[Dark Hunter]

My favorite part was the banter during the Archives mission.

"This is Team Mako, showing Team Hammerhead how it's done!"
"Showing? More like copying!"
"If we were copying you we wouldn't be hitting anything!"
"This is Team Prothean, I have a higher kill count than both of you combined!"

[newman]

Shepard: "Team Mako, take point!" (or whatever)
Brooks: "What's a Mako?"
Liara: "Something we could really use about now"


The whole thing is a shameless nostalgia plug for the fans, and you know what, it doesn't bother me at all. This DLC was fun.

[Luis Dias]

I was saying the

Spoiler:

evil Shep clone

thing was amazing.

My bad.

[newman]

The story of this one opens up some fun possibilities for ME4, in case it'll happen after ME3. Specifically,

Spoiler:

running into conspiracy theory nuts would be fun.. making claims like Cerberus let loose the clone Shepard after the Collectors, and it was the clone that ultimately fought the reapers, while the real Shepard was kept in a lab, went insane, escaped, and eventually tried to take his life back by force in ME3: citadel

[Ashrak]

it wont. theyd have to cannon an ending then....

[Fury]

Both control and synthesis options are no-no from storytelling point in a game. That only leaves one option where events after ME3 can be as open as possible, even allowing for large-scale conflicts which probably wouldn't happen if Reapers were present as benevolent force. Thus, destruction of Reapers as canonical ending is pretty much set in stone.

[Luis Dias]

I really don't think ME4 will take place after events of ME3.

[The E]

I think it is pretty clear by now that whatever ME4 will be, it will be somewhat unconnected to the previous games (as in, events in those games do not influence stuff in ME4 directly). It'll be something set in the ME universe, but not related to the Shepard trilogy.

Personally, I am expecting it to either be a prequel or a far-future sequel (with the latter being really really unlikely, given the known issues surrounding all of the endings to ME3). There's also a slight possibility that it would run parallel to ME1-3, but that's rather unlikely as well (It would be like making a game in the LotR universe that runs parallel to the plot of LotR; it's not impossible, but as a fan, you know that the actual big story is happening off-screen).

[MatthTheGeek]

Whatever they come up with, I certainly hope it won't be as ridiculously human-centric as the trilogy. It was so far-fetched and borderline retarded 99% of the time.

[Luis Dias]

Whatever they come up with, I certainly hope it won't be as ridiculously human-centric as the trilogy. It was so far-fetched and borderline retarded 99% of the time.

What. What are you even saying. Of course it was "human-centric", look at the audience of the ****ing game. And what is that **** about "borderline retarded"? Mass Effect was all about giving you the captain seat of an Enterprise-like ship and making errands through various planets. It's mostly gritty Star Trek with some Lovecraftian scent done well. If you expected good science from it of course you were bound to be disappointed. That wasn't ever the point.

[MatthTheGeek]

What has science even to do with this. I'm talking about how unbelievably human-centric it was.

[The E]

Matt is right to a point. ME has a somewhat intricate universe with several major and a few minor sentient races all jockeying for position. Then along comes humanity, and through a combination of having agents in the right places at the right times (Shepard and the Normandy, Anderson) gets into one of the major race slots incredibly fast. Not only that, but as Mordin says "Humans are more genetically diverse", which is a "wat" moment from hell.

At several points in the story, it is remarked upon how humanity is basically the Mario of all the available races (Not as disciplined as the Turians, but organized enough to give them a good fight, not as resilient as the Krogans, but able to innovate to overcome that handicap, not as long-lived as the Asari, but flexible enough to be their equals anyway, not as brilliant as the Salarians, but able to get to the same places slower.....).

[Luis Dias]

That point was addressed in-game. Humans were rising like a behemoth due to several reasons, one of them being exactly that wtf-science-rofl thing you mention. But that's exactly why I said that science doesn't really mattered in ME. I don't really understand why having a species that is somewhat "steamrolling" the others in terms of evolutionary speed is such a "stupid plot point". It isn't. It was just convenient, and while I accept that may annoy people, I was already numbed to a lot of other scientific and inconsistent points to let that minor issue be really minor.

[TrashMan]

Yeah. Humans FTW.

You xeno-loving fools were put in your place.

[phatosealpha]

That point was addressed in-game. Humans were rising like a behemoth due to several reasons, one of them being exactly that wtf-science-rofl thing you mention. But that's exactly why I said that science doesn't really mattered in ME. I don't really understand why having a species that is somewhat "steamrolling" the others in terms of evolutionary speed is such a "stupid plot point". It isn't. It was just convenient, and while I accept that may annoy people, I was already numbed to a lot of other scientific and inconsistent points to let that minor issue be really minor.

The issue isn't that they're steamrolling.  That was happening in ME1, and wasn't a problem.  The issue is all the other places where humanity is given priority for inexplicable reasons.

