The Mass Effect ending support group

Yeah...

I got ME2 for free with a GPU upgrade, I think it was a 560ti. Anyways, I started the game and was some resurrected space commander, which struck me as odd and informed me that I needed to play ME1 first.

I then played ME1, loved it, played ME2 and also loved it. But god damn the story beats.... Space Jesus and the T1000 would have been a better title.

I liked the notion of lazarus and Shep getting a second chance at life from a roleplaying perspective. What i didn't like was how they dumped subject on a back burner too quickly, followed by the then attempt to kill Shep again in me3.

I can go on but the character development and stories are very mixed. They are all one trait characters at best with only half actually having a decent personal story developed.  A single character trait and only half ass development is a corner stone of this series from ME1 to MEA.

I would have left Shepard dead to be replaced by a new main character especially since Shepard can die again in ME3.

Anyways. Instead of killing Shepard at the beginning of ME2, have him/her survive with minor injuries. Over the next couple of years, Shepard recovers the dogtags from the sight of the SR1 wreckage, investigates who/what destroyed the SR1 and to find any clues that can help deal with the reapers. Back on the Citadel, Shepard encounters Miranda. She explains who she works for and want Shepard to help find out who has been abducting colonists. She invites Shepard to a colony to prove what she said. Shepard talks with Anderson who confirms colonist have gone missing. Shepard is upset the Alliance isn't doing anything. She/he decides to work with Cerberus. The Alliance isn't happy about that, but at the same time know something has to be done. 

Or really play with the idea of the ME2/3 Shepard being just a clone or copy or "A VI that just thinks it's Commander Shepard." instead of only having that one conversation in the Cerberus base. 

Putting aside that the game didn’t even allow us to have Shepard even so much as ask about rejoining the Alliance, the real cause of the break between them is the fact that they’re essentially tied up with both the rebuilding of their thinned-out fleet, and the Council’s backslide into retardation with their doubling down of doubting the existence of the reapers after nearly getting wiped out by one. It’s established immediately on the Citadel that even if Shepard wanted to, basically the “good guy” faction is just down for the count for various reasons.

So where did this death and resurrection really get us in the end? Seems to me that all it got was a skill reset. Any of the meaningful story and character implications inherent with the kind of voodoo magic Cerberus had to yank out of its ass to resurrect someone whose body was obliterated by being spaced and flung into a planet’s atmosphere got traded up for a lot of one-liner references to it, like “I got better”. 

I don’t actually agree with killing Shepard at the start of the game. What I’m saying is that killing Shepard in the beginning was cheap drama that was quickly deflated. If you’re going to kill a character, just do it and make the drama stick. Otherwise, don’t bother. 

Seems to me like ME2 itself established that Shepard’s relationship with Cerberus was coming to an end at some point. Even if you attempted to be pro-Cerberus, the writing of the game always made it seem like you were making a pact with the devil to get the job done. Just look at Project Overlord, where David’s put into a weird sadistic cyber-crucifixion machine with his eyes stuck open instead of lying in a nice hospital bed or something. The game is overt with its anti-Cerberus sentiment, even if Shepard can pretend otherwise in dialogue. Just look at the reaction of everyone if you give the Collector base to Cerberus. Everyone thinks it’s a bad idea, even the Cerberus lackeys. 

You don't need death or a coma. You just need two years of lack of evidence of the Reapers.

I mean, imagine, Shepard and crew spend all this time searching the galaxy for evidence of Reaper activity, historical evidence, ways to fight them, etc, and get...nothing! Shepard squanders Spectre authority, the goodwill he/she gained from bringing down Saren, and is in real danger of turning the Council and/or the Alliance into a laughingstock over a phantom threat. "Maybe Sovereign really was some kind of geth superdreadnaught"

Shep basically becomes this:




Funding dries up, crew gets recalled and reassigned. Everyone sorta drifts away. Shep doesn't get recalled largely because everyone just wants the "hero of the Citadel" to just GO AWAY. so the Normandy gets reassigned to the Terminus to be out of sight, and hopefully get killed by pirates or someting. Until a battered Normandy operating on a skeleton crew pulls into Omega, and gets met by Jacob and Miranda with an offer Shepard really can't refuse...

Fair enough, I think there were flaws in every game but for me very little was large enough to interrupt the entertainment value of the games.

I think the endings were bad. I think Indoctrination Theory is bad.

I think that most people were going to be disappointed with the endings, because the ride with Shepard was a great one, and it's hard to end that satisfactorily. Especially since a doomsday weapon like the Crucible really needed some buildup (I can accept the Protheans, it took the Reapers centuries to harvest, but humanity needed some head start)

Even before that the exposure to vacuum and subsequent freezing would have rendered Shepard unrevivable. The freezing would result in every cell and surrounding ultrastructure to be shredded by the formation of ice crystals. But I've long since learned to shut off the science part of my brain when watching/reading/playing SciFi (not just ME) because it's all bad science to one degree or another. There's very little well written science fiction with respect to science.

Shepard would have been reduced to atoms miles before even hitting the planet. No armor for Legion to fix the hole in his chest. No armor for Liara to keep. No dog tags for Hackett to recover. No helmet to keep. And certainly no body to revive.