Every time you post in this thread a Batarian dies.
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Every time you post in this thread a Batarian dies.
Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
UFOs Are A Psyop Shirt $21.68 |
Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
whats a batarian
a plague
a loathsome creature
Go back
A cheap allegory by the developers for what they believe your average unapologetic white person is like.
Take your meds anon
meds, now
>Batarians
>White
>Not a blatant North Korea allegory
Why must /misc/ schizos leak into every board?
they're space russians anon
who else do you think are a White and unapologetic country at this point, other than Russia? real answers only
>"What? Just 305000?"
>*sends the asteroid to the relay near the batarian homeworld instead
>Casualties?
Frick Batarians but also frick YOU
WTF IS THAT
A (now dead) Batarian, thanks to you.
WHY didn't we get ME3 multiplayer if the Legendary Edition of the ME trilogy is the best version?
good riddance to bad garbage
but do i get an asari gf?
Only if you are a man
i'm fine with it
Asari doesn't have dicks. In non-cucked edition of Mass Effect 3, you can see pussies on Banshees
>castrated asari
Its so sad that they cut off Samara's dick and balls so she could never create anymore Ardat Yakshi.
Don't worry Bioware will try and force the blue demon down your throat at every opportunity.
Whats the fricking point of even giving the player choices for romance if you're just going to make Liara the main character of 3 anyway.
>Liara is literally the only character in the series who cannot die
>Kerrilian is still better as an information agent than her, making her entirely redundant in the role
The sheer incompetence of 3 never ceases to amuse
Its not 3's fault though. 2 needed to make Liara edgy and cool so they threw her established character out the window so she could be the shadow broker. She could've just stayed as a Prothean researcher and literally nothing changes in the series.
>it’s not 3’s fault that it introduced a redundant character that makes her repeatedly look moronic, despite Liara being the only character who did not need one
Wat.
I don’t disagree that she was brutally character assassinated in 2, but the fact they introduced an information specialist that feeds you all the important intel, despite having the shadow broker on your side was phenomenally moronic writing.
Other redundant characters at least had the excuse of there potentially being needed to cover dead characters, but Liara is such a writer’s let that she literally can’t die
My point was that 3 sucked because 2 didn't know what it was doing. Cerberus wouldnt be a shit villain in 3 if they didnt spend all of 2 apologizing for and jacking off the illusive man.
I can definitely get behind that.
It’s especially bad in 2 where we constantly come across the colossal frick ups cerberus have made, yet the game wants us to believe TiM is a good boy who dindu nuffin, then it also bangs on about how practically omniscient the man is despite the lunatic cell heads fobbing him off with transparent bullshit.
There’s a point where the isolated cell excuse doesn’t fly any more, because so many of the goddamn things keep shitting the bed and clearly require more supervision.
If "muh independent cells" is such a great organization method, then why do they keep doing fricking insane shit? The fact that they try to pull a "tim dindu nuffin" with Jack is insulting. Miranda is a c**t and like actually incredibly mean to Jack for no real reason.
"But she calls me a cheerleader!"
Miranda has a history of just saying Cerberus did nothing wrong (see screenshot where she says infiltrating and nearly destroying a Flotilla ship was fine and okay). She's generally a completely unreliable narrator about everything and a compulsive liar to manipulate them, which most people seem to miss. It contrasts with Jack who always tells you the truth about how she's feeling or what she's done to try to push you away, which is a real thing traumatized or emotionally immature people do because they feel like nobody will ever love them if they know the truth. It's why Jack feels like she was written with love and tenderness, and Miranda comes off smug no matter what she's doing.
yeah but miranda has big breasts and a perfect ass
Maybe its the shitty swimsuit shes wearing but its not that amazing.
Jack in 3 is hotter than Miranda
Miranda's ass is a meme. Aria unironically has an ass that completely mogs Miranda in 2 and 3. That b***h's ass is massive.
An even greater crime than ME3's ending is no Aria romance.
Size isn't everything
That's a very fair point. Samara's got the breasts and Tali has the ass, but Miranda has both.
Of course, she also has the face, which puts a damper on that.
It's not the biggest, but it's shapely, and she wears pants that mass effect themselves to be more form-fitting. You can count the wrinkles on her butthole in those, I swear.
Miranda knows one big truth, though. Nobody and nothing is perfect, including herself. You only need to appear, or keep the pretense up. Because that's what it all is, a pretense. Everything is fake. She knows that it's all about manipulation, it's something she's known about herself, since she was a child. Which is why she was so stern and controlling with Project Lazarus, why she is so cold and distant, etc.
