Advertisement

Register for free to remove this ad

Originally Posted by Wombat I thought they were more like Green Lanterns, with the council being the guardians.

I understood what you talking about, but a better example could've been the Justice League, where instead of a race of omnipotent beings selecting the few, the proud, the marines, you'd have a bunch of chosen heroes protecting the galaxy instead of screwing it up more often than not. Heck, you already have the overpriced space station.

I thought the discussion was great. I really didn't have a problem with the ending. I played through the whole series, and I was kind of surprised and entertained by how much some people really read into the ending. Sure, it felt a little out of left field. They had to put a bow on it some how.

The problem with discussing this game is that almost every person is going to experience a slightly different version of the story. The major plot points are mostly the same, but there are entire characters and scenes that some people will never see. Unless they look up the alternate scenes online, or play through the game multiple times. That part is way more interesting than Space Poochie Jr.

This is the only video you need to know about Mass Effect 3.



It's an okay game that EA pretty much treated as a cash grab and it should have been much better and the ending is the stuff of legends, but this video makes everything alright.

No talk about FEZ this week? I was looking forward to a little discussion regarding this title. . . oh well.

Cheapy, Wombat, and Shipwreck while I appreciate your efforts at a full ME3 discussion this week overall I found it lacking because IMO it was too one sided. I respect your opinions on the game so maybe you could have invited a guest on your show who liked the game & ending to balance it out. Also too much time was spent on the end and you left out many parts of the rest of the game for example the improvements to the game (combat, weapon customization, leveling, etc), multi-player, or even more time on the differences in your stories. It also didn't help that only Wombat seemed to have any real interest in the topic.

Regarding your confusion with the ending if I may I will try to be a counter point. In my view the ending is a logical end to one of the major themes in Mass Effect which is the nature of organic vs synthetic life.

There is a race of beings (represented by the ghost child) that control the reapers and the universe in general. The made the reapers to keep organic life in check (This race was foreshadowed by the defeated reaper on the Quarian world). Your arrival to the Crucible (Citadel) is their proof that their "solution" has failed and they need a new one, hence the 3 choices, kill/control/merge.

While I would agree the idea of a master race behind everything is cheesy it's not an uncommon theme in scifi (ie Battlestar Galactica) and is not out of place here.

Ship, just to refresh your memory over the Kaiden/Ashley decision as this video shows you indeed get to choose which of the two dies in ME1 regardless of gender and that decision follows you the whole game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C0OkmX3Hcg

I still haven't played Mass Effect 3, but I listened to the spoiler discussion anyway. I felt like I had to, because I wanted to understand why people were upset, but I didn't want to spend money on it at the moment.

My problem with the ending is that it's eerily similar to the setup for Deus Ex: Human Revolution's ending. A character just talks to you and says, "here are the endings you can choose." Sure, it was bad in Deus Ex, but Mass Effect is a game that tries to sell you on the idea that your choices matter. I still want to play Mass Effect 3, but my financial situation isn't great right now.

Originally Posted by drkshr FYI: I always look for your post now so I know where to jump back too when I miss certain discussions.

Cool, I'm glad it's helpful for someone Sometimes I get bored at work and want to hear someone talk about a specific game.

Good show, I'm glad the ME3 talk started so early. I like that Wombat leads the in-depth game critique sessions, he does a nice job of giving it a structure.

One thing that continually surprises me here and elsewhere is how user experiences can be so similar. For example most people talk about the quality of the story at the end, but I find people's reactions to be very interesting. When I heard my 3 options, I literally didn't want to choose anything. I hated em all and basically just picked the middle one because I no longer cared. And hearing Cheapy say that he just didn't care reminded me of that.

In my opinion, the worst thing about the ending is just how it makes people feel. Like it was all pointless. That it didn't matter. That things you cared about are irrelevant. I'm assuming that most of these plot points are errors due to bad storytelling, but in my ending I felt horrible that I took Liara along on my last mission and got her killed, then felt horrible because I was forcing an evolution upon the entire galaxy, even more horrible when I saw them all blow up anyway due to the mass relay explosions, then having to watch Joker and crew frantically trying to escape the explosion that I caused. Then after all that crap, everyone's fine! And Joker gets to bang Edi and my Liara for the rest of his life. MY Liara. The end. :P

Regarding the indoctrination theory, that would take a lot of foresight and by all accounts the end was put together pretty fast. I think its much more believable that this was all just a big screw up caused by pushing it out the door too fast.

