Are all our choices and descisions ultimately pointless?

no less so then the trilogy your still going from point a to point b.

frankly and I know I'm gonna get flamed for this, choice in video games is a myth. your always going from point a to point b with maybe a few very minor differences or some pictures with words on it tacked to the ending. but overall it's the same damn story.


and yes ME: A does react to what you do to a point.

Andromedas ending changes more than any of the others did, visually.

Mass Effect 1's always ended exactly the same. Mass Effect 2's changed in that some characters could die, but that had no actual impact until mass effect 3. And none of your previous decisions affected Mass Effect 3's original ending at all outside of unlocking synthesis and one scene where you see either the quarians or geth in the fleet for a split second.

Actually having the people we've met or saved join us in the final confrontation is more acknowledgement of our choices than we've ever had before. Yes the final outcome is the same, but that's true of every mass effect game except 3. 

The problem here is that you have to be sure about what you want.

Do you want DLC that will reflect you choices? Do you want to have sequels that will reflect your choices?

Or do you want to have a single game that will reflect your choices in game changing ways, leading up to very different endings?

You can have only one of those, not both as it will get ever more difficult to include consequences of different choices the more game/narrative changing they are (even though ME3s endings weren't vastly different they made it pretty much impossible to create a sequel that would include all those choices). Look for example at Telltale games for other choice driven game. There are a lot of (some might say cosmetic) choices that ultimately lead to largely the same ending. Not because they don't want to have real choices, but because it would not practically be feasible to do otherwise as they would have to produce more much more content than they could. They pretty much would have to produce content for not 6 episodes but a shitload more as each different ending would have to lead to a different game. So yes, if you produce a game with choices and you want it to have more than a few hours of story driven content those choices ultimately will have to be pointless (the difficult part is not making the choices actually matter a lot, but making you feel that they do that at least the first time you are playing).

Personally I think the game dealt pretty well with the choices offered and with the possibility of having future content that might respect those choices. I'd rather have this over slightly different ending cutscenes and a lot of those choices could be seen as similar to those you made in ME1 for example.

Exactly - especially in quests that let you make moral decisions like casting somebody out ("The first Murder") or if traitors should be allowed to remain free because they can provide intel (they can and have infiltrated the Kett) etc. (I am sure you will meet that STG-Agent again and if you let the traitors go he will probably not help you - on the other hand: That intel could save many lives, especially if infiltration (and maybe sabotage) really worked out (!))

It really is a lot of setting up for a follow up game IMHO (I hope so) - I hope it is NOT DLC-Baiting (like that stuff surrounding the Quarian-Ark (!), which seems to be DLC ("Sad, Bioware, SAD!" - sorry, to quote Trump here, but IMHO they should not have made the Quarians DLC (note: I think they are DLC, I mean after all we get a damned signal from them and nothing more, we can't investigate etc.!)))

greetings LAX
ps: Better than the last Bioware games (DA:I and ME3), but a sequel needs to be better IMHO (and have fixed face animations...I know it's a high level complaint, but they had 5 years, I believe that if they gave me (and a team of trusted friends!) 5 years and access to resources and people that I could do better animation wise...story wise? I don't know, I know that I could make some better quests and a better beginning (I would have introduced the scourge later and have the ark attacked by a Kett patrole directly (and if I really needed to kill of Alec Ryder he would have gone down in a heroic last stand, not because some freaking shitty helmet, that shouldn't have that much glass anyway (!), broke!))

Wow. Seeing all these replies is leaving me feeling really conflicted now about what I wanted from this game. On the one hand, of course I want to see more Mass Effect in the future and past decisions being reflected in said continuations. Especially the whole Kett/Amgaran choice. And yet on the other hand I wanted a whole complete story that adapted as I went along with a conclusion unique to what I had done. Something Dragon Age Origins accomplished with near perfection.

I'm realy not sure how to feel about all this. I feel let down but I'm still hopeful. I think this is the first Bioware game which has made me analyse myself because of it's story and what I truly want from the franchise. So conflicted right now...

To what post ending content are you reffering? Is there anything that unlocks only after you beat the game?

Hahahahahaha that's funny right there!

A really simple way that they could have accounted for the extensive amount of choices in ME1 and ME2 would be to categorize war assets (military, engineering, diplomatic, etc) and then have different outcomes in the epilogue based on which ones were the highest. For example, if you cured the genophage and actually dispersed the cure, you would get some krogan army troops that would count as a military asset. But if you were a total dickhead  decided to sabotage the genophage cure, you could get some salarian engineers that would count as an engineering or scientific asset. It's simple and it would have given a lot of people what they wanted -- different endings based on Shepard's choices throughout the trilogy. 

The ending of Mass Effect 1 was pretty much exactly the same no matter what choices you make -- this is true. You kill Saren and destroy Sovereign and stop the geth from invading and yay everything is puppies and rainbows! But the key choices along the way really allowed the player to develop the kind of person that they wanted Shepard to be. Saving/killing the Rachni, saving the council/letting them die, hell even choosing between Kaidan and Ashley made me want to go back and do a play through where I kept the other one alive.

So I guess the question is, does the ME:A main quest storyline feel like a railroad, or does the player have choices along the way that seem to have a profound effect on who Ryder becomes throughout the game?

This game felt like a prologue, decisions seem to be something that would have consequences later on.

It will be just as pointless as ME1's.

I have been saying that for years. I like to see my choices have consequences in the same game (and if they add DLC to further some plot points that looked like they could now be explored because people really liked it) . It can be good, bad, or cosmetic results. Results are good enough for me. I think if it is important to span games, then I would like more out of that decision.

The trilogy had some really epic choices but it became a handicap to sort because they could only do so much with the decisions via ME3. I liked how they handled ME3 with all the choices, character loyalty/death, ect. I can't really name another game where the story takes a whole different turn throughout it while juggling each story. Besides EMS and the end (which was so sad.. even though I knew it was over), your choices were at least referenced.

ME3 wasn't perfect but I am glad they gave us a choice at the end to shape your Milky Way as it comes to a close. Otherwise, everyone would have the same ending.. it wouldn't feel personal. It wasn't the best way to go about it but eh, better than nothing.

True, it shouldn't of been done if they were planning any future series for Mass Effect, plus take out a few more big decisions. Honestly, I swing back and forth with the simplified ideas of mine below..

A. They had no plans at all to return to the Mass Effect Trilogy. The ending was like headcanon to what happen after the series was over. They may have thought that IP was wrapped up and thought the new IP and DA were going to be their focus for the next decade or so. The popularity and money making of Mass Effect was too much to pass up so they had to reboot somehow so MEA came the way it did to escape the handicaps of MET decisions including the ending.

B. They have always wanted to make another Mass Effect but all those choices during MET (even excluding the ending) were too diverse to really expand on during a stay in the Milky Way especially if Shepherd was alive. The guy/gal you've played hundreds of hours now as an NPC (imagine those angry mobs shouting "my Shep wouldn't do/say that.") The ending uproar might of help them even more to want to not address the endings,ect ..so they planned to leave as soon as they could from the Milky Way and came MEA as it did.


Just random thoughts. Shep didn't really get an ending or closure but the Milky Way definitely got it's ending.

I think they said they weren't making a trilogy? But the first game sort of suggest more than one game. It's not the simplest thing to continue a game's story if previous games had different impactful endings.
However, I think it would be interesting to see previous game choices carry over and have an impact at the end of the entire story. Like cross game choices, where the final game could actually have various endings since it doesn't have to consider implementing that into a new game.