Your choices didn't matter by the end?

Kind of amazed how people don't seem to understand how choices work in the real world. And are some how upset that the game does something similar.

There are choices in life that are not effected by any others and the effects of them ignore all previous choices you have made before.

And yet you seem to lack the basic understanding that every choice made in the ME 3 game is all focused around uniting the galaxy to buy time to create the Crucible. You recuit the Krogan including curing the genophage not because of a moral stand point but because the Turians refuse to provide any assistance till they get the Krogan support of ground troops needed to allow some of the heat to be taken off the Turians.  Shepard only saves the Quarians or Geth or possibly makes peace between them because he needs the technological expertise and fleet to assist him.  In fact at one point both the Quarians and Geth use the reasoning that they would best be able to help with the Crucible as reason they should be supported. The choice to help Aria reclaim Omega is based around the need of the Mercenary Fleet and eezo needed for the war effort. The choice to search seek out the Leviathan is to attempt to find a Reaper killer. So that they have a plan B/something that can take some of the heat off the rest of the galaxy by introducing something capable of killing them.

Everything boils down to the Crucible. Once it is complete that is the end of all your choices and their effects it doesn't matter how they ended it. Catalyst or no Catalyst. Alternative endings or a single ending.

The creation of the Crucible is were all the different possible paths converge together at the end point. From the moment you attack the Cerberus base in the game you are starting down a new path.


Or to put it another way since you some time seem to struggle with complex ideas always simplifying or over simplifying them.

If you decide to move from North Dakota to Georgia once you finalized the move and leave your city. Be it by car or plane all your previous choices and actions done in that city will no longer apply to your new set up. You could have told everyone withing a 4 mile radius of your house to go sit and spin. You could be a total social pariah. To the point you are tolerated at stores simply because you spend money there. I mean such a giant pain in the collective rear end that they throw a party the moment they find out you are leaving.

But the second you leave that city all those choices are no longer in effect. You could do a complete 180 and become an absolute saint. Or you can keep being a big pain in the rear. Your collective choices and their repercussions ended at that city that you left behind. Just like the various choices and repercussions in the game end the moment the Crucible is complete and you attack the Cerberus base.

I actually get a lot of joy in curing the genophage.  When I see the slideshow at the end with Tuchanka being rebuilt - a thing not seen in thousands of years - and little babies being born, it makes me know I made the right choice.  We see a race that is finally moving forward.  I'm not super concerned about the fate of the geth because I know I'm going to kill them anyway but I still try to RP getting peace because Shepard doesn't know the outcome.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. I like the RP, for the most part. Hence, I'm currently playing a Shepard in ME1 who is Earthborn and Ruthless but is kind to his companions. I know the hard choices he makes will have an impact later on but this is just the kind of guy he is. He doesn't know the future. This Shepard definitely isn't thinking he's going to encounter a Starkid in three years who offers choices he'll in no way be able to trust (from an RP perspective). Never crosses my mind while I play.

(Sorry the quoting is weird.  Not sure what happened or how to revert it.)

When you take the route that all ending and all choices are equally valid and equally good then the ending kind of has to be extremely generic to compensate for the many ways of reaching it.  Just based on choices made in ME 3 alone there are dozens of possible ways for it to play out. Programing that many possible set ups simply isn't realistic. It is ok in our minds but we are dealing with imagination which is limitless not actual game creation.

The concept of save quarians= destroy points, save geth=control, etc causes problems. Because making peace with Geth has nothing to do with synthesis. Just like picking Geth over quarians has nothing to do with control. And that set up would also equal the same numbers on the board. Granted War Assets and I assume that is what you are referring to here could have done a bit better. Separating the stuff you find for Crucible from the warships you find which have no direct connection to building it.  But the War Assets themselves are a choice and the choice does show an effect on the game.

To low and Destroy option causes massive collateral damage and synthesis isn't an option. As well during the scene during the start of the fight it shows the galaxy struggling against the Reapers.  Choose to get high war assets and it shows the galaxy putting up a much greater fight against them. As well as if you choose destroy there is no collateral damage and synthesis is an option.

As for holokid as what seems to be a good 70-80% of the complaints about this game it is all more a state of mind then actual problem.