That's true. I didn't mean to imply that Miranda was written poorly, because she isn't, and as I said she forms a contrast with Jack. They both see the galaxy the same way, they just come at it from different angles. She came out of a test tube, Jack came out of a lab, and neither of them are 'real'. It's an interesting dichotomy. But ultimately, Jack is just more likable than Miranda is in basically every circumstance, and Miranda coming off as a smug c**t is intentional, to make you feel Cerberus is even greasier and more unethical than you can see, even with the few positive things they do.
Both characters are wrong, though. And that's one of the great things in their writing; how both characters have the potential to learn and grow from their interactions, a potential I don't think we've seen from another pair of female characters in gaming. There's also the appeal of the characters. Yvonne Strahovski is absolutely adorable, every which way and Courtenay Taylor is one of the best VAs in the industry. They both imbue their characters with charm, which draws you in, in addition to their writing, which gets you immersed and invested. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that we really don't have another couple of characters, not just female characters, in gaming, that have such a dynamic and potential The fact that Bioware sidelined and then shelved them, isn't a positive to the franchise, and whoever deluded themselves in thinking that repeating, or exceeding what they achieved with them, is possible, I hope, got a very brutal awakening with the reception of Bioware's newer characters.
Jack got sidelined really hard but the Grissom Academy mission was really good and even better with romance. Its a nice place for her character to go.
Grissom was terrible. She was the only good thing about it.
Really well put, anon. I don't have much to add on, which is saying something because I'm a mouthy moron usually. I'm glad we see eye to eye, you seem like a smart fellow
In part they were sidelined because of the suicide mission. It would have been better if they just retconned it so that regardless how me2 ended a few more of the crew had survived so they could take greater roles in 3. All that was needed is some dialogue explaining how they barely made it out alive. It would have been corny but better than what we got, and I get the feeling that most people play me2 so that everyone survives anyway.
Both, at some point, were supposed to be full squad members. Jack, however, was scrapped for time, so they could fit in Tali instead, and Miranda's content is somewhat restored in a mod, that adds her back into the game. So patently, the suicide mission had nothing to do with it. It was always about time.
No doubt ME3 was rushed, but the suicide mission didn't help since they had to waste time figuring out divergent paths based on how me2 ended. If they had just decided that no matter what these crew members survived it would have at most required a couple lines of dialogue to explain how they survived.
One of the things about "your choices matter", one would expect, is that some things either happen, or don't. You don't get replacements, you don't get new companions. If X died, then nobody shows up. And if you imported a save where not enough squadmates made it through, then maybe you get a game over, because you fricked up. Wouldn't that be nice? That's the kind of C&C that I expect in a game where choices matter.
I'm just saying cut down on the amount of potential divergent paths so that the ones that are left have a greater focus and potential impact. They gave too much player choice and had no way of resolving all of them so they just kinda gave up and railroaded all paths to the same spot and the choices don't really matter in the end. The series would have been better served with less choices and less paths but more time spent developing those alternate paths.
I don't particularly care, at this point. We have confirmation that content was cut for time, important content. And instead we got Samantha Traynor, Cortez and Diana Allers. Not worth the tradeoff.
Allers is the worst of the bunch. She exists solely to flaunt how shamelessly EA was buying reviews at that point.
In a strange turn, though, James is almost unarguably one of the best human squadmates in the series despite looking like he was going to be utter dudebro "we want the Call of Duty audience" garbage from all the pre-release stuff. Beef Largecheese turned out pretty well. Funny how those things work out.
I never remotely cared for Vega, and I hate mr. Sarah Michelle Gelar.
I didn't even realize he was voiced by Fred until you mentioned it.
Even if you don't care for him, do you really like Ash more? Or Jacob? Or fricking Kaiden (the worst squadmate in the series)? The only competition I can imagine is Jack, since Zaeed is unfortunately not very fleshed out.
>Kaidan
>worse than Kanye
homie are you serious?
I revel in leaving Kaiden to die on Virmire. Frick you, Worse Carth, you whiny b***h.
That's a fair point. Maybe I see him with a lower bar for Bangman Processblast because he's in ME3 alone, but I think he gets more out of one conversation than most of the others do (and it helps that his scenes are dynamic instead of just sit-and-talks too).
