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[Bongo Bill]

So, as I enter my ME2 stage of "The Perfect Save Part Six: Save Harderer-erer-ering" what do people here noticing missing from this list of stuff that matters in ME2 for ME3?

The outcome of the Suicide Mission.

Accepting or rejecting reinstatement as a Spectre during Citadel: The Council.

Saving or destroying the genophage data during Mordin: Old Blood.

Preventing or allowing Tali's exile during Tali: Treason.

Convincing Kasumi to destory or keep the memories during Kasumi: Stolen Memory.

Rewriting or destroying the heretic geth collective during Legion: A House Divided.

Destroying or preserving the Collector Base during the Suicide Mission.

Ending or continuing the Overlord project.

Completing Lair of the Shadow Broker or not.

I'm pretty sure all of those are at least acknowledged, but if you're saying that one of them isn't and we have to guess, it'd be [spoiler]accepting or rejecting Spectre reinstatement[/spoiler].

[Beat Bandit]

I mean what else have you noticed helped. Like "oh man glad I did that" or "wish I had".

[Bongo Bill]

Oh. Every loyalty mission for characters who survive has some effect, though the most important one can be made up for by other means (in particular, you'll want to make sure that either [spoiler]Kirrahe[/spoiler] makes it out of ME1 or [spoiler]Thane[/spoiler] makes it out of ME2. There were two decisions at the end of Overlord, and both of them turn out important. The events of Arrival are referenced if you performed that mission. Your behavior when you encounter Conrad Verner matters for the resolution of that quest. Having a conversation with Matriarch Aethyta causes a follow-up to appear. Whether or not you had dinner with Kelly Chambers has an influence as well.

Your post covered all the major ones, though.

[A²]

I had dinner with Kelly Chambers for the sole benefit of having someone feed my fish when I was out and about mission-ing.

[Ziiro]

GETH INFILTRATOR

Ignore the facebook text.

This may be future DLC or just some of the shit that comes with the action figures? I can't tell.

[Bal]

More like Krogan Battlemaster

[Shinra]

So, as I enter my ME2 stage of "The Perfect Save Part Six: Save Harderer-erer-ering" what do people here noticing missing from this list of stuff that matters in ME2 for ME3?

The outcome of the Suicide Mission.

Accepting or rejecting reinstatement as a Spectre during Citadel: The Council.

Saving or destroying the genophage data during Mordin: Old Blood.

Preventing or allowing Tali's exile during Tali: Treason.

Convincing Kasumi to destory or keep the memories during Kasumi: Stolen Memory.

Rewriting or destroying the heretic geth collective during Legion: A House Divided.

Destroying or preserving the Collector Base during the Suicide Mission.

Ending or continuing the Overlord project.

Completing Lair of the Shadow Broker or not.

[spoiler]Ultimately, nothing fucking mattered anyway.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Fan outrage right now is so thick and heavy you could cut it with a knife and spread it on fucking toast. People are petitioning Bioware to patch in a new ending that isn't such a load of horseshit. It seems obvious that the developers were deeply in love with Human Revolution, as they fucking copied the ending exactly. The difference here is that Human Revolution was basically an interactive movie with very few actual moral decisions along the way, and Mass Effect was built around hundreds of choices having an effect on the plot. So having the 'go left, right or forward for a barely varied ending of your choice' ending was bullshit, and the ending does not make any fucking sense anyway.

On top of all of this

Now there's speculation that Bioware made the ending deliberately shitty (possibly because they ran out of time) so they could go back and release a good ending DLC and fucking charge for it. It wouldn't be the first time this happened, if anyone remembers Fallout 3.

I think it's safe to say it: Bioware is no longer a company that makes products worth purchasing.[/spoiler]

[Kayma]

Penny Arcade's strip today outlines the plans Bioware has for ending-repairing DLC.

[Shinra]

You know, there's a pretty fucking huge difference between giving fans a saccharine sweet pandering ending [spoiler]and giving fans the variable, choice-laden decision-affected ending they were fucking promised for the last five god damn years

I want to point out that Chrono Trigger had more variable endings based on player choice and it came out nearly twenty god damn years ago.[/spoiler]

[Shinra]

BTW, for the record: I've never felt more justified in pirating a game in my fucking life.

[Friday]

I want to point out that Chrono Trigger had more variable endings based on player choice and it came out nearly twenty god damn years ago.

I agree that ME3 would be greatly improved if there was an ending where you died during the final battle, and it showed the Reapers slowly exterminating all life in the galaxy, then it zoomed out to show the Milky Way with lots of tiny explosions, and then it sort of fades to monochrome greyscale, and then fades in

BUT THE FUTURE REFUSED TO CHANGE

Also after beating ME3 you can start over in ME1 on new game + and immediately take a portal to the illusive man, shoot him, and then the credits fly by while sped up music plays

[Shinra]

also it unlocks a developer room, which is just ray muzyka and jennifer hepler fucking on a giant pile of money. If you talk to Stanley Loo, he bans you from accessing origin content for 24 hours.

[Bongo Bill]

Jennifer Hepler didn't even work on this game.

Don't let the existence of histrionic anti-fans distract from the point that they have, which is that the ending really was lousy by any objective metric. I think Ben Kuchera had the right idea when he said that it's a good sign that such a meltdown is possible (though not a good sign that it's happening): if a game can build up an emotional attachment so powerful that it goes nuclear when it's not released at the end, then it must be doing something right. Something other than delivering catharsis. It's like saying that Chernobyl is a good sign for the technology level of the power industry, because you could never get such a dramatic disaster from a primitive coal-fired plant.

