[General Battuta]

hey man 'park my immortal starship body on the ground and flail about shooting ineffective tiny lasers at building facades instead of grasering literally everything in sight and deploying drone platforms for over-the-horizon nuclear-yield suppression capability' is a tactic

e: this was just a thing i accepted as part of the action movie style, though, it didn't really hamper my enjoyment

[Ace]

Thought about it's philosophy?

the idea that the protheans were totalitarian darwinists is one of the best things they could've done

woo-woo wise mystical elder races are a dime a dozen

*ahum* Social Darwinists.

There's a nice bit with Shepard and the Prothean where the Prothean does his rant and paragon Shepard's comment basically alludes to: "Ermm... that's your culture dude, biology doesn't really work that way buddy..."

[General Battuta]

you are correct

[TrashMan]

Omni-blades are garbage and what they did with omni-tools is garbage (forging an entire blade in a nano-second? ST replicators got nothing on this!).

Omnitools were always meant to be able to create simple parts for weapons and equipment on demand (it's why your **** never breaks down). You can reprocess entire mods into their component materials in seconds as of ME1. Casting a single, short blade, no complexity, and as far as we know not even mixing materials, and it's still hot from the process in (counting 'em) two or three seconds is well within the realm of possibility from the ME lore.

Besides, it's not like we can't magically generate flamethrowers with an omnitool that will burn better than white phosphor or napalm and burn through steel and ceramic composites even in a ****ing vacuum, or freeze people with cryo bullets, or a half dozen other things that are actually a ****ing whole lot more impossible than the omniblade.

I'm sorry, but the "instant" fabrication was never stated as fact in ME1.

Being able to produce/repurpose some basic materials is OK, but we are taking about a tiny apparatus the size of a cell phone, flash forging a friggin sword in a nano-second and emmiting all kinds of holographic fields (and ME fields). And the ME fields themselves have become a galactic glue. They can apparently now hold everything..including atmosphere!

Omigel and ombinbaldes (tools) are the worst part of ME lore. Period.

[General Battuta]

i dunno they seem to enable fun gameplay, so that means they are probably good parts of the lore

[Scotty]

Inane ranting.

It takes 15 omni-gel to repair the Mako in a matter of seconds, in the field.  You can convert half of your entire inventory to omni-gel literally in the time between shots on your assault rifle.  And you're trying to say that the omni-tool, which can already throw fireballs, iceballs, fabricate combat drones instantly, and all manner of other things can't make a simple, semi-sharp, very hot blade over the course of two seconds.

I think you left logic somewhere behind you.  It's far enough back there that I can't even see it from here.

[NGTM-1R]

i think you will agree that reaper tactics are really ****ing inexplicable

Forget tactics, there were Reapers ****ing walking around. After that bit I decided the Reapers exist in individual anti-reality bubbles and draw their strength from mocking all forms of conventional behavior and physics.

If they tried to use normal tactics like we do they'd probably implode or something.

[General Battuta]

i think you will agree that reaper tactics are really ****ing inexplicable

Forget tactics, there were Reapers ****ing walking around. After that bit I decided the Reapers exist in individual anti-reality bubbles and draw their strength from mocking all forms of conventional behavior and physics.

If they tried to use normal tactics like we do they'd probably implode or something.

yeah the walking around business is really a bit dizzying

i like to imagine world war 2 conducted by politely landing one's bombers on the enemy's highways and attempting to roll into town to hand-deliver the bombs

[NGTM-1R]

Actually it occurs to me the Reapers are...uh...how shall I put this.

They're downward spiraling.

One capital Reaper is built per cycle.

We've already won, in a sense. We killed Sovereign. The Turians have apparently taken down several more capital-type Reapers in the battle for Palaven.

The Reapers are losing spectacularly. It will take them hundreds of thousands of years to recover from what's already happened, and I'm only a few hours in. They must know it, too, since they think so long-term. Their strategy is doomed to inevitably destroy them.

[General Battuta]

i think the codex can be read as saying '1 species = 1 capital class reaper, multiple such harvests conducted per cycle', rather than '1 capital class per cycle', but even so it's a ****ing stupid plot point that literally never figures into the game at all, and like most things about the reapers in ME3 makes no sense whatsoever

actually looking at the entry this is likely just desperate fanwank :|

maybe when a reaper goes down its civilization-crew downloads to another one? that seems to be the only sane way to imagine them ever risking themselves in combat

[Ransom]

Ransom: ME3 will not be on Steam for the foreseeable future. Better get used to it.

