Everything Wrong With Mass Effect 3 Redux by GCN

Should have had Miranda "replace" the idiotic sexbot as the Cerberus specialist. That waste of an idea should've never left the writing room

EDI was a fine character in ME2. It didn't need a robot body and a cringe romance arc and it wouldn't have needed one in 3. Pretty sure nobody asked for that shit, but plenty would've liked Miranda back on the crew (or another ME2 teammate, but Miranda makes most sense both from a narrative and popularity standpoint)

James was pretty unnecessary too. I don't mind him, but he's essentially just a male version of Ashley (human grunt), and thus a pretty pointless character outside of the "ME3 is best place to start" thing that should've never happened. Another ME2 teammate could be in his place. 

Sounds simple enough, though if you’re trying to craft a narrative that’s meant to be unexpected, but fans end up hating it, the solution to that problem is not necessarily “well don’t do the unexpected”, since that would just be a wholly lazy answer. But I think might be veering away a bit from what I was talking about specifically. What you’re talking about here would apply most to the final act of the game, not really all those other details that came before it. BioWare tried to take a route that wasn’t a safe, straightforward victory that came in different flavors of bittersweet if you decided to rack up a bigger body count along the way. It’s just too bad that they didn’t so much stick the landing as much as they missed the mat, twisted their ankle and face planted into the judges’ table. 

The fanbase certainly wasn’t set aflame because [insert companion here] ended up not getting enough screen time in the end, or that the game itself didn’t have enough of a divergent path, if any, for choosing certain things in a previous game. After all, Mass Effect 2 offered no alternate path at all, and even ignored the major change to the galactic government you could cause. It gave a potential love interest from ME1 practically no screen time and a bitter farewell no matter what you said, and had an exceptionally thin plot that effectively invalidated the plot of the previous game, but people loved it. Personally, I think a fair amount of the ideas at play in the game function just fine as a product, but its BioWare’s implementation of those ideas that just go so wrong. It’s clear that making complete sense or crafting a totally cohesive story, important as they may be in the broad scheme of things, is not truly what makes or breaks this game, considering just how much we’ve been so willing to forgive, forget and ignore in the past. I could go on and on about the ending and what they could have done better, but I’m 100% certain that this part of the trilogy alone could have saved so much more. 

I'm going to make an unexpected argument here; if the rest of the game had been 10/10, the ending blowback would have been a lot less severe. ME3 breaks on multiple levels. It is a wholly flawed experience that simply implodes at the breaking point. Just like TLJ. TLJ is not a good movie, or at least not a good Star Wars movie. I've given my definition for TLJ, it's the opening episodes of TNG, with the Borg chasing the Enterprise, without the smart stuff, the dialogues, the characters, the tension and making it about fuel. On top of that, it kills Luke Skywalker. Prior to killing Luke Skywalker, it would have been a passably bad movie, but had TLJ been a fantastic movie, that did Luke justice, before killing him off, nobody would have batted an eye. Similarly, ME3 is a bad game, or a bad Mass Effect game, that also botches its ending. Had it been a good game, that justified the ending, it wouldn't have been a problem. The endings are just the breaking point of the game, the part where it all falls apart, because of how terrible everything leading to that part was.


Yes, because it did a lot of things right. It isn't a single point of failure, that kills ME3, but a sequence of poor choices that culminate in the utter failure of the title. I've said it before; you don't need to nail it 100% of the time. That is impossible. But nail it 70% of the time and you've got a hit. ME3 nails it a mere 30% of the time and that's why it fails. 70% is my magical success number.

The problem that Mass Effect, including Andromeda, faces moving forward is ME3. To put it another way, let me use Star Wars again. Say we get a new Star Wars movie, 500 years after the events of tRoS. There's a new Re(y)public, a new Jedi order etc. Luke would be dead, either way, so the setting shouldn't be affected by it, right? After all, it's Star Wars. What does it matter if Luke Han and Leia are all gone, they would be eventually, right? And here's the problem; nobody's going to care. You can build it up again, but it's going to take so much work and so much effort and it may not work in the end. There's no guarantee at this point that it will work. I mean, Andromeda didn't. And I'd actually say it is a better game than ME3. But figuratively nobody showed up for it and it subsequently died. So why would the next game fare any better? Neither the Bioware name, nor the Mass Effect brand mean that much to people right now. But people would have been much more receptive to the game, had Mass Effect been at a healthy state.

Another example; Halo or Gears of War. Both franchises are in decline. They have, or had been for quite some time. Bad installments, waning interest, changes in cast, but the franchise are still coasting along just fine. Gears 5 was actually a hit, sold really well, compared to recent Gears titles and 343i Studios, from what I'm hearing is really turning a few things around with the next title in the franchise, by doing what the fans want them to. Weird notion, I know, listening to people who only criticize and produce nothing, am I right? Anyway, what is my point? Neither of these franchises suffered from the kind of failure ME did. And while they were both in decline, listening to fans turned things around. Doing a good job turned things around. And Bioware, even though they did a better job with Andromeda than ME3, in my opinion, did not turn things around. The damage is done.

To conclude, if Mass Effect is to survive, the damage has to be meaningfully undone. Going back to the Milky Way, 500 years after the events of the Reapers war, a thousand years after, ten thousand years after, with some jumbled up mess of the legends told about the Milky Way post Reaper war isn't going to fix ME. It's ... basically what Andromeda did. And it failed. You'd just be making Andromeda 2, with another coat of paint.

Yes. You know, at my job, I don't make excuses, for when I fall short of my customer's needs or expectations. I make up for it. No matter the personal cost. I will make up for it. And I will hold every business to that same standard. So you see, it's not hypocrisy.


Well, in business, this is called a standard. Every company works at a standard, a very competitive standard. And you know what your customers love to hear? Yes. They like to hear yes, not excuses. "Oh this can't be done", "oh this is too much work" etc. You know what your client is going to tell you to that? Thank you for your cooperation. And they'll go to your competitor. This is what happened with Bioware. That's the effect. You want to excuse Bioware further? Be my guest. It doesn't bring the customers back. And you saw what happened to ME without the customers. It died. And the next one will die again.


Then don't make a game that should handle all these things, at once. Break it up. Make 10 games. Make 20 games. And make money, while you're at it and further your name. I think the concept of ME3 is broken at its core, under the circumstances and should therefore never have been attempted.

How much better that would have been, had it come from Jack, who had some actual beef with her, through a tale of female bonding, from having to work together in the battlefield and coming to an understanding of each other's viewpoints, though conversation and finding common ground, in spite of their differences, to eventually become, perhaps, good friends. Wouldn't that be a tale to experience? Guess not.

The fact you continue to deflect from addressing any part of my reply is very telling about the kind of person you are. I've been addressing your argument and your complaints and you refuse to actually respond. I'd call it fear at this point. Because the exponential growth of choices and the effects that can be given and how they could write that into the narrative isn't a irreconcilable difference. This is a basic fact. One you have been complaining endlessly about while refusing to address any point I bring up about it.