The collectors going so far out of there way to capture humans, for example.  With the reapers already on their way, why?  Surely there is something more useful to do if the reapers are going to show up and start harvesting humanity in it's totality in 9 months.

Then you've got things like the Reapers moving the Citadel to Earth to 'protect' it.  That makes no sense at all.  Surely tossing the thing into interstellar space would've been safer.  And then the whole 'lolgeneticdiversity' thing that makes humans go from being pushy bastards to galactic chosen ones.  Just doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Luis Dias]

Let's not bring the wider plot into question.... ME2 already hinted that they had no clue where to end the trilogy.

[newman]

The only thing ME2's ending was missing was to have "You could be mine" play during the end boss fight.

[Luis Dias]

It was easy to fix ME3 in ME2 though....

You just had the council and the races heavily investing in securing the galaxy against the Reaper threat, IOW, taken the events of ME1 seriously. Then you would have Shepard investigating these awkward Collector events, while the wider galaxy was worried about the bigger picture and let you focus on these apparently smaller concerns.

This would have solved a lot of things in ME3. For starters, it would have given you a glimmer of hope in the beggining (you'd start thinking "hey, they came sooner than expected but we started to prepare for this ****"). You'd have a council despairing because they had no time to prepare for the slaughter, but there was sufficient R&D and war investment to make things more interesting: you could witness new tactics and new weaponry based on the Sovereign encounter. There would be a realistic edge that the game could play with: while the galaxy not being entirely ready, it wasn't a complete downer. The battle in Palaven would have been with a lot more tension (as it is right now, the pew pew is awesome to look at, but what is the point? No Reapers will fall under Turian fire, you know that and so there's zero tension), and some twists could be arranged (a general mood of hope increases until a really nasty blow is given to some big fleet at 2/3 of the game, destroying your hopes, then a final desperate plan is arranged to get you to the end of the game).

As it stands, it's a crescendo of hopelessness and whatever-we-are-doomed-anyway put on top of a frustrated scenario where your warnings were completely ignored and belittled, almost making you want to abandon the unworthy galaxy to its fate.

[MatthTheGeek]

Someone has never picked a look at the Codex... Kinda dangerous when you want to discuss about the ME universe, don't you think ?

You'd have a council despairing because they had no time to prepare for the slaughter, but there was sufficient R&D and war investment to make things more interesting: you could witness new tactics and new weaponry based on the Sovereign encounter.

Already the case. Thanix cannons, which have been deployed throughout Citadel and Alliance fleets by the time of ME3, are scaled-down Reaper capital weapons, reverse-engineered from Sovereign's debris.

The battle in Palaven would have been with a lot more tension (as it is right now, the pew pew is awesome to look at, but what is the point? No Reapers will fall under Turian fire, you know that and so there's zero tension)

The Turians already "downed several Reaper capital ships" during the very first major strike of the Turian fleet, at the opening of the Battle of Palaven. They have proven Reapers can be taken down through conventional means, and that they have the firepower to do so. You can't argue that "No Reapers will fall under Turian fire".

[Luis Dias]

Someone has never picked a look at the Codex... Kinda dangerous when you want to discuss about the ME universe, don't you think ?

Someone bringing low key sarcasm into debate, kinda dangerous and unnecessary, don't you think?

To make the plot rely on codex entries is dumb at least. To look down on people's remarks because they didn't read the codex entries is even dumber.

You'd have a council despairing because they had no time to prepare for the slaughter, but there was sufficient R&D and war investment to make things more interesting: you could witness new tactics and new weaponry based on the Sovereign encounter.

Already the case. Thanix cannons, which have been deployed throughout Citadel and Alliance fleets by the time of ME3, are scaled-down Reaper capital weapons, reverse-engineered from Sovereign's debris.

Despite your condescending sarcasm, I am well aware of Thanix cannons, and have long discussed them in other fora as well. That doesn't make a dent to my point though. The Citadel species were completely denying any Reaper threat whatsoever in ME2, not only in public but also to Shepard himself.

The battle in Palaven would have been with a lot more tension (as it is right now, the pew pew is awesome to look at, but what is the point? No Reapers will fall under Turian fire, you know that and so there's zero tension)

The Turians already "downed several Reaper capital ships" during the very first major strike of the Turian fleet, at the opening of the Battle of Palaven. They have proven Reapers can be taken down through conventional means, and that they have the firepower to do so. You can't argue that "No Reapers will fall under Turian fire".

[/quote]

That would bring me making a long post on why that part was completely atrociously written, since the Reapers were considered to be invincible (and how do you really manage to be "sustainable" if you lose more Reapers per cycle than you can build them - alledgedly one per cycle?). The codex entry is inane. Despite the fact that the Turians didn't "know" the Reaper capabilities, they successfully retrieved enough data to pull a winning tactic against them.

The whole thing was badly conveyed. Nowhere in the game are we given any hint on how such success was possible in the first place, how the tactics kept going, etc.