[Bal]

On the one hand I agree that the entire game up until the ending sort of IS the ending we were all hoping for. The problem is that that stops.

[Shinra]

I was more making the point that forces like Hepler are entirely why Bioware has turned into such a shitty company.

Don't let the existence of histrionic anti-fans distract from the point that they have, which is that the ending really was lousy by any objective metric

The real issue for me, beyond everything else, is how little sense everything makes. Nothing adds up. [spoiler]in the absolute best-case scenario, billions, possibly trillions of people die. There is no ending in which the Quarian and Turian forces around Earth survive, for example. Arrival established that mass relays extinguish all life in a system, because they go supernova when they blow - so how did anyone survive, save for Joker and the crew of the Normandy, who just happened to outrun the explosion and make it to a system without a mass relay? And what's the implication here, Joker and the crew populate an entire world and the post-credit followup was descendants of the Normandy. Except, there's not enough genetic diversity on the Normandy to repopulate a planet.

You have to suspend disbelief and swallow a lot of bullshit in Mass Effect already. (for example: how do the Asari not have a larger population than Humans despite having lifespans about 18x longer? WHY IS THERE MEDIGEL ON THE GETH DREADNOUGHT? FOR THAT MATTER, WHY DOES MEDIGEL HEAL EDI?) But that's all something that comes with playing a game. I mean, they're telling a space opera so you can't expect hard science fiction - however, that does not excuse an ending that basically ignores everything that happened before it for the sake of unsatisfying narrative. The ending simply has plot holes a mile wide that are absolutely impossible to ignore if you were paying attention. What the fuck, Bioware? How does this happen in a game series which pays so much fucking attention to detail?

I'm also pretty peeved that they basically just took Human Revolution's ending and slapped an RGB coat of paint on it. The ending was the shittiest part of Human Revolution by far, but at least it made contextual sense.[/spoiler]

On the one hand I agree that the entire game up until the ending sort of IS the ending we were all hoping for. The problem is that that stops.

The problem with that is the ending invalidates everything you did prior to that point. Shepard waking up on the Normandy 1 and Nihilus saying "Hey, Eden Prime just sent a message, apparently their comms went out!" and it turning out to have all been a dream wouldn't have been any less satisfying.

[Bal]

Except that everything before that was extremely satisfying. I don't choose to have the work I did and the results I achieved totally nullified by an unsatisfying ending that may or may not undo some or all of them.

[Shinra]

For the record:

[spoiler] I don't think many people honestly had the expectation that the ending would be sunshine and puppydogs or that Shepard would even survive. I do, however, think that people had the expectation that every ending wouldn't be "(almost) everyone dies"[/spoiler]

Except that everything before that was extremely satisfying. I don't choose to have the work I did and the results I achieved totally nullified by an unsatisfying ending that may or may not undo some or all of them.

So it's Gurren Lagann again?

I'm OK with recognizing the gameplay and story prior to the ending as meaningful and interesting and fun and good on it's own. I just don't feel it's right to end things in the shittiest, most half-assed way possible, [spoiler]and I can't re-iterate this enough: as a blatant copy of another cinematic game that came out in the last 12 months and won shitloads of awards. I can't help but feel that someone at EA saw Deus Ex's success, felt like ME3 needed to get out the door and just told the development team to copy it.[/spoiler]

Walking away from a game I otherwise really enjoyed and a series that I rank as one of the best overall videogaming experiences of my life feeling shitty because Bioware didn't think the ending experience was important is pretty fucking stupid. You can't please everyone, but Bioware couldn't have really thought people invested in the series would be OK with this. I'm sorry, but it's just really unacceptable to me.


edit: obvious spoilers: http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/

[Bal]

Personally, having gone with what we will ambiguously call the "Green" ending, I felt pretty good about how things seemed to turn out, I just wanted more in the way of epilogue. Having done so much for so many, I want to know what happened to at least some of them. However the ending itself, the result of choosing Green, was as result I liked in and of itself. I'm even willing to accept the push-button-receive-ending scenario, in the context of a [spoiler]totally ancient and inscrutable AI giving me no other options[/spoiler], I, again, just want more in the way of epilogue with regard to my last choice, and the choices that went before it.

Mass Effect has always kind of been a game of three choices. Hundreds per game. One more more set of three choices at the end is not the problem, the problem is that they don't tell you the results.

[Zaratustra]

You can repopulate a planet from a single couple, by the way, as long as you have relatively unlimited population capacity. If everyone has, say, ten kids, three or four are going to be reasonably healthy to keep going.

[Shinra]

Personally, having gone with what we will ambiguously call the "Green" ending, I felt pretty good about how things seemed to turn out, I just wanted more in the way of epilogue. Having done so much for so many, I want to know what happened to at least some of them. However the ending itself, the result of choosing Green, was as result I liked in and of itself. I'm even willing to accept the push-button-receive-ending scenario, in the context of a [spoiler]totally ancient and inscrutable AI giving me no other options[/spoiler], I, again, just want more in the way of epilogue with regard to my last choice, and the choices that went before it.

Mass Effect has always kind of been a game of three choices. Hundreds per game. One more more set of three choices at the end is not the problem, the problem is that they don't tell you the results.

They tell you enough of the results that I think my shepard would rather fight and die to the last man than take any of them.