Good video, but I had to laugh at the trotting out of the tired "fanboys" label from the guy who spends his time making videos with nonstop nerd-culture references. Are those the people who did do the sidequests and don't get paid to make snarky videos about the experience?

So there's this...

http://www.gamekicker.com/gaming-new...versial-ending

Purportedly one of the main ME3 writers slams the ending and explains how it was basically taken away from the writers and Casey Hudson did it all himself. Not sure if legit, but if it is, it does seem to explain a LOT of the problems I had with the way the story concluded.

I haven't read this yet, but just the premise of it strikes me the wrong way. They really need a unified front on this and no one should be playing the blame game, especially when there's really nothing to defend. If it was "taken" away, that issue should be handled internally and they could have a whole lot of "I told you so, Casey!"s in the board room.

Seems like it was just one of those "moments of uncontrollable frustration" if it's an actual writer posting his thoughts to the internet, as all his comments have been scrubbed. The article grabbed it before it was erased.

Not saying he was right to vent publicly either, but I can certainly understand the level of frustration if he's saying the writing staff wanted to do right by everyone and it was taken away from them for no sensible reason.

Personally I'm starting to think this was all the plan from the beginning... controversy for the sake of publicity.

Yes, because as we all know, no one was going to buy the game otherwise.

So this is a ego thing for Casey Hudson isn't it? Mac Walters was the lead writer was he not?

Total Biscuits talked about this last week, Negative buzz and press is great. Look at how long Bioware and Mass Effect has been in the search engines/public mind, every day there are new conversations popping up about the ending, about the creative control process (Do fans have the right to demand new endings etc).

If Mass Effect would have had that 'great' ending from the start, would it still be in the headlines? No.

Brilliant move by Bioware honestly (IF they eventually fix this)

Okay.

its been a while since i played ME2.
i wish the had a small tutorial in the beginning of the game.
How do you know when the cooldown period for a power is over?
Is it the same timer for all the powers?

I waited a week and change to see if they could sort it out, but then jumped in recreating my Shep as best I could.

Just beat the game about an hour ago, and maybe it was because I was expecting the worse, but I liked the ending just fine. I do recognize some of the flaws that have been pointed out, but they just don't bother me. As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, Mass Effect invokes a lot of the themes that were in Babylon 5, so I filled in some of the gaps left in ME with B5 logic.

One thing I think people are not giving the ending credit for is context. The context of the decision you make informs what the ending means to you. My ending means one thing to me because I picked X, but would mean something different to me if I picked Y -- even with the same imagery.

And more importantly, I do not subscribe to the notion that a bonk ending negates an awesome journey. So even if fans have a legitimate gripe with the ending, all of this bullshit about getting their money back, and wishing ill on Bioware is just lame as hell to me. Now I understand how fans to the end of LOST feel.

That said, here is a pretty big let down I did have with the game:

One more thing about the ending



And the best thing in the whole game was ragarding Tali

Minor spoiler

Absolutely nothing would have changed. That's a big part of what people are griping about. The only difference is that if your readiness number is high enough,

I've got two questions about ME3. First I've played boith 1&2...."2" just being downright fun and a joy to play. I decided not to get "3" right away but now thinking of grabbing it since two others have it and want to do the coop play thru.

(1)....How is coop and does it work ok with the storyline or just how does it fit in?

(2)....what's up with everyone ragging the "final"? I've gone over to Amazon and about everyone and I mean everyone is ripping the last hour of the game. I've tried not to read much into it fearing some big spoiler. Basically it's like one put it..."the game is a (4.5 of 5) up to the last hour which after that it's a (2 of 5)"

I'm now wondering if I should bother getting "3" and just go back and play ME2 with some new DLC.

There is no co-op. There's multiplayer, which will allow you to up stats in the game. It's basically like "horde" mode from the Gears of War games. On a team with 3 other players, and you progress through levels.

Many people were disappointed on how the game ended. That's what all the negative reviews are for.

Co-op is horde mode, up to 4 players. It has 6 maps, all very similar and recycled from the single-player campaign, and it's basically just survival with a couple (and I do mean only a couple) of different objectives sometimes randomly thrown into waves along with the fighting. It's 11 waves I think, with 3 different enemy types that you can choose from (Cerberus, Reaper, Geth), and whichever you choose will be the only enemy type you'll see in the current game. There are three different difficulty levels (bronze, silver, and gold) and even bronze can be a challenge depending on your build and level.

Based on your performance, you earn credits, XP, and "galactic readiness." Credits are used to unlock more multiplayer content (weapons, mods, characters/classes), although you only get to buy what's essentially a "grab bag" that unlocks random combinations of the above depending on how many credits you spend. They also conveniently included the option to buy more content with MSP rather than earned credits, which was thoughtful of them. XP and character progression works just like it does in the single-player, with 20 being the max level for any given character. Galactic Readiness is what purportedly has an effect on the single-player game, although -- in the interest of avoiding spoilers -- don't worry about it. Really, don't.

I found the multiplayer to be lazy and repetitive, offering little variety and clunky controls (as much as ME3 wants to be Gears of War in its combat, it's not), and ultimately not something I was interested in playing a minute more than I needed to. Your mileage may vary.

Honestly it is a great game until the last 3 minutes, I would wait till it goes on sale and once they release the dlc

I tend to wait for sales or for when games to come down in price, but if ever there was a game that is deserving of the full $60 price tag, ending not withstanding, Mass Effect is it. You get a lot of bang for your buck, and the amount of resources put into the game are more than deserving of full price IMHO. Not that games are measured on how many hours you play, or how many lines of dialog were recorded for them, but I feel like ME is a very quality title.

I played 40+ hours on ME3 without touching MP or a second run. So, accounting for those "terrible" last 3 minutes, I'd say it's only worth $59.925.

Okay, I don't play video games. Haven't in at least five years. But I do love philosophical science fiction. I was curious and watched the ending on Youtube. Loved them.

Finally finished tonight. My thoughts/confusion on the ending:

Makes sense. It just seems so hard to believe that the Mass Effect team was all on board with the ending, and no one even in QA or testing raised a red flag about the ending. Course, maybe they are so close to the source material that they can't stand back and see the trilogy as a whole from a gamer's perspective. Looks likes at least someone at Bioware would have anticipated a backlash from a shitty ending.

Taken out of context and without playing the series, the 'philosophical' endings work.

Apparently Rannoch is 62k light years from Earth, and I guess you can travel 12 light years per day, means it would take over 5k years for the Quarian to get back to Rannoch.

wait...am I reading that wrong? 62,000 light years....12 light years per day is 5 thousand days not years to get back