>and it helps that his scenes are dynamic instead of just sit-and-talks too
Exactly because he's wasted resources, that's what bothers me the most, about him. He's not interesting, I have no reason to get invested in him, especially because he's a one and gone character, that shows up too late into the trilogy to be of any real use, and I have zero motivation to even consider him. I'm more invested in Rana Thanoptis' character, than James Vega.
Zaaed, Jack, Miranda, Kasumi, are all more fleshed out and better characters than him.
As for the rest, they're all equal amounts of pointless. Like, if there was a choice to kill Ashley, Jacob, Kaidan, or Vega, I'd probably kill Vega, but it's not because the others are that much better. And I'd choose to kill him over every other squadmate.
Jacob annoys me because he has a distinct personality that doesn't actually carry over from his original game. In fact, the way he brushes you off almost felt like they were saying "you should go play his game instead if you want to know more about him."
>Zaeed and Kasumi
You mean the characters that didn't even have proper dialogue in ME2 and were treated like generic citadel NPCs when on the Normandy
Ashley was absolutely kino in ME1. They should have just kept her as the hard-headed marine who just wants to get the job done as efficiently as possible.
Ashley in ME3 is practically a completely different character tbh
Not only that but her character arc about hating aliens is basically retconned considering its never brought up again in ME2 or ME3
I mean even if they just put a throwaway line in like "yeah got over my alien space racism after all those times wrex/liara/tali/garrus saved my ass" or something would have been nice.
That's why I prefer to kill her, so I don't have to see her dumb bimbo face afterwards. Carth, at least, I can believe turning on Shepard in 2, since he already admits to having problems with authority figures.
Flexy McBufferson would have been a great companion if he started off in ME1, but adding him to 3 felt like he was taking up a slot for someone more deserving.
Miranda's right when she says
>that wasn't really Cerberus
Jack's too emotive to distinguish between the doctor acting under his own inititiative and his employer ignorant of the experiments' specifics.
It worked for secret societies throughout history. Each member of the Mithraic mysteries or Masons or Kabbalists or whoever can independently pursue the goals of the organization under his own discretion and, if/when they run into one another again identify their shared allegiance with secret passphrases like yiddish.
It's not the best structure for pooling resources or focusing activities but it's anti-fragile which's why such organizations survive even when far weaker than their enemies.
>Miranda's right
SHEPHERD! MIRANDA WON'T ADMIT WHAT CEBERUS DID TO ME WAS WRO-oNG!
she already whines and tattles to Shepherd like he's DADDY
>posts shoe past her prime
twitter commie detected. That's a wig.
>jobber
No matter how many times I hear this work in context I never understand what it means.
Jack is easily the worst character in the trilogy due to her whininess.
I think they were trying to make her the "badass who does her own thing and takes nobody's shit" archetype but every actual conflict she gets in is petty and moronic.
Yeah I know we're trying to stop the galaxy destroying robots but let me just pick a fight with someone who works on the otherside of the ship over something that happened over a decade ago. Genius.
bruh
1. The team-member conflict adds to the games replayability.
2. It's also implemented in Legion vs Garrus.
3. If you're a smooth talker you can keep both hos loyal.
4. Her whole life has been on a bad course because of her kidnapping and MKULTRA upbringing.
5. She's not whiny generally.
6. Her appeal to Shepherd indicates she identifies him as on her side which's big personal growth.
I don’t mind it with Miranda, since she pretty consistently had blinkers on, but the game itself also wants to justify TiM as being a degree of separation away from the fricked up things they do, right up until the end where Shepard is allowed to grow a spine.
It’s very frustrating that the player can never approach the subject without being subjected to TiM being so much cooler than everyone else. Even the ending feels more like childish pique than telling him to frick off
It just reeks of corporate shilling. They literally tell you that Cerberus is a human supremacist paramilitary organization funded by corporations and the wealthy and they act like that isnt the worst kind of organization possible. The constant "government bad, vigilante good" is kind of tiring.
When I played ME2 originally I thought they were overtly retconning all the shit ME1 Cerberus sidequests. I knew TIM/Cerberus was eventually going to go Saren but I thought there might be some subtlety to it, but they really put a lot of work into Cerberus as an early 2010s Modern Warfare chasing facton for the multiplayer and their role in the SP game just got completely moronic because they wanted to use those assets.
I mean they literally gave him husk eyes, i knew from the second I opened the game that hes indoctrinated and then I just had to be his fricking b***h for the whole game.