They really never said that it was the first of a trilogy at the time when ME(1) was the only ME game. They only came out with a statement that ME had always been planned as a trilogy after ME2 came out, and after it had proven successful.

The end of ME1 had an obvious sequel hook, but the change in tone and style between ME1 and ME2 is pretty good evidence, as I see it, that those "plans" were never more than a vague possibility that there might be a sequel. If a trilogy had been in their minds from the start, the sequels wouldn't be such a storytelling mess. The plain fact is, ME1 was the only ME game with a well-structured story that was solidly grounded in the MEU's lore. The sequels, from the storytelling point of view, appeared to me as if the new team didn't really know what they should do with the groundwork laid earlier. So no, I don't believe that ME had always been planned as a trilogy.

There were signs that a change in story direction was taking place even within ME1 though.  The story line there is not as tight and "solidly grounded" in the lore as you're indicating.  The Citadel itself is touted as being a huge Mass Relay... but by the end of the game we're left with a little mini one-way relay that goes to the Citadel only as a device to get Saren into a public area so he can shoot his way into the Council Chambers and open the Citadel's arms... which are normally open.  I strongly suspect that game suffered from sections of it being cut and the remaining story getting revamped to try to "tie up" plot holes that were created by cut content.  Those sorts of changes in story direction are just easier to "work in" to a first installment of series than in the third one.

The ME Trilogy was an ambitious concept (perhaps an overly ambitious one for Bioware) that achieved unforeseen success.  The company did it's best to keep up with the rollercoaster they found themselves on... and ME3 is really not that bad a game... It's just not the "perfect" game that the fans were dreaming of... so they felt "let down" by it.  The company had lots of "growing" pressures on it... being acqured by EA was not the least of many others.  Hopefully, Bioware is a little older and wiser now and hopefully EA is giving them what they need (in terms of time) to develop their plans for the story properly (that is if ME:A is being planned to be a POTENTIAL trilogy at all.)

"Disturbing" is not entertainment for me.  And not all attention is positive.  If I see my nephew trying to stick a fork in an electrical socket, he's going to hold my interest, though neither of us will be happy about it.

What holds me here (well, aside from the Dragon Age games) is that Bioware used to be a go-to developer for cRPGs.  They were once a solid, reliable company.  Before they got delusions of being artists at least.  

I actually agree somewhat with the replayability of the game, but from a different perspective: I think ME3 has great replayability, if you have different saves from the previous games.
That way you get to see how things go differently throughout the game, which I think is awesome.
But that was a problem for me with ME2 as well. The things that affected the end game were the least interesting. I mean, who wouldn't do everyone's loyalty missions anyway? It's how other parts of the game playout that interested me.

I never had a problem with that aspect of the outcomes as such. Sure, they all feel uncomfortable because of what they are, but had they been presented by a neutral agent, people wouldn't have felt they lost in the end. Iakus would probably have hated them still, but then, almost nobody else has held their grudges for 4 years.

In any case, a story that's going to end up with a disturbing choice would be well advised to lay the groundwork much earlier. Disturbing outcomes are as valid as any others, but ME3's came out of nowhere. And it was presented by the enemy leader...

Again, I think it all comes down to the Catalyst. It drastically compounds everything else that people don't like about the ending, and without it, that everything else may have been more acceptable.

But there isn't anything wrong with the Catalyst.  Blaming the Catalyst is like blaming Neville Chamberlain for WW2 happening.

I certainly don't disagree that a big part of Mass Effect's undoing was that they had no freaking idea where they were going with the story.  But it was planned to be a trilogy.

... and philosophically speaking... would any one person's choices matter even that much in a world galaxy locked in a repeating cycle of war for all of it's known history.  The game, from the outset, led us on an attempt to solve the unsolvable... world peace.  The cost of peace is extremely high and it's not surprising that Bioware could not come up with a satisfying ending.  Someday, lakus, I hope you can come with a real life solution to that dilemma.

As for the use of the Catalyst - We do fight entire wars to get an opportunity to eventually sit down with the leader of the enemy and broker peace... and then, in the end, we don't trust them enough to act on those options or to maintain that peace.  The "problem" with the Catalyst being the enemy is, I think, part of what the story was building towards all along.