[Firesteel]

Mass Effect 2 saved the series from ME1's **** gameplay and dull characters while absolutely damning the series through the annihilation of ME1's strong macroplot and fantastic ending.

I think ME3 had the best gameplay and two solid to great arc payoffs.

This is probably the best summation of ME's failings in my eyes. One of the biggest issues I had with the series was how it was planned as a "trilogy" yet the entire middle third of the story is about dicking around with pawns. Had ME2 been some side game like "ME TV version" or something it would have been great but it instead ejected all the tension out the airlock by pushing the main antagonists so far into the background they might as well not be in the game.

I'll agree that ME1 had middling characters but some of that can be chalked up to having them all basically be spokesmen for their species (and thank god Garrus and Tali were in ME2 to move away from that). The fact that ME1 was still enjoyable despite the **** gameplay and middling characters overall is a credit to its world and plot. ME2 might have had the best characters but the collectors weren't interesting antagonists and the twist could be completely ruined by doing a particular side mission or watching the prothean vision on repeat for an hour.

I'd characterize ME3 as a game of extremes. Tuchanka is some of the best payoff to a 3 game arch in existence and it really gives Wrex's issues in the first game weight. The Geth/Quarian stuff is good but does have a few cracks in how the Geth all just side with the reapers and how the ideal resolution of peace contradicts what ME makes its central theme of synthetics and organics always being at war. Well I brokered peace between the creators and the creations without having to dissolve myself.

[666maslo666]

Yeah, every high resolution NASA photo of Saturn's rings ever. Try doing a little of your own homework, lazyass.

I did not find any such photos. Post a link, pls.

All ring photos are from quite far away and they look really dense.

[Col.Hornet]

.... The Geth/Quarian stuff is good but does have a few cracks in how the Geth all just side with the reapers and how the ideal resolution of peace contradicts what ME makes its central theme of synthetics and organics always being at war. Well I brokered peace between the creators and the creations without having to dissolve myself.

Yeah, but The Catalyst would most likely counter the argument, that the peace you achieved that way would be only temporary (let's say a thousand years or two. It's nothing when we look at the bigger picture). Conflict may appear as well later or in another place with another synthetic race. The Construct was seeking a way to eradicate this problem permanently and he found that solution through Synthesis (which that little bastard suggest you to choose). Which, anyway, in my eyes is a complete bulls*** because it solves nothing. Synthetics upgraded with understanding of feelings an emotions become like us. And then the conflict can arise just like between any organics.

[Firesteel]

.... The Geth/Quarian stuff is good but does have a few cracks in how the Geth all just side with the reapers and how the ideal resolution of peace contradicts what ME makes its central theme of synthetics and organics always being at war. Well I brokered peace between the creators and the creations without having to dissolve myself.

Yeah, but The Catalyst would most likely counter the argument, that the peace you achieved that way would be only temporary (let's say a thousand years or two. It's nothing when we look at the bigger picture). Conflict may appear as well later or in another place with another synthetic race. The Construct was seeking a way to eradicate this problem permanently and he found that solution through Synthesis (which that little bastard suggest you to choose). Which, anyway, in my eyes is a complete bulls*** because it solves nothing. Synthetics upgraded with understanding of feelings an emotions become like us. And then the conflict can arise just like between any organics.

That's the problem isn't it? The reapers ultimate goal (thanks ME3) is to eliminate conflict as a whole. Wrapping it around the "synthetic vs. organics" argument makes it worse. It isn't that conflict is inherent between organics and synthetics, it's inherent to everything in the natural world. Even the Geth/Quarian conflict boils down to the basic idea of not liking things that are different. That ultimately stems from the fear of becoming obsolete and nothing, not even giving everything glowing green bits, will stop that.

[Col.Hornet]

That's why the only ending that makes any sense and it's satisfying is the Destruction. It maintains freedom for everyone without altering every being (against their will maybe?) or turning the whole galaxy into one big "1984" with an abomination made of Shepard's consciousness acting as Big Brother. Loosing the Geth and EDI is sad and I was soooo pissed when I had to pull the trigger, but still' it's the best solution IMO. Maintaining peace is a constant struggle not something you can make with a magic green boom.

[SkycladGuardian]

Yeah, every high resolution NASA photo of Saturn's rings ever. Try doing a little of your own homework, lazyass.