Originally Posted by 4thHorseman Really didn't understand all the confusion for ME3. Felt like most of it made sense, just a tad vague and stupid at times. Regarding the indoctrination theory with the little boy: In the beginning of the game, other people do see the kid. When they are trying to escape on the ship, you see one of the soldiers rush the kid onto the shuttle. Of course your other teammates didn't see him, because they weren't there at the time.

Shepard is the only one who seems to notice him. The soldiers wave some other civilians onto the ship, and the little boy comes stumbling after. If it were truly real, you would think the soldiers would run and physically pick the child up. Nope, he casually struggles to get on board with people around him doing nothing.

Check out the vid (Min 23 Sec 25):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrACow5jnfE#t=23m25s

Drive rental at Amazon $1.99

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...K6C8MQ8N5Z6MEH

Great show guys, only errors I noticed in regards to Mass Effect 3 was Shipwreck thinking that you get Ashley if you're male and Kaiden if you're female. It's entirely based on who you picked to survive in the first game. Bioware has always been cool about giving the option to be gay if you so happen to swing that way, so they made a point to give you either option. The other thing was Wombat saying how he would have appreciated a couple lines of dialogue to explain why Cerberus was now shooting at Shepard. During my game I talked to the Elusive man via hologram, not sure if it's game specific. Any-way's, keep it up!

The entire time I watched that beginning part, even during the demo, I was thinking the kid was a Shepard hallucination, some sort of extension of his "innocence" (that's not the word I'm looking for, but it will do) in the grand scheme of things. Once that ship the kid was on blew up, it troubled Shepard for the rest of the game. Obviously.

I will agree with most people on here, though, and on the spoilercast. The ending just didn't fit. I wasn't pissed to the point that I was ready to burn down BioWare and EA headquarters or anything, it just didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. The entire time I was watching that end sequence on the Citadel, I was like...wait, what? And when The Illusive Man was talking, something about that whole sequence just didn't fit.

While I agree that the Indoctrination Theory seems real enough, I've heard from someone claiming to be close to BioWare (take it with a grain of salt) that it is wrong, mainly because of that end "Stargazer" scene. How would the old man know what Shepard experienced while he was being Indoctrinated? He did kind of give me his theories about some of the end sequences, particularly Joker flying away from the scene. It might be as simple as Joker and Shepard had determined that, should anything happen to him, Joker needs to get the whole squad away from Earth to try and come up with a plan b. Also, the exploding Relays, they didn't destroy the galaxies because they were releasing their energy that caused their explosion, or something like that. I really feel that the Extended Cut will explain everything. Or maybe that is simply wishful thinking...

Originally Posted by basston3s Shepard is the only one who seems to notice him. The soldiers wave some other civilians onto the ship, and the little boy comes stumbling after. If it were truly real, you would think the soldiers would run and physically pick the child up. Nope, he casually struggles to get on board with people around him doing nothing. Check out the vid (Min 23 Sec 25):

I retract my statement. Totally remembered it wrong. I thought he was trying to get to the ship and one of the soldiers were kind of leading him onto the ship.

Okay, I find myself in a weird place because I wasn't crazy about the ending myself (I liked the concept but also think they didn't execute it clearly enough) yet I feel like I'm one of the few lone defenders online. This is weird because in real life everyone I know who played the game loved the ending and thought I was being overly negative so personally I've been shocked to see the hate online. I thought the ending perfectly matched the themes of the series.

Let me retort some of the comments on this show:

1) First of all, I don't know why people keep pushing this narrative about how "no sites or magazines talked about the ending". Off the top of my head, the reviews for PC Gamer, Gametrailers, 1UP and Gamespy all dedicate space to saying that some people may be dissatisfied with how it concludes.

2) Second, I find it baffling that the same people saying the ending "makes no sense" will then defend the plausibility of the "indoctrination theory" which has got to be right up there with Loose Change as far as making up crazy shit until it fits.


3) Both the first and second games make it clear that (a) Nobody fully understands how the mass relays work and (b) Making a new mass relay would be incredibly difficult to do because there just aren't enough raw materials to do it. Also, it was fully established that the only point of the Mass Relays were part of the honeytrap to get the Reapers to wipe out civilization easily. By removing the Reaper control, they had to go.