2's main concern was fleshing things out, for better and worse. You see a lot more of the galaxy, in a lot more detail than ever. The crew are characters instead of living codex entries on their races, and you visit Asari and Krogan worlds to actually see how they work firsthand. It establishes basically everything about Cerberus as a major player in the background, upgraded from 4 small missions in prefab maps. It develops the Reaper modus operandi with Collectors as their tools, sets up the Dark Energy plotline all over the place, establishes what Reapers want, essentially re-creates the Geth as something more than lightbulb robots to shoot, gives you unique takes on issues like the Genophage with nuance. It shows you a more alive galaxy, even down to more interesting random conversations you can pick out of a crowd.
Part of the blame lies with ME1 barely utilizing the setting. Wrex is the only Krogan you speak to besides one Warlord trying to kill Liara, so it needs to spend its time fixing that. Tali is the only Quarian so it needs to spend a lot of its time fleshing that one. Same with Salarians and Mordin, except you had a whopping three for those. And three of four major missions (Feros, Noveria and Ilos) deal with extinct races, instead of developing the living ones who continue to have consequences. It's just really poor utilization of a great setting, and most of the best stuff for it comes from 2 when it should've been in 1. 2 gets a lot of shit for "collectors are irrelevant" but why the frick did we need 1/4th of our game to be about the fricking Thorian? Because of Gravemind, I guess.
All in all, as it stands, I think the real remedy would've been to make it a quadrilogy, because they really needed a game to show things getting bad instead of just saying "oops, it's the end of the world hehe!" at the start of 3. It's so sudden and melodramatic (because it's rushed) that 3 feels fake, like the situation is too bad but also just... not real
wut
It's 3 that shat everywhere on everything written in ME1 and ME2
I really don't get the rabid ME3 defenders that have started visiting Ganker
activate your brain more when thinking about the trilogy
Liara in 2 was clearly trying her best to replace Shepard. There was an obvious sense of loss there, which manifests in how she was still hesitant when Garrus and Tali basically threw themselves into your arms. Mentally she was still rejecting Shepard because she thought they were going to be taken away from her again, and had hitting Renegade irl to cope with suddenly losing her support structure. It was an interesting, natural evolution of ME1's Liara, just like Garrus becoming Archangel was an evolution and showing him cope, and Wrex on Tuchanka too. (I would include Tali but she doesn't have a personality in 1 to begin with.)
3 is the one that fails to continue evolving her. In that, like in most departments, it's a totally rushed nightmare of a game.
Except Garrus becoming Archangel and Wrex tardwrangling the Krogan are direct continuations of their characters in 1.
Liara had nothing connecting her to the Shadow Broker and nothing connecting her to information trading in general, sure shes coping but I just dont think it was handled well. Also she didnt say hi to Garrus or Tali when I went to see her in 2 and shes a b***h for that. Glad 3 added in more of that kind of stuff, loved seeing Garrus and Wrex talk on Sur'Kesh.
Garrus becoming Archangel was his attempt at replacing Shepard. Spectres are said to usually work alone, which is why only Shepard and Liara (or the romance in ME1) were on the Normandy when it got Collected, but Garrus put together a team of specialists to bust shit up instead. He's not emulating a Spectre, he's emulating his Spectre. And Wrex actually becoming a Battlemaster on Tuchanka feels like the 'reward' for being a solid friend to him and influencing him to feel like the Krogan mean something again, because before he clearly didn't give a shit. Shepard put a spark back in his soul, and he makes use of it.
>sure shes coping but I just dont think it was handled well
I don't think it was handled spectacularly either, necessarily. I don't know what else she could've done to have that same character arc, though. I imagine they ran into the same issue, given ME1 characters were so bland.
>Also she didnt say hi to Garrus or Tali when I went to see her in 2 and shes a b***h for that.
Yeah, holy shit, I waited until I had got them both to go see her (just a few days ago, I'm on ME3 now) and I was fricking shocked they didn't have any dialogue. Considering ME2 is usually solid for letting squadmates talk in certain situations, having them just stand outside was super fricking weird, and I have no clue what that was about.
Funny story, about six months before the Will Continue teaser came out, I talked to this guy on the BSN that said Liara would return for the next game, and Bioware's plan was to increase Liara's involvement and participation, per title, if it underperformed.
>more liara to make brainlets like the game
This series deserves to die and im just going to play Mass Effect 1 on repeat forever. Liaragays need the rope and thermalcucks will face the wall.
Literally made for human females
Made for dancing and nothing else
Okay!
Imagine marrying Tali and then holding her hand while a batarian pounds her like a cheap prostitute on your honeymoon.
have a nice day cuck, or better yet, die when I shoot an asteroid into your local mass relay.