I did not find any such photos. Post a link, pls.

All ring photos are from quite far away and they look really dense.

To be more precise: Saturn's rings may be dense, but they are incredibly thin (in average 10 meters), so you won't finde huge ESB-like asteroids there. Mostly fine dust.

Here's a good video, explaining the basics of saturn's rings (you should watch the whole series, it's great):
 

Now that's enough off-topic ...

[Phantom Hoover]

Nope.
Mordin mentioned it at least a couple of times why did he decide to cure the Krogan despite his previous goals. Add to it a salarian ability to process the ideas and making decisions at ultra speed and there is nothing strange about it.

Except in ME3 he eventually drops that cover story and admits "I made a mistake!": he undermines all the work done in ME2 establishing that he was confident that he did the right thing at the time.

[Firesteel]

Also who can forget carving off one of the most important characters as day one DLC? That price though...

[Aesaar]

ME3 completely missed the point on synthetics v organics.  Basically, people don't fear the geth (or AI in general) because they're AI and AIs are bad.  They fear them for the exact same reason they fear the Rachni: they're different.  It has nothing to do with them being synthetics.  That's superficial, and the series went to great lengths to point out that AIs aren't always so different from organics.  Just look at EDI.

The Geth and the Rachni are feared because they represent an unknown that can't easily be predicted or controlled.  It leads to one of the central questions of the entire series:  If you can't predict their actions or their capabilities, should you live and let live in the hope that they'll do the same, or should you eliminate them to guarantee your own security?  During ME1 and ME2, the paragon/renegade dichotomy was (almost always) about that question, and neither game presented either answer as wrong.  Morally dubious, sure, but not wrong in that it makes everything worse.

Then ME3 happened.  The Rachni?  Nice all along, you're dumb for killing the queen.  The optimal solution to the Geth?  Do this technobabble and make them just like us.  The Krogan?  Again, if you were nice to them, they'll turn out fine.  The game stopped asking the question and just flat out told us paragon was the right choice all along.  Treat people nicely and they'll treat you nicely back.  It's so different from the moral ambiguity the other 2 games presented. 

ME3 had the best gameplay, but I can't help but feel it completely failed to live up to the other two thematically.

[Firesteel]

I'd definitely agree with that, though it's exceedingly rare for games now to actually go with the risk in a risk/reward scenario. ME3 is a prime candidate for this as you've said. Put your faith in something or someone and it'll always work out. Udina is the only character who betrays you and even then he's written to be such an ass that it doesn't really have an effect.

I'll point to Bioshock as another example of this. You get more rewards if you are "good" and even if the resource reward is slightly smaller and delayed, the other free crap more than makes up for it. Long gone are the days where taking a risk is actually a risk.

[Luis Dias]

Tuchanka isn't that smoothly written. You are indeed presented with the choice of either going for the Krogan or the Salarians. Yes, the Krogan will be "alright", although tones are somewhat changed if you have Wrex and Eve alive or not. Nevertheless, you do lose Dalatrass' support.

The Geth / Quarian struggle is also similar, people seem to forget that the friendship solution to that struggle is not that easy to achieve, and if you just start ME3 without any save file or any editor of some sort, that solution is simply unavailable. You either let the Geth or the Quarians die in a stupid struggle.

I disagree with the notion that the problem is "specieism" or just "struggle" in general. That is a trivial matter that the catalyst wasn't bothered by. The Catalyst makes it very clear. The problem is that the "creations" surpass the "Creators", and eventually, all creations will wipe the creators out. That's the point of Synthesis: by turning organics into a mix, they are guaranteed to not be "surpassed". They are part of the, so-called, "Singularity", and thus won't be wiped away. I'm not enfatuated by the idea whatsoever, but at least I think I understand it.

I also disagree with the notion written in another comment that states that the only viable end solution is the Red one, therefore the endings are stoopid. Well, if that's the reasoning, then I guess the endings are actually not that badly written, since I've always come to the conclusion that the best solution by far (let's forget synthesis for a second here) is the Blue one. So, you see, there *is* indeed an element of "Role Playing" here and of personal taste. In my reckoning, with the red option, you're not solving the problem at all. If the problem is that AIs will eventually surpass creators and wipe them out in a stupid struggle, what matters if you wipe all present AIs? In your lifetime, some outlier faction (like, say, Cerberus) will eventually create an AI, and someone else (like, say, Joker) will unshackle it. It might be the case that such an unshackled AI will be a fine person (EDI), but it might be the case that it ain't. The odds will go to zero in the long run that *every* AI will be fine. Then we're back at the very problem that was stated by Leviathan. Thus, we haven't solved anything by going Red (nevermind that you're killing EDI, you ****ing monster ).

