ME3 Flaws

ME3 has the best sense of your crew being a crew that works together along the way but it's never part of the design to make the game about them. They're incorporated in the plot, if only some of them which is great, but there's never anything resembling the Suicide Mission. It's all one-offs instead and two-three random moments when certain team members become mandatory to bring along for no good reason (when you think about this is an RPG and picking a team used to be our choice). Where was my choice to tell Liara to stay from Thessia because I'm the commander and I don't want her fragile thoughts about her homeworld to become a liability for the mission? This is exactly the same kind of emotional stakes as with Benezia yet in ME1 they ask you to reconsider who you bring with you if don't take Liara and you can say "nah, it's better this way" and go without her.

A great hollywood ending as opposed to a failed attempt at a Space Oddysey kind of ending that didn't feel smart or well conceived even a little. I love good high-concept science fiction endings and I love stuff like Interstellar where it constantly emphasises that the ideas are of higher weight than the various characters (even if protag and side character are the emotional core) so even when that was flawed it worked because I understood the entire time what type of narrative it was. ME3 juxtaposes some really, really Hollywood-appropriate stuff with some ill-fitting moments about a child and PTSD dreams and then an ending that pretends to be artsy sci-fi in nature when that isn't at all what Mass Effect had turned out to be over the course of the trilogy. It was a space-opera, not a high-brow science fiction. It may have been one in ME1 but the transition from hard sci-fi to space opera and back again was not exactly smooth or well signaled on BioWare's part and the return to hard-sci-fi elements had writing that wasn't competent.

Another argument that would be interesting to look at is how many fans that were lost with ME2 and ME3 respectively but we have no statistics. I think the series' fandom really blew wide open with ME2's mainstream success as opposed to ME1's Xbox-only status (for a year at least) and its slightly less appealing gameplay (to the mainstream I mean) but I know a lot of people that just gave up with ME3, either because of the ending or even before that. I also am watching a twitch streamer lately who was pretty into the series. 2 hours into ME3 she goes "Why are the conversations like this now? I feel like I can't really build the relationships. Urgh, ME3 feels so different it's bothering me". That's 100% how i felt too, and I know one of my local friends who played it around the same time complained about the same things, and I know there's a pretty big minority complaining about autodialogue as well. I also had two friends from high school at the time who were casual PS3-gamers who both played 2 and loved it. A bit into ME3 and they were both complaining. "Why are the side quests on the Citadel so bland? Why are there those two women by that fucking door scanner? I hate that". I've heard way more hate about Mass Effect 3 than I ever heard about 2 from the more general playerbase.

I just think ME3 was a game where more people noticed the flaws as opposed to ME2. There's the admittedly smarter or more intellectual fans who probably felt certain things in 3 was a big improvement such as the plot being an actual plot with structure and literary merit again and the more realistically portrayed use of gear and armor etc. but I have the impression that ME2 was the game that brought everyone on board and the fanbase has been very in and out then after 3.

In the hologram it's the collector ship over horizon, not the base. compare the two and you'll see.

Would it suit you better if I used the term "dissolved."  During the Long Walk, if you use the wrong biotic (e.g. Miranda) and the barrier fails, one of your squad mates gets carried up into the air by a swarm and the swarms do appear to "eat that squad mate" or, if you prefer, dissolve the squad mates body just before it's carried out of sight.



Start at 2:48 in this video.

The seeker swarm behavior is certainly not the spreading out and individually stinging and freezing of the victimes we see happening on Horizon.  Had they stuck with that during the Long Walk, Shepard's entire party would have likely been stung by only one or two of the swarmers and all frozen before they could make the door.  (Compare this video of the beginning of the Horizon mission).



Start at 2:47 in this video

As for not answering your question...you didn't actually ask me that question.  What you actually said was:

"I know you feel you need to somehow "balance" the criticisms of ME3..."

Uhm, no, they don't. In that video, and the one I linked you the squadmate is simply carried out of sight. The one you linked is even better for proving my point since Grunt is larger than Jack and thus easier to see. Look at the last frame before it cuts back to Shepard. I'd say 2:51 but it's probably 2:5123 and Youtube's not that precise. But the very last shot is actually Grunt very much intact with the majority of the swarm actually pulsing away from him. Blink and you'll miss it, but there is zero evidence of "devouring" or "dissolving". Nor would I expect there to be as that would actually require more animation, tweaking the models or creating "gibs" for each squadmate. We both know BioWare won't do that.


Obviously, because they were not programmed for seeker behavior in their own base. Honestly, they do different things in different situations, why is this so hard for you to accept? Hell this might even be default, not programmed behavior. Assuming they were modeled after insects (which, again feels like I'm saying the sky's blue), swarming on intruders to their hive/nest/whatever is precisely the expected behavior. You could make the case that with that many seekers all of them should've been swarmed when the bubble dropped and you may have a point there. But "oh no, why do they not only do one thing" is a silly thing to harp on.