??? my only post in this thread concerns adorably rugged admirals, i'm not even bothered by origin :(

[bigchunk1]

<<DO NOT READ THIS CRAP IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THE GAME!>>

Commence rant:
Ok so I beat me3. Man, I felt like I made all the wrong decisions. Seems everywhere I went people needlessly died. Shot Ashley in the chest, Drove Tali to jump off a cliff after she saw her people burning in the sky above, let that "children!" breedqueen creature go which seemed like a fruitless errand to get good Krogan soldiers killed. Drove the Salarians away from negations... Can't we all just get along? Also, everyone seems so incompetent. Everyone's so needy I mean come on! Is Sheppard the only one in the galaxy with a gun? Kinda felt that way.

At one point I imagined my Sheppard character looking up and saying, "Sometimes I feel like I am playing out some kind of sick game made by a psychopath who likes to inflict the pain of moral dilemmas on the innocent." The game is kinda cruel that way. Getting you to like characters and then quickly killing them off. Like the Asari snipers who give you covering fire just before a burst of energy comes crashing down vaporizing them, at that point I snickered to myself thinking "****in game...every time"

Probably my favorite part of the game was the part where you fight the reaper with a targeting device linked to the Quarian fleet. I wanted to support the Quarians, but if the game made me choose between Quarians and Geth, which I had an idea they would, I'd go with the Geth. I just had to for legion, or his... clone? I don't understand what Geth IV was in relation to legion if he was related at all.  When I saw the Quarian fleet burning, and the cut scene focused on Tali I imagined my Sheppard saying, "So... uh.. we're still cool right?". Right before she starts her sprint off the cliff. The drama! Oh the drama my feckless decisions cause!

Also the part where the sandworm of Tachonka(spelling?)  drags the reaper into the ground and buries it. Pretty cool stuff.

Anyone check army composition in the warroom? Seems like fleets and squads have almost equal value. That does not seem proportional at all! A dreadnaught takes thousands of crew (freespace logic), no way that compares to a bunch of guys holding assault rifles; no matter how good they are. And how do those nuke cannons oughtweigh dreadnaughts in reaper killing ability?! Why don't they mount nuke cannons on their dreadnaughts then? Speaking of which, how bout those fleet based cutscenes? large phalanxs of space faring vessels trading firepower until someone wins. Reminds me of 16th century musket warfare. Sucks to be in the first line of dreadnaughts. Fighters don't seem to have things any nicer either. Some good crazy fun those cutscenes were.

Probably the point in the story where my interest was piqued is when the Krogans, Turians and Salarians were all negotiating and the Krogran says, " You want our help? Cure the genophage." That set the stage in my mind that this game was going to be one of interracial negotiations, allowing us to explore the tenuous alliance these otherwise warring races would share. It's somewhat of a common theme to have unlikely customers unite to defeat a common foe, like independence day or pick your average alien invasion film. I was considering making some kind of storyline for a freespace campaign along these lines, but perhaps the theme is too overplayed? I do like the theme overall though.

Yeah, so the ending. Uh... I don't really get it. Sheppard dies? Synthetics(Geth!) die? Seems like everyone in space would die without their ships. No masseffect cores? So it's back to medieval earth? Really? And what about those organics who burned on the earth's surface as the nova made its sweep? And why is the catalyst that kid you keep chasing in your dreams? Wonder If I would have preferred the traditional 'build the cannon, cannon kills all bad guys the end' sort of route. I kinda get the feeling that the ME3 team tried to outdo themselves so much that they said, "Hey if we make the ending confusing enough maybe we can trick people into thinking it's good" I did, however, like the confrontation with the illusive man though; maybe he was right all along?.

[General Battuta]

You sound like really, really needed to import a character from ME2. Sounds like you didn't have Wrex or Legion alive, for one.

[TrashMan]

Inane ranting.

It takes 15 omni-gel to repair the Mako in a matter of seconds, in the field.  You can convert half of your entire inventory to omni-gel literally in the time between shots on your assault rifle.  And you're trying to say that the omni-tool, which can already throw fireballs, iceballs, fabricate combat drones instantly, and all manner of other things can't make a simple, semi-sharp, very hot blade over the course of two seconds.

