being her carer don't count.

So apparently I'm in the dog house because I didn't know it was Mother's day today...

It's almost as if he's saying that every event within ME3 from the time you hit "new game" to the moment the credits roll should be treated as the culmination and ending. The matters of the genophage, or the settling of the quarrian/geth war, because you deal with them, those are "endings". That the actual last minutes of the game are just a small portion of the total finish. Which to me seems a very warped way to view the third part in a trilogy. I mean, yes, the whole process wraps up elements introduced in the previous two parts, but the culmination of the story is the ending. Not the entire third part of the trilogy. If the culmination has no sense of closure... And I can agree with Tale, while there were a lot of elements of struggle against a potentially hopeless situation, you were overcoming and winning. The defeat of Sovereign, the destruction of the Collector's base, the fact that the Council finally freaking believed you. That you got everyone organised and following.. and gave them hope. To go through the Shroud, and Mordin's sacrifice.. the way that led to that hope.. and then the ending of the game took away all meaning from that event.

Bendu, did the ending actually reflect any of the choices you made in the game? Did you actually feel a sense of closure to the investment in the decisions you'd made and the effects your Shepard had on the galaxy? Did the developers outrightly say "we won't give you an A, B, or C ending" and "we plan to answer all your questions"? Did they in fact give you an A, B, or C ending? And were questions actually answered? Did the end sequence (not just the cutscene) actually relate in any serious coherent manner to the previous games?

That's the thing, nothing is really answered. What you do get is a whole bunch of added questions. Oh, sorry, you get told that the reason the synthetic Reapers were created and do the whole cycle of killing organics? Is to prevent organics reaching a point of advancement where they can create synthetics that would kill all organics..

The one thing I still want to ponder on.. Part of ME1 was the whole. Sovereign getting access to the Citadel, which would let him summon the rest of the Reapers directly to the Citadel, and also allow them to shut down all the other Mass Relays... So, the ending reveals And for the other minor plothole.. The Reapers "abduct" the Citadel and take it to Earth.. why the hell didn't they then use it to shut down the Mass Relays as they always do and was part of their original Plan A?? Also, one point for the whole series has been that when the Citadel shuts its "arms" it's pretty much untakeable, But.. There's a freaking big open hole at one end of the cyclinder... Exactly how hard is it for a few starships to fly into an opening that's roughly 7km in diameter?

For a slight amusement value: Warren Spector on Deus Ex Human Revolution And for the challenge:

I'd say it's the contrast. 90% of the game is rather well crafted, and elements from the previous two games are woven in nicely. But to have that sudden reversal of quality on the final ten minutes.. It's jarring and it stands out.

Yeah, the bits about Really hit the death nail on the "Indoctrination Theory" that so many people have been pinning hope on...

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/ - The leaked dlc "Happy Ending".. "The krogan baked you a cake!"

That is a certain.. possibility. It would make an interesting attempt. But it would also be a very dangerous thing to try. But whether it's at all likely is a totally nother matter...