Happened in best Mass Effect, too (2, to, tutu).
Disgusting, greasy Batarian fingers typed out this post.
Consenual cuckoldry is based, don't let these idiots say otherwise
if anyone cucks shepard with tali it'd be garrus tbh
>357 checked, actually happens in 3 if you don't play ~~*multiplayer*~~
>average taligay
yep but would you expect anything less
I wish we got a batarian companion you could abuse and call four-eyes and shit
good
Turian Supremacy
Very saddened that we never got to meet and frick Garrus's sister
based and turian gf pilled
>no breasts
>no hips
>no soft flesh
No thanks, if im gonna frick a b***h with incompatible amino acids im gonna frick one with cute breasts and squishy thighs.
Coward
I would kill every person on this planet for a turian gf
I need a Drell gf to throatfrick so often and deposit so much cum into that the moisture of my loads singlehandedly advances her Kepral's Syndrome to the final stage
imagine eating your drell gf out and getting high off of her bodily fluids since they're hallucinogenic and then she gives you a blowjob while you're tripping balls
finna crash my whip into Turian owned businesses
sex
NOW
MODS?!
>New new Mass Effect won't be out, before 2028
>We'll get an all new batch of rejects for a main cast
>Even what returning cast there is, will be a sliver of the people we knew, because the new protagonist won't have the same relationship Shepard had with them
>Will probably only appear in a cameo, that lasts less than 2 minutes
>Bioware will charge us $70 for it
It's a long time to wait for something that I can watch on youtube, for free.
Bioware learned from their mistakes, they said they'll return to their roots and really focus on making DA4 and ME4 a real narrative focused RPG.
I trust that statement about as much as a glass hammer.
>Bioware learned from their mistakes
> Bioware learned from their mistakes
I would have to be a fool to take Bioware, at their word, and with the next ME being still 6 years away, and nothing to show for it. I'm sorry, I just don't believe it. And nobody cares about DA4. It's a dead game.
Bioware has made many mistakes and had a difficult time learning from them but this is a point of no return for them. If DA4 or ME4 suck they're a dead studio. Not dying like when anthem flopped or andromeda had worse facial animations than Mass Effect.
Maybe they'll return to the series roots and have a story thats not moronic.
I'm going to be honest, I don't care about the setting, I don't care about the story, and I most certainly don't care to meet Bioware's next batch of reject, that will be the main cast of the game. I only care about having fun with some old friends. And I don't mean the Citadel DLC kind of fun. I don't need it to be funny, I need it to be fun. As in entertaining. Bioware is simply not making entertaining games anymore.
As much as I hate 2 for being an anthology of character stories with some shit to glue it together. A bunch of stories about what the gang has been up to wouldnt be bad. No new major characters and stop making alternate endings where you hurt or kill your friends. I dont want to kill Wrex but theres probably a ton of content for that shitter Wreav I saw once when I was like 13 and never again.
But 2 is legitimately the best game in the franchise. Nobody really cares about the Reapers, and the people that did, well, you have ME3 thanks to them. They should never have been the focus, and the stories of characters, that really got you to care for them, would always be far more interesting than the Reaper War, that also killed off some of the best characters in the franchise, with no way to get them back. ME3 is a game full of bad developer choices. Not because there was no other way to do them, but because Bioware chose to do them that way. Extremely short-sighted of them.
> Nobody really cares about the Reapers
Remind everyone what the introductory cutscene has TiM and Miranda talking about again.
Remind everyone what the final cutscene of the game is
Reapers as backdrop characters trying to stir shit in the Milky Way, is fine. Reapers as main villains, is terrible. So bad, in fact, that in the one game that they are the main villains, Bioware had to swap them out for Cerberus.
If that was the case, then why did 2 make it clear that the reapers were explicitly on their way to the milk way, and that they were no longer a nebulous threat that someone in the future would have to face?
ME2 not advancing the reaper plot would have been fine if not for the ending, and even then it could have been wrangled with some handwaving if not for fricking arrival.
Arrival was made with ME3 in mind. Remember, by the time it was released, ME3 was already into its last ... 9 months of development? So already half way into its development cycle. That the Reapers would have to, at one point, be dealt with, is true. You can't have them be backdrop forever, and you can't have them always be these masterminds, manipulating things from the shadows. But even then, I'd say the Reapers, in that cutscene, are probably hundreds of thousands of light years away. It's ME3 that needed their arrival to be accelerated. Not the other way round. ME3 is a game that, maybe, we should be getting now, after a few more games with Shepard and co. At the very least, it should have had a development cycle that put it way past 2012, and possibly be an early PS4/XBONE title. As is stand, ME3 is entirely the wrong game.