I think you left logic somewhere behind you.  It's far enough back there that I can't even see it from here.

Gameplay mechanic  does not equal direct lore. Just because in-game you can convert 15 rifles to omni-gel, doesn't mean squat.
B.t.w. - omni-tools have been wonky from day 1.

[achtung]

So I beat the game

Spoiler:

I made everyone hybrid synthetic biological things. The loss of the mass relays deeply disturbs me, I'm hoping since everyone is all good now that they might be rebuilt at some point in the future. Sol would still be a major pocket of diversity though. So I guess I can feel okay about that. Ending feels wonky as ****, but bioware. I took Garrus and Kaiden along on the last spin. I assume we are all chilling at a bar in some sort of afterlife now.

[The E]

bigchunk: The values in the war room seem a bit arbitrary, but then, a squad of expert commandos is probably as useful in a ground fight against reaper forces as a cruiser is in a fight in space. Also, Mass Effect ships are consistently smaller and less crew-intensive than FS ships.

In addition, all of those decisions you made sound pretty Renegade. Also, you really need to keep hoarding those reputation points; in the decision with the geth vs the quarians it's possible to take a third option, provided you have nearly maxed your reputation bar (Which is possible, but does require doing most of the available side missions).

And yeah, it sounds like you pretty much rushed through to the ending; There are at least 8 possible variations for it that are dependant on your ingame choices, whether you blew up the reaper base in ME2, and how much stuff you collected for the war effort.

Gameplay mechanic  does not equal direct lore. Just because in-game you can convert 15 rifles to omni-gel, doesn't mean squat.
B.t.w. - omni-tools have been wonky from day 1.

You really are grasping at straws to stick to your opinion that this game is bad, aren't you? I mean, nearly every single point you have raised in the previous thread as being a bad decision turns out to be actually well-executed in the actual game, or at least that's the opinion of people who have actually played it (and who are not on BSN).

[General Battuta]

This is the best game with the worst ending I have ever played. It's the most insanely schizophrenic thing.

Bioware romances are always kind of creepy and pandering but the Bioware space bro friendships really get to me for some reason.  When Liara-who-was-not-my-love-interest just put her head on FemShep's shoulder, clearly certain she'd never see Shep again, I got all misty-eyed.

And yeah, it sounds like you pretty much rushed through to the ending; There are at least 8 possible variations for it that are dependant on your ingame choices, whether you blew up the reaper base in ME2, and how much stuff you collected for the war effort.

In practical terms there are only three endings, and all that varies is the color of the giant super saiyan laser you shoot into space, and the number of characters you see on your stranded inbred death colony. It is possible to also blow up Earth or something but I get the sense that's pretty hard.

[MP-Ryan]

Question:  someone mentioned earlier than multiplayer factors into the possible endings.  Is this accurate, or can you still obtain all the different endings without a shred of multi?

Mostly wondering since I can see the multiplayer in this game dying a fairly rapid death, and I'm thinking I'd better get in on it sooner if it's basically necessary to influence the singleplayer.

[General Battuta]

Question:  someone mentioned earlier than multiplayer factors into the possible endings.  Is this accurate, or can you still obtain all the different endings without a shred of multi?

Mostly wondering since I can see the multiplayer in this game dying a fairly rapid death, and I'm thinking I'd better get in on it sooner if it's basically necessary to influence the singleplayer.

The multiplayer is honestly pretty astoundingly fun and I don't see it dying super fast.

You can get all the endings that matter just with single player but (huge but kind of stupid but still I guess pretty huge spoiler)


THIS IS A HUGE SPOILER I'M SERIOUS

 

Spoiler:

one of the endings gives a hint Shep lives if you get an effective military strength of I think 5000, which requires a bit of multiplayer).

  Honestly, though, this hint is so short and dumb you might as well see it on Youtube.

I'll reiterate: the endings are all effectively equally ****ty, they differ only in the color of some lights and one or two other details. None of them gives any feedback on what happens to the galaxy or the characters you care about.

Fortunately if you pretend the last ten minutes of the game never happened there's a pretty good ending sitting there.

[General Battuta]

Jesus Christ, from some of the leaks that came out of Bioware, it sounds like the ending they originally had planned was even worse