4) The "child" is obviously just part of a VI program, you can tell by the way it looks. It was a person Shepard was obsessed with at the time, so it's not a stretch to believe the VI chose that form to appear.

5) The only ships stranded around Earth when the relays are destroyed are battleships, so I don't see why you would think all civilizations are ruined.

6) The child makes it clear you will die if you choose the other two options. He does not make it clear that the "destroy" option will kill you. This is why it hints you might live if you choose it.

7) As someone else already stated, you are inside the Crucible for a significant period of time without any contact to anyone outside. To me, it doesn't seem that far-fetched that the Normandy might have picked up your crew members and is preparing for an escape during that period of time.

I enjoyed all three of the games. But, I did come away with the feeling that the ending was lazy. Instead of having multiple, different endings based on dozens of choices throughout the game, it came to a single choice of A, B or C. I had thought of playing through all the games again to try Renegade v. Paragon, or saving a different character to see what happened at the end. But, if all my choices come down to Red, Green or Blue, AND the game sets you back to a point where you can get to that choice again? I just watched the different endings on YouTube. Not really motivated to play through again.

It also bothered me with the word choice "decimated" right near the end when Admiral Ackbar says that no one made it, the squad was "decimated". I know a common, modern definition has "decimated" to be "mostly wiped out", but historically, it's 1 out of 10 is killed. It's similar to when a writer or speaker uses the word "irregardless". Just plain dumb.

And, Ship, "Hammer" refers to the ground attack. Hammer and Spear: Ground and Aerial/Space attacks. So, when Hammer was getting wiped out, it meant that most of the ground troops were getting killed and the effectiveness of the ground attack was diminishing.

But, "Project Wombat" is worth it. I'm hooked! I just wish people would talk more, or I could play with CAGs. There are snobs playing with N7 rankings over 200 that would kick people out if they were less than 50.

Without discussing the rest of the ending, the fleets being stuck at earth doesn't "invalidate" what you did during Mass Effect 3..

with the exception of (possibly) the Quarians, the fleets of each race only represent that race's military(and not even necessarily all of their military)

Cheapy don't stop the Jamaican accent for nobody. Shit's still funny as .
Trilogies this Gen...um Gears? lol

Just finishing up the podcast now, and not sure if someone else clarified this for Ship yet, but during the final operation they designated seperate forces for different functions.

Sword was the offensive fleet
Shield was the fleet defending the Crucible
Hammer was the ground force

It wasn't really something that needed to or would make sense to have been explained before the mission starts.

Originally Posted by smoger Just finishing up the podcast now, and not sure if someone else clarified this for Ship yet, but during the final operation they designated seperate forces for different functions. Sword was the offensive fleet Shield was the fleet defending the Crucible Hammer was the ground force It wasn't really something that needed to or would make sense to have been explained before the mission starts.

Ok. I had it wrong. Sword. Spear. I forgot about Shield. But, what was Nick Fury doing in Mass Effect 3?

I don't think its fair for Cheapy to keep asking Wombat and Shipwreck to watch Driver when Cheapy wouldn't watch Paul MaCartney is Really Dead when Wombat watched it and asked Cheapy to watch it!!!!!

I have to agree about the whole Spectre thing. We do see a few of them throughout the series but they are supposed to be like super agents. You seem like the only one doing anything significant. You would think other Spectres would help with the Reapers and you would work in tandem at times.

As far as future Mass Effect, I am looking forward to a game set in the future where the Reapers are gone and we get to explore the universe. Let's get back to dealing with other people/aliens, more enemies we can go after in a tangible way, and let's really open up the universe.

Lastly, and many will probably disagree with me on this, I really enjoyed Alpha Protocol a couple of years back. In my opinion that game actually delivered on the "different choice lead to different outcomes" concept Mass Effect has tried to create. Mass Effect does change things but overall the changes are usually not as big as I had hoped. In AP, you could kill or not kill every boss which would change what happens later in the game.

I hope a future Mass Effect title, which would have a story that is smaller in sheer scope can do a better job of implementing these changes on. With a scheme this grand I feel like it was too hard to give the variety of game changing story some of us were seeking since game one.