Unpopular opinions

I never said the one holding the nameplate didn't believe Shepard wasn't alive.

I'll definitely give it a try this time since you are recommending it. I already started the infiltrator run. I thought I would do insanity for the first time as well. Its not as hard as I thought it would be and I like the fact that enemies are more aggressive and will push up on you instead of just hanging back all day. But yes, one of my biggest issues with Cryo is that they will fall down behind cover and become unreachable. Also, sorry for the noob question, but what is CC?

Well, I guess I'm more weird because if I was in the Mass Effect universe, I'd want to romance my own Shepard.   And babies? That's a cute way of looking at them. 

I started it after MEA came out and found out what a disappointment it was. I tried MP and thought it was ok in MEA. My friend recommended I go back to ME3's. This was a month after MEA's release. I did so, and understood MP and gradually got better. I'd say I'm a very solid player now. Its amazing how much better overall MP in ME3 is. Like literally everything is better. And I'm assuming, you play on PC? I was going to ask if you would be interested in wrecking face sometime, but I'm on 360. And it seems like a lot of our ME experiences have been very similar actually. 

Ha, nice that you already started! If you want to discuss anything or have some thoughts on the Shotgun/Cryo Infiltrator just PM me if you feel like it, I'm always happy to talk about such things (and also characters/games etc in general)
Sorry about the abbreviation, CC means Crowd Control.

Fine with me wanting to romance your own Shepard I guess I feel that my Shepards always belong to their LI.

I never tried the MP in MEA because I didn't actually play MEA for very long (been disappointed by it). And yeah, I feel a lot more comfortable on Silver by now and gradually Gold too. It's a shame we can't wreck face together because XBox is the one platform don't have I'm both on PC and PS3 for MP.

We are gonna have to disagree there for sure, literally almost everything is better in MEAMP , except some kits..

No significance to them in terms of it not being something related to their species granted, but significant in terms of the war. Palven is still contested, and is keeping a large portion of the Reaper forces occupied. The Turians also have the largest naval presence in the galaxy, which the Alliance (superweapon plans or not) still needs in order to screen the Crucible deployment so the priority of the Turian homeworld takes precedence for simple logistic's sake.  Plaven is also still actively contributing to the war effort while Earth is not.


Outside of the Citadel being moved to Earth, the human homeworld had nothing tactically significant to offer and realistically should have been left to it's own devices, like the Hanar and Elcor homeworlds were, seeing as how nothing could be gained from it's liberation at the time. 

Oh don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that humans and the Alliance aren't contributing anything to the fight, nor am I saying that the actions of the other species were insignificant (though I would say that the "actions" taken by several of them *cough* Krogans and Asari *cough* would leave much to be desired to say the least). I am just saying that, given the situation presented in the Reaper invasion of the Milky Way, with Palaven being a relatively stable front-line point of contention and Earth being far behind enemy lines and not being able to contribute its infrastructure and population directly to the war effort, that focusing the majority of the galaxy's military might to reclaim it is tactfully foolish.

If the situation were reversed, with Earth being the hotbed of fighting, of stalling the Reaper advance, and Palaven being the planet far behind enemy lines I would be all for keeping allied species' military directed to our planet over the lost cause of the Turian homeworld.   Now of course the plot eventually does make Earth a valid target for liberation once the Citadel is moved into orbit, but before then pushing to take it back would have been just throwing away valuable military assets for nothing.

The first priority of the combined species of the galaxy should be the completion of the Crucible, obviously, but after that they should be focusing on areas and territories that they currently still have. They should not be campaigning for the funneling of the entirety of much needed personnel and ships to taking back a world that has already fallen to the enemy, is well defended and behind enemy lines.  


To use a rough, rough analogy, the insistence of Shepard/Hackett to 'Take Back Earth' (prior to the Citadel's move there) would be akin to the Allied forces, during WWII, forgoing all of their plans for D-Day, pulling all of their forces away from the front-lines and then placing all of their metaphorical eggs in one basket for an all out assault on Berlin Germany in the hopes of taking the city and then using it to help fight the rest of the Nazi war machine still surrounding them. 

I will let you know if I need help or strategies or anything else. I appreciate it. Ah, okay, I should have guess that but thanks for the clarification.

So you never finished MEA then? I personally don't think you are missing out on a ton in regards to MEA MP. There are many issues I have with it. Though I replayed it recently and they have added a few new characters that I would like to get. But somehow I doubt they will be as cool as the Batarians, the Warlord Sentinels, or the N7s. I also unlocked one of those characters in MEA and I wasn't initially impressed.

Just my luck huh? Too bad we can't play, it could have been interesting.

Design wise, ME3 is far ahead with better maps, better factions, and just better programming. I personally really like how each faction plays and sound differently. Compare Outlaw in MEA to Cerberus in ME3. Cerberus feels like an actual coherent unit. Its the small things like Dragoons/Centurion being the commanders calling out orders, battle chatter, the cries and desperation in their voices as you crush them, etc. In MEA Outlaw says... nothing. They barely make a sound. In MEA, you know when a turret is being set up even if its off in the distance or if a Phantom is close. Also the combat in ME3 feels more weighty and satisfying. Using snipers, biotic/tech detonations, and even melees feel great. A krogan feels like a krogan. Their melees send enemies flying, they seem like they are enjoying the fighting, and the sound of their melee sounds like it hurts. Lets look at MEA's effeminate lisping krogan with their lame headbutt that has no oomph to it at all.