By going Blue, you at least are creating a firewall that prevents some rogue AIs to become too powerful for organics to manage and contain. If they can't do it, your controlled Reapers are there to guarantee it. It's a fragile state of affairs, but it's a thousand times better than the Red one. And also, you got these incredible beasts helping you rebuild all the infrastructure that they destroyed. It's the least they could do.

[Azrael15]

I'll always be waiting for someone to explain to me how the whole Geth thing works in ME3, how the upgrade makes them all 'people'.

We'll ignore ME2 pointing out that the Geth didn't want to be people.

See, the Geth are said to work as a gestalt consciousness. More Geth in a platform, the more intelligent the platform is. If you put all Geth together, they'd reach their most optimal processing ability, which is their end goal with their little dyson sphere. All Geth are basically the same and reach the same conclusions, which is why the Reaper Geth in ME2 exist - they're a set of Geth programmed to think differently by Sovereign.

Was every Geth program made into a sapient being, equivalent to a person? So, would you have these Geth platforms composed of literally hundreds of separate minds? What about the less intelligent Geth made up of less programs? Or did it basically crush those programs into a concrete thing, creating individuals out of things that only understood the concept academically? Both of those things feel kind of weird to me and it's probably why the game just handwaves it as making them people without mentioning what it entails.

Now, as for the Catalyst's logic. It is braindead and stupid. 'The creation will always surpass the creator'. Yeah, sure, okay, it's something that is echoing a line from Battlestar where children must kill their parents to come into their own, but it is fine enough. I can't hate the idea. I can hate that the Catalyst comes off as a malfunctioning AI and Shepard has no choice but to go along with it.

But I find it absurd that the Catalyst thinks the problem is entirely coming from synthetic life, not any kind of life. Ignoring that the Geth never took the opportunity to wipe out their creators (and the quarians always instigated), it was the Krogan and Rachni - organics - which came closest to doing irrevocable damage to the galactic community. If you dive into the Codex and talk to Javik, you can see that basically every incident of synthetic threat was instigated by the Reapers. The Catalyst talks up the Reapers as a fire, a force of nature, without mentioning that they are also the arsonists.

The overarching theme of ME has always been inter-generational conflict, parents against children and the failure of responsibility. Look at ME2, it's every loyalty mission. The final five minutes of ME3 whittle that down into being some banal robots vs people plot dictated by a glowing child and it's just trite, ridiculous and laughable.

But I mean, as a whole, ME3's writing was just all over the place.

CAPTAIN ANDERSON: Be careful Shepard, that Kai Leng is worse than the Reapers! I'm really mad that he ate my cereal, and I don't know why I'm so intimidated by him because when we met in the Mass Effect Novels I shot him in the legs and basically crippled him and he just got punked by a dying Drell with no lung capacity... Yes, worse than the apocalyptic battleship squids.

It's kind of like how the Catalyst is doing this all for our own good, and then it has the Reapers graft a human to a batarian so the husk can have a sweet gun arm.

[Luis Dias]

I'll always be waiting for someone to explain to me how the whole Geth thing works in ME3, how the upgrade makes them all 'people'.

We'll ignore ME2 pointing out that the Geth didn't want to be people.

No qualms with me here, I am with Battuta's point 100%.

Now, as for the Catalyst's logic. It is braindead and stupid. 'The creation will always surpass the creator'. Yeah, sure, okay, it's something that is echoing a line from Battlestar where children must kill their parents to come into their own, but it is fine enough. I can't hate the idea. I can hate that the Catalyst comes off as a malfunctioning AI and Shepard has no choice but to go along with it.

But I find it absurd that the Catalyst thinks the problem is entirely coming from synthetic life, not any kind of life. Ignoring that the Geth never took the opportunity to wipe out their creators (and the quarians always instigated), it was the Krogan and Rachni - organics - which came closest to doing irrevocable damage to the galactic community. If you dive into the Codex and talk to Javik, you can see that basically every incident of synthetic threat was instigated by the Reapers. The Catalyst talks up the Reapers as a fire, a force of nature, without mentioning that they are also the arsonists.

