MASS EFFECT FRANCHISE CATCH-ALL THREAD

[RIPPA]

I think you forgot the 500 page Grand Theft Auto thread

 

[Craig H]

1 minute ago, RIPPA said:

I think you forgot the 500 page Grand Theft Auto thread

 

That was the other one I thought of, but didn't mention because the GTA talk seems to have died down.

[Raziel]

Playing Andromeda right after playing the Trilogy is actually kind of fun, and I'm hoping a lot of the stuff makes it, and some doesn't. 

 

But the biggest thing is making me want an Andromeda 2 or a Prequel game to the series.

[RIPPA]

1 hour ago, Raziel said:

Playing Andromeda right after playing the Trilogy is actually kind of fun, and I'm hoping a lot of the stuff makes it, and some doesn't. 

But the biggest thing is making me want an Andromeda 2 or a Prequel game to the series.

I was thinking about it after your last post and (while it will never happen), Andromeda would provide an excellent backdrop for a different type of game in the franchise

Like some sort of resource management game (like Age of Empires or Civ but set in Mass Effect Andromeda)

Or do like an X-Com turn based tactics type game

[Raziel]

I think it's the mix of ME gameplay with the exploration/colonization aspect.  Add resource management, and it could work.

But I think we're getting a 600 years later post-Control ending ME4.

[J.T.]

12 minutes ago, Raziel said:

I think it's the mix of ME gameplay with the exploration/colonization aspect.  Add resource management, and it could work.

But I think we're getting a 600 years later post-Control ending ME4.

Well it can't be a Destroy ending since that would shitcan all of the Mass Relays and destroy instantaneous travel through the galaxy.

At least with the Control ending, we actually see an image of the Reapers repairing a damaged Mass Relay.

Edited August 11, 2021 by J.T.

[Eivion]

6 hours ago, Raziel said:

But the biggest thing is making me want an Andromeda 2 or a Prequel game to the series.

Even with its issues I really felt Andromeda set up something solid to continue on by the end so I will be forever disappointed there will be no sequel. I wanted to follow the Ryder twins more.

[J.T.]

I'd have liked a bit more story, but I was pretty underwhelmed with the Kett's generic alien villainy and I had a bad feeling that the Remnants were just going to end up being Andromeda's Reapers.  I didn't like the nearly identical trajectory to ME that Andromeda was on.

If there was anything that Andromeda got right, it was the movement scheme and the combat engine.  I normally hate platforming but exploring and fighting on an XYZ axis was a tremendous breakthrough.

Edited August 11, 2021 by J.T.

[Raziel]

12 hours ago, J.T. said:

Well it can't be a Destroy ending since that would shitcan all of the Mass Relays and destroy instantaneous travel through the galaxy.

At least with the Control ending, we actually see an image of the Reapers repairing a damaged Mass Relay.

I always interpreted The Catalyst saying that the organics can repair the damage caused to tech by the EMP-like blast Destroy send sends out applied to the Mass Relays as well, and that in Control The Reapers were doing it because The Shepard was speeding repairs up.  But who knows.

 

I went with ME4 using Control ending because that's the Paragon ending anyway.  After Andromeda I'm ok with the "No Choice" ending because almost all the advance races exist in another galaxy so sending an Ark *back* to Milky Way isn't out of the question.

 

As long as it doesn't feed into the Indoctrination Theory, I'm good.

[RIPPA]

It is always so weird to me that "Control" is considered the Paragon ending just because the choice is "blue"

I mean if folks are gonna bitch about the ethical ramifications of changing species genetic code in the Synthesis ending, then they better be okay with "controlling" an entire alien race

[Raziel]

Well either way, the end of the game is Shepard playing God.  He/She either destroys 3 entire races, Forcibly takes control of 1, rewrites the DNA of everything, or lets the all the sentient races get wiped out and hope the evolved lower races get it right next time (that they do was totally up to chance)

But you could argue that The Reapers aren't actual sentient AI's, because they're incapable of deviating from their programing and the only actual AI is The Catalyst itself.  The Reapers just straight up do what the Machines do in the Matrix.