Also, you cannot reload cancel animation so guns like the Widow are not as useful. Not to mention, enemies have extremely satisfying feedback when you hurt them. Like the Primes reeling back in pain when you've hurt them enough. In MEA, this sense of satisfying feedback is lacking. I find using most of the guns to be not fun and the detonations sound wimpy. And can someone explain to me why everything in MEA is so obnoxiously accurate? Even canon fodder foot soldiers are hitting you with pin point accuracy at every turn. Even Centurions, Collector Captains, and Marauders will miss if you run diagonally or in a zig zag. The Observers are the single worse enemy.

And probably the biggest reason I don't play MEA MP is a reason you stated. The progression system is horrible. If you want to have all the XP/points possible for a character you HAVE to unlock them in loot boxes. The human commando looks really cool. But if you want to max her out you have to unlock her 20 times? That's dumb as hell. And I like the Kineticist. But I only have her at level 3. And she's an ultra rare, good luck getting her 20 times. Also the fact that each character levels up soooooo slowly and individually (instead of the entire class) is what killed it for me. It makes it a chore to play. 

Ok, I'll shut up now. I can go on forever on why MEA's MP is so much weaker. 

I finished the SP once and started an Insanity run, but abandoned it. I wanted to wait for more patches, but by the time they were done I had lost any interest in replaying this game and instead bathed in the glory of the trilogy again
I did play the introduction of MP though and watched some videos, but I was not fond of the combat in MEA in general, so I didn't bother with that either, also it seemed to have been terribly balanced at the beginning.

Personally, I don't think humanity needed someone fighting for their interests that bad. With all the concessions that humanity is given, for reasons unknown, to how we are even surpassing other well-established major species, in several key areas, doesn't really paint the picture that us humans are exactly struggling for power or respect in the galaxy at large. Obviously the Reaper plot, and Shepard being the only 'chosen one' capable of stopping them, relied on him/her becoming a Spectre in ME 1 but aside from that humanity was far from being the bottom of the galactic totem pole. As for Cerberus, I never saw their purpose; even before they went all Sith Empire on us in ME 3. Why do we need a "Humanity First" terrorist organization when humans are practically running the galaxy (depending on choices from ME 1) and are almost certainly frontrunners in every area of society? We are already "First".


Seriously, if there was any species that was given the metaphorical shaft throughout the series, and as such needed a crusading hero to speak on their behalf, it would have to have been the Hanar and the Elcor.

Here's a super unpopular opinion I would wager:

I think Earth should have been destroyed at the beginning of ME 3, a la Titan A.E.




That would have made for a much better reason for Shepard to start having nightmares than some random vent boy. It also would have upped the stakes immensely for the rest of the game. As it is, yeah lots of faceless NPCs die but they're all statistics really; there's no weight behind them. And sure, maybe your companions will die but only if Shepard makes certain choices. But all in all the galaxy, humanity in particular, make it out of the Reaper invasion relatively unscathed.

I mean you have to intentionally do a "fail run" with a bare minimum of EMS in order to see Earth( well the UK and Europe really) get burnt; but not destroyed. All other endings have us coming out the other side squeaky clean, with a fancy new Citadel in orbit to boot.




Having Earth destroyed would present a real dilemma to the conclusion of the trilogy. Sure we won, but were do we go from here? Plus it would have been a great motivation to see the Initiative succeed in ME:A, seeing as how there would literally be no home to go back to.

I am familiar with the lore surrounding our assent to being a major galactic power, and for all the hurdles that our species had to overcome we sure rose to prominence faster than any of the other known species; so much so that the other major races are fearful of us. Not exactly an underdog story.

A tale of a people who have had to struggle for hundreds of years to even be recognized by the larger players in the galaxy would lead some credence to a humanity that needs to rise up and take charge, but as it is we have an embassy on the Presidium in less than thirty years while species like the Volus and Elcor have been waiting for centuries. What's more, our ambassador gets his own personal office space while those other two aliens have to share a room; one smaller than Undina's. We get a human nominated for Spectre status and then finish the first game off with either a human Council member being appointed, or even an entire Council solely made up of humans, and the rest of the galaxy just goes along with it.

As for avoiding sanctions and legal repression, let's not forget that the Council continently overlooked genetic engineering restrictions and allowed us to not only produce a universal medical treatment in the form of Medi-gel (while surpessing any other species pursuing something similar) but also allowed us to become richer than several Volus Mega-Corps (the people who created the basis of the galactic economy) in the process with not a tariff or hefty taxation to be seen. I also don't want to forget to mention humanity's flagrant disregard of the Council's laws regarding AI development and research. We're over here making AIs like S.A.M, all the while thumbing our noses at the Council, while races like the Quarians were practically ostracized from galactic society for accidentally creating AI.

We're not so much an underdog as we are a race of Mary Sue snowflakes that are continuously usurping other species with thousands of years of interstellar trade, politics, and infrastructure under their belts with our superior 'genetic diversity'.