You're analysing this from the point of view of one single cycle, one that hasn't been lost yet to synthetics. AFAIK, Reapers dive into the galaxy before that happens, not afterwards. There are plenty of episodes wherein AI gets almost loose and starts to go wild. Luna base, Overlord, the Geth themselves (as they fought back the Quarians all those years ago). There is a strict rule within the citadel races to prevent any AI to be created (and this is why Quarians are so badly esteemed on the galactic scene), and still we see them popping here and there, even despite the Reaper's interference.

The problem with synthetics is not the short run, is not the "synthetics are inherently bad towards organics", it's merely the slow but assured development of a kind of life that is going to become too superior to organics. As much as species like the Krogan and the Rachni can deal some damage, these events never seem to be utterly final.

The overarching theme of ME has always been inter-generational conflict, parents against children and the failure of responsibility. Look at ME2, it's every loyalty mission. The final five minutes of ME3 whittle that down into being some banal robots vs people plot dictated by a glowing child and it's just trite, ridiculous and laughable.

It's simplified and yeah, not that great. Still I will defend it as passable. Not everything can be great, especially in a project like Mass Effect 3, with so many variables to untangle. I think they got themselves into a mess of a problem regarding game development, and they were simply overwhelmed by the project. Given what the variables were, I'm kinda still amazed they pulled it off as good as they have.

It's kind of like how the Catalyst is doing this all for our own good, and then it has the Reapers graft a human to a batarian so the husk can have a sweet gun arm.

Hmm? What is this that you are talking about? Regarding the Catalyst, it's not doing anything for "our own good", it's doing what it is doing because it was programmed to do it. It's trying to solve a problem that it was told to solve. Once Shepard goes to the Citadel with the Crucible, the Catalyst realises that it failed. Its solution can no longer work, so it asks for a new input, a new solution. It's badly written, but if you strongman it, it can make some sense (for instance, the tone and macroplot is contradictory, when we are told at the middle of the game, I think in Leviathan DLC, that the Catalyst is "trying to find out a solution". In Thessia, the same intuition gets stated. At the end, it says that what is really going on is that its solution "no longer works" and there's no mention of any "sped up" evolutionary experience or whatever. I attribute this to just too many lines of dialogue to cross-check and QA).

[Col.Hornet]

.....
I disagree with the notion that the problem is "specieism" or just "struggle" in general. That is a trivial matter that the catalyst wasn't bothered by. The Catalyst makes it very clear. The problem is that the "creations" surpass the "Creators", and eventually, all creations will wipe the creators out. That's the point of Synthesis: by turning organics into a mix, they are guaranteed to not be "surpassed". They are part of the, so-called, "Singularity", and thus won't be wiped away. I'm not enfatuated by the idea whatsoever, but at least I think I understand it.

I also disagree with the notion written in another comment that states that the only viable end solution is the Red one, therefore the endings are stoopid. Well, if that's the reasoning, then I guess the endings are actually not that badly written, since I've always come to the conclusion that the best solution by far (let's forget synthesis for a second here) is the Blue one. So, you see, there *is* indeed an element of "Role Playing" here and of personal taste. In my reckoning, with the red option, you're not solving the problem at all. If the problem is that AIs will eventually surpass creators and wipe them out in a stupid struggle, what matters if you wipe all present AIs? In your lifetime, some outlier faction (like, say, Cerberus) will eventually create an AI, and someone else (like, say, Joker) will unshackle it. It might be the case that such an unshackled AI will be a fine person (EDI), but it might be the case that it ain't. The odds will go to zero in the long run that *every* AI will be fine. Then we're back at the very problem that was stated by Leviathan. Thus, we haven't solved anything by going Red (nevermind that you're killing EDI, you ****ing monster ).

By going Blue, you at least are creating a firewall that prevents some rogue AIs to become too powerful for organics to manage and contain. If they can't do it, your controlled Reapers are there to guarantee it. It's a fragile state of affairs, but it's a thousand times better than the Red one. And also, you got these incredible beasts helping you rebuild all the infrastructure that they destroyed. It's the least they could do.