[RIPPA]

I am just getting irritated again because I just discovered a lot of places not only call Destroy the "good ending" but they call it the "Perfect Ending"

[Craig H]

Hrmm...So I started ME3 last night and, uh, it's weird.

To start, the menus, text, and other on screen elements look really shitty. The entire color scheme is just bad when compared to ME1 and 2. The character models also look weird, especially when they're running. Everyone runs like they have poop in their pants and it doesn't help that, at least for Shepard, his model now has longer legs and a shorter body. The backgrounds also wind up looking a little muddy, especially when you ADS to shoot anything. Something is off with nearly everyone's face too. Shepard's or Capt. Anderson's faces shouldn't look worse than they did in ME1. Mind you, I just landed on Mars so I'm basically at the start of the game still, but this isn't a great first impression. Am I alone in wondering why this game just looks all around worse? I know it's really nitpicky, but man, I can't get over how ugly the menus, text, and color palette all look now. Oh, and pushing in the right thumbstick to know where you're supposed to go is really bad now. It was so much better when it just appeared in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

Gameplay wise, it's...ok? Vaulting over obstacles is a little weird in that there is this inconsistency where sometimes you do a slide and sometimes you don't. Gunplay feels a bit better.

I guess it just feels like Bioware was in a little over their head. We'll see how the story goes I guess. On that front, it was pretty shocking to have the game immediately start with Earth getting fucked up and watching a kid die in a ship.

[Raziel]

1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

I am just getting irritated again because I just discovered a lot of places not only call Destroy the "good ending" but they call it the "Perfect Ending"

Oh, I can see that.  A lot of gamers wanted an ending that was, for lack of a better term, cliche, with the closing being Shepard retired on Eden Prime or something with Harbinger's head mounted on their mantle married to Liara with little half-Shepard Asari kids running around.   I tend to lean toward Control being the better ending because it doesn't rewrite everyone's genetic code and you can make an argument that the Reapers were never really sentient, just VI's repeating the same programming over and over with no deviation and it was the Catalyst that was the actual sentient being, as evidenced by being open to changing the cycle.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Raziel

[odessasteps]

I have no problem with the hero sacrifices themselves to save the world ending. And there could always be another clone there if need be. 

[Robert C]

I dunno about best, but destroy will always be my ending.  I've done all four endings at various times.  The fourth one is obviously the worst, though I'll freely admit it was satisfying to shoot the catalyst in the face.  Synthesis just feels gross.  I don't mind control, I guess, but I just wasn't feeling it.

I still feel like destroy sets up for ME4 really well.  The galaxy is a mess.  The Reapers are gone, but they left massive destruction in their wake.  Earth is likely some sort of devastated, wasteland based on that teaser video and on its proximity to the crucible when the shit went down.   The Citadel is obviously gone.

The relays are gone, which makes for some actual interesting scenarios.  I'm assuming the next game will be set a few hundred years in the future.  What's been going on out there in all these cut off areas?  Is some remnant of Cerberus still out there?  What's left of the council races, and the smaller ones as well?  How powerful are the Krogan?  What's Leviathan up to?  How about the Yahg?  I know the catalyst said all synthetic life is gonna die, but he's kinda a fuckup on a colossal scale, so maybe he's wrong, and there's still Geth on Rannoch?

I'm sorta guessing that Liara somehow has some of her network still active locally wherever she wound up when the Normandy crashed and managed to build a mass relay, like the Protheans did on Ilos.  She heads to Earth and maybe finds Shepard.  Then she and others start to get a few more built/working to reconnect the galaxy.  Re-resurrected Shepard, or whoever replaces him/her heads out to see what's been up in the meantime, finds a colossal mess, and maybe finds some new threat in the process.

Control and synthesis seem like they work too well to set up for ME4, especially control.  Assuming those two choices don't go to hell in a handbasket due to the catalyst's fuckup, they'd almost have to introduce some bigger, badder than the Reapers threat to have anything worth fighting.

[Gonzo]

I can get the logic that the Destroy ending makes the most sense to a lot of people because for 99.9% of the trilogy, that's the overarching goal. You have to destroy them before they destroy you. But you get to the end of the game and the Catalyst goes the full Monty Hall and says, "Or maybe you'd prefer what's behind door number twoooooooooooooooooo!"