And yes, I did ask you that very question, if you follow the rest of the quote

You chose to deflect by focusing on the word "shitty" out of context. So if you please, do you have an answer?

Do you need everything telegraphed for you? You're complaining about "foreshadowing" for such a minor element (your word, minor) and yet you're ok with the freakin holographic child in ME3 coming out of nowhere and spouting its crap about controlling the Reapers? Or how about its giant space rattle just suddenly found on Mars after years of study finding nothing of the sort? Where was your "foreshadowing" then? This is your sense of balance?

Minor or not, this criticism is ridiculous. There are plenty of things you can say about ME2, chief among them being it does precisely dick to advance the plot and I have yet to see anyone try to argue that isn't the case. But if you want to keep at this seeker thing, be my guest. You're not convincing me you're right, you're merely reminding me I could be doing better things.

My biggest issue with ME3 is that it's an action game with a shitty plot and shitty action sequences. Take the Reaper on Tuchanka. You can walk through the point it's shooting at you and not get hit, you don't have to kill a single Brute in that little arena, and the Reaper can only kill you if you have one bar of health and are directly under its leg when it slams down. So in essence, the entire ending sequence of the Tuchanka storyline is useless and could've been a cutscene without changing anything.

Also, this might be a little nitpicky, but... alright, I don't hate the dream sequences. I hate that they add to nothing, but I especially hate how they are triggered. Now, on repeat plays I'm predisposed to hate that kid, I admit that. But having Shepard see the kid get killed that then triggers some dream sequences... it's a little cliche but something I wouldn't mind. However, the kid gets blown up by a Reaper while the Normandy is sitting there staring at the damn thing. So, the Reaper decides to go after the lightly armed transports versus the warship looking right at it? Even disregarding that, neither Shepard or Joker make a move to get the hell out of there as soon as they see the Reaper? The whole setup is illogical, especially after I spent five seconds thinking about alternate ways to kill the kid and came up with, "You see his bloody body surrounded by Cannibals."

Some of the story setups are just stupid and the action is meaningless if not downright illogical. ME3 tries to up the stakes and ends up fumbling at nigh on every turn, in my opinion. I still love the character interactions and even some of the story beats, but overall it's a goddamn mess.

Got a video of you doing that on any mode that isn't easy? Cause I got wrecked several times in that instance trying to run. Even when I played Infiltrator class with cloak.

No one said you can't, just don't be surprised when others call out your callout for being flawed or invalid (which it is). There are plenty of other things you could've picked at, genuine goofs or outright fuckups that if you had done so, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. The seekers aren't even a thing I would've ever given much thought on, your post just caught my eye.

And you must, must stop playing the victim. There is no conspiracy against you. There is no conspiracy against ME3. I am not "the big bad mod" stifling your opinion. My status as facilitator of the rules has no bearing here because no rules have been broken. If I'm debating with you, I'm debating as a user. If you ever hear from me as a mod, it will not be a debate.

If the Collectors operate mainly in the Terminus System why would there be? We're not told shit about the Terminus in ME1, except vaguely implying it's bigger and more dangerous politically than it actually is. Seems like a retcon, or like they forgot what they going for initially <-probably a valid criticism of ME2.

But hey I'm not the one shouting "foreshadowing" like it's the Ten Commandments. Though I still have to point out that the Collectors and the termiReaper at least show up in new places we (either we the team or we humanity) haven't really explored. They're not right under our freakin noses on Mars or on the Citadel.

We'll see that after every iteration. ME1 fans complaining about ME2 were a plague on the old boards. In a few weeks we'll get people complaining about how ME:A didn't do ME3 features X, Y, and Z right.

Maybe we should have a thread about what X, Y, and Z are going to be.

And I wholly agree that ME3 is the game which gets called on the flaws, for whatever reason. It's amusing when an ME3 flaw turns out to be present in one of the earlier games.

seeker swarms?

On Horizon they fly around paralyzing their victims so that the collectors can put them in pods and take them back to their base. It saves a lot of time instead of the swarms flying back and forth one victim at a time. On the base, there is only the one squadmate to get. Why waste the time paralyzing him/her when carrying them off to wherever would be easier? Had there been a lot, they might paralyze them.

One time I did leave the barrier for the heck of it. Within 15-20 seconds I got a game over screen

I wonder why the swarms never showed up when fighting the proto reaper?

I don't know.

Maybe because they only had enough seekers to carry one.

Why didn't they use them when boarding the Normandy? Joker would be taken with the crew. the hologram would still be shackled. 

As you once posted. Go on twitter and ask Bioware