Synthesis is only an answer to the "surpassing the parents" problem, nothing more. Keep in mind that the Catalyst was designed "to preserve life at any cost". Any kind of apocalyptic conflict may appear later as well, for any other reason. I could say that a risk of conflict between different parties would still be the same (since the organics would be improved by technology and synthetics being able to understand and be influenced by feelings and emotions). Just look at humans alone. We are "the same" but that doesn't mean we don't kill or hate each other. That's why I don't buy Synthesis at all. And also... Altering absolutely EVERY living being in the whole galaxy, which gets caught by the blast, maybe against their will (especially the primitive species, unaware of what was even going on)...no. This is too much, even for my Commander.   

I found Control even more creepy when I looked at it in that way:
 The new Catalyst is built by using Shepard's memories and thoughts. It's ultimate goal is basically the same. Preserve the life, put out the conflicts. And here comes a nice question. What kind of conflict would be necessary to trigger the Reaper intervention and how would it look like? By watching the ending with "Sheplyst" we can hear that a priority will be to not to do any harm if possible. Seems like a nice idea but there is a hook. Catalyst is a construct who's actions are driven by variables and data, not by emotions, to obtain a certain goal. And those variables can be altered. Shepard's thoughts are a guidance but it may get twisted over the time. There is a slim possibility that even the new Catalyst will come to the similar conclusions as the previous one after let's say, several million years.

Destruction, indeed doesn't solve the problem of the conflict, but there was something beautiful about it. The future of every organic was left in their own hands, without any goddamn deus ex machina which knows what's better for them, trying to "preserve" them by slaughtering trillions and treating the whole galaxy as a giant laboratory. We are the ones who shall take responsibility for ourselves and face the eventual consequences. Loss of all friendly AI's felt really bad but it was the Catalyst who put me in position with my back against the wall.
Finally, I came to conclusion that ME3 endings discussions can tell us a lot about what kinds of people the players are, what are their priorities etc. Which is as much interesting as the game itself 

[Luis Dias]

As I said, it's a fragile solution, one that could provide a new installment of a new trilogy down the line (eh), on how a society that is being overwatched by a Reaper species corraled by a long gone organic is starting to **** the organics up, instead of helping them. Then again, every solution is a fragile one, because that's how History really is. It's always in the cusp of something. The Red solution, as "pretty" it might be, basically resets History to zero again, and nothing has been developed. It's akin to Snake Plissken's solution. Ok, that's great, but the morning after ain' that pretty. And it's not as if we have solved anything with this. In fact, we didn't, we just kicked the ball down the line. At least, we are presented with a new status quo in the Blue choice, one that could at least be really interesting as a setup for follow up sci fi stories.

[Col.Hornet]

As I said, it's a fragile solution, one that could provide a new installment of a new trilogy down the line (eh), on how a society that is being overwatched by a Reaper species corraled by a long gone organic is starting to **** the organics up, instead of helping them. Then again, every solution is a fragile one, because that's how History really is. It's always in the cusp of something. The Red solution, as "pretty" it might be, basically resets History to zero again, and nothing has been developed. It's akin to Snake Plissken's solution. Ok, that's great, but the morning after ain' that pretty. And it's not as if we have solved anything with this. In fact, we didn't, we just kicked the ball down the line. At least, we are presented with a new status quo in the Blue choice, one that could at least be really interesting as a setup for follow up sci fi stories.

It isn't that bad actually. In Extended Cut we've seen that everything was rebuilt by ourselves in relatively short time, mass relays included (Krogan returned to Tuchanka) and hey, even Shepard made it.
Instead of reset, I would call it a fresh start. What will happen in the future is in 100% up to next generations without any Reaper meddling.


Also. Somebody would like to introduce you to our new ship:

[Klaustrophobia]

Because this is HLP and therefore I disagree with almost everyone about almost everything, ME1 = best ME.   Obviously not as polished as its successors, but it had amazing and unique ideas that were abandoned and retconned to be replaced with bland generic crap.  ME3 tried to recover but didn't make it all the way.

[Phantom Hoover]

the HLP consensus basically agrees with most of what you just said

[AdmiralRalwood]

except that obviously ME2 = best ME because Legion

[Phantom Hoover]

the 'mostly' part is that ME2 does have much stronger character writing, as battuta noted earlier