Then there's the Control ending, which is sort of creepy. Yeah, the Reapers suck, but the idea of enslaving an entire race is just. . .bad.

Synthesis might be the "best" ending, because you don't enslave anyone or wind up killing off entire races or anything, but then, like Robert said, you have to introduce something bigger and badder than the thing you just spent three games trying to wipe out. Who Reaps the Reapers, or something.

Obviously, if you're going to try to build around Shepard, the only ending that works as canon (at least to our knowledge) is the Destroy ending, but at this point I don't think we can be reasonably certain that ME4 is going to be built around Shepard.

[AxB]

I think the general assumption in a lot of places is that ME4 will take place Centuries after 3, rather than years or decades. Like Liara would be approaching Matriarch status.

[Kevin Wilson]

13 hours ago, Craig H said:

Hrmm...So I started ME3 last night and, uh, it's weird.

To start, the menus, text, and other on screen elements look really shitty. The entire color scheme is just bad when compared to ME1 and 2. The character models also look weird, especially when they're running. Everyone runs like they have poop in their pants and it doesn't help that, at least for Shepard, his model now has longer legs and a shorter body. The backgrounds also wind up looking a little muddy, especially when you ADS to shoot anything. Something is off with nearly everyone's face too. Shepard's or Capt. Anderson's faces shouldn't look worse than they did in ME1. Mind you, I just landed on Mars so I'm basically at the start of the game still, but this isn't a great first impression. Am I alone in wondering why this game just looks all around worse? I know it's really nitpicky, but man, I can't get over how ugly the menus, text, and color palette all look now. Oh, and pushing in the right thumbstick to know where you're supposed to go is really bad now. It was so much better when it just appeared in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

Gameplay wise, it's...ok? Vaulting over obstacles is a little weird in that there is this inconsistency where sometimes you do a slide and sometimes you don't. Gunplay feels a bit better.

I guess it just feels like Bioware was in a little over their head. We'll see how the story goes I guess. On that front, it was pretty shocking to have the game immediately start with Earth getting fucked up and watching a kid die in a ship.

No one else will tell you this but I'm the only honest one on this forum - ME3 is an average game and the worst in the series. Still worth playing but man is it a slog at times.

[Gonzo]

23 minutes ago, Kevin Wilson said:

No one else will tell you this but I'm the only honest one on this forum - ME3 is an average game and the worst in the series. Still worth playing but man is it a slog at times.

I don't think 3 is the worst of the series, save for the last 20 minutes.

2 is the best game of the trilogy, because the Suicide Mission alone puts it at the top of the pecking order. But I can't, in good conscience, say that 1 is a better game than 3.

[Kevin Wilson]

Just now, Gonzo said:

I don't think 3 is the worst of the series, save for the last 20 minutes.

2 is the best game of the trilogy, because the Suicide Mission alone puts it at the top of the pecking order. But I can't, in good conscience, say that 1 is a better game than 3.

The basis of my stance is I didn't like the party options as much in 3 and the side missions were such a bore. I can do fetch quests but they took it too far with the Citadel, ME1 didn't have all the fluff. I know, I can just skip the stupid task missions, but my brain never lets me do that in any game. I hate having open missions so I'd appreciate it if they at least made them fun. The only pro-argument for ME3 is the multi-player but that's a separate beast and not included in LE so I'm not considering it in this case.

[Craig H]

9 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

No one else will tell you this but I'm the only honest one on this forum - ME3 is an average game and the worst in the series. Still worth playing but man is it a slog at times.

So far, this game has put me to sleep twice. This is just nowhere near as good as ME1 or 2.

[AxB]

ME1 Completed, and indeed Platinumed. Didn't want to take Kaiden on the final mission, but the Neural Shock Trophy hadn't unlocked yet. But yeah, on to ME2 sometime.

[RIPPA]

Played for the first time in a week yesterday - finish Leviathan

Yeah - I can totally understand why the most popular theory on the big bad/thing to link Mass Effect and Andromeda is something to do with Leviathan/The Intelligence/Apex Race

[RIPPA]

Yeah - I gotta stop reading shit since realizing that Destroy is all but confirmed as the cannon ending is making me sad