Arrival was such a bafflingly stupid decision to make.
3 was utterly kneecapped by it, and the fact that nobody at any point realised the crucible might be a hint they’d fricked up shows how awful hack and casey were
>3 was utterly kneecapped by it
Like I said, you could easily have the Reapers, at the end, still be thousands of light years away. For example, the Andromeda Galaxy is visible, from Earth. We can see it, with a naked eye, if the sky isn't light polluted. You can google it, it's true. The Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light years away. The average ship in ME can FTL for about 3 ly per day. The Reapers are supposed to be able to do twice that speed, so 6ly per day. Due to our position from Andromeda, and our relative size to that of a Reaper (let's say the average human is 2m tall, while the smallest Reaper, assuming these are the ones we are seeing at the end of Arrival, is 2km tall, so a Reaper is 1000 times larger than your average human). For the Reapers to have that view of the Milky Way, at their size, and relative distance, could easily put them at 1 million years away. And at 6 ly a day, it would require ~170.000 days, which is more or less ~500 years.
I said this a decade ago and I'll say it again now. There should've been 30-50 Reapers TOTAL, with a much larger emphasis on their cryptowars and agents rather than just being big battleships. Having millions of Reapers show up at once makes them so untouchable that they actually can't be utilized effectively as a villainous force, because they can't realistically be beaten in force, it makes no sense that they rely on other forces when there are so many of the super-elites going around, and it takes away any sense of victory in the rare instances that a Reaper is killed on-screen, because there's another 40,000 right behind him.
A small number of reapers would even have worked as brute force if necessary, given their MO was to isolate the galaxy and steadily exterminate it.
It would also have meant that they could actually have been fought, had the games provided a plot about either using the relays against them, or simply locking their ability to hijack the system. That would also have cut away the plot hole of the reapers not just simply rushing the citadel
"There are dozens of Reapers but if they warp through willy-nilly we can blast one to bits before its friends show up. This is an unacceptable loss for them, and we can't exactly sustain it either, but they're going to live forever and we aren't so they don't mind taking hundreds of years to whittle us down instead of letting us even kill one per fleet."
"If we had every gun in the galaxy firing at every Reaper, we still wouldn't win. But it'd be way closer than they're comfortable with.
vs.
"Dozens of reapers just showed up at once and destroyed three entire fleet casually on the way to Earth, and flew from Pluto to Earth in minutes. They'll probably take years destroying it fully, so much so that after months there'll still be a standing army fighting them, despite how easy it'd be to glass the planet from orbit, but there's still fricking 96 reapers there, so we can't hope to take it back unless we get the speshul Deus Ex Machina."
If the reapers were invented a billion of years ago, and they come around every 50,000 years, there would only be 20,000 cycles. There's like a dozen harvest-ready species in the game's cycle, so if we assume that's an average, there should be around 200,000 reapers total, spread across the entire galaxy. You could make their creation more modern, though, since the Leviathans were added only in 3.
Hypothetically, you're correct. I think "a billion" is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but regardless.
>There's like a dozen harvest-ready species in the game's cycle
Prior to ME3 they show no interest in harvesting Asari, Salarians, Quarians, Drell, Volus, Hanar, Elcor... Anything but Turians and Humans in ME2 after Shepard dabs on them. In writer logic, knowing that Karpyshan had it all planned out already, the Reapers would've only wanted to harvest the knowledge of the most powerful race in the cycle, which was, in ME1, undoubtedly the Turians. Following Shepard almost singlehandedly destroying Sovereign, that switches over to Humans. And it's stated that the proto-Reaper final boss is similar to a fetus and not even close to being finished, which would require the harvesting of Earth, so we can assume they can't get that many Reapers out of one race. (I assume they had Krogan cloned to turn into the next cycle's Collectors, btw.)
Though, ever putting a number on it is a mistake. I can't properly fathom how many cycles that actually is, and giving a hard number exacerbates that problem. From a writer's standpoint, there should be exactly as many Reapers as the story needs, otherwise you get the issues I outlined earlier. Maybe Reapers don't harvest every time. Maybe the mighty few Reapers are named because they're the pinnacle and the others are mere sub-routines, like the Geth operate. Maybe the entire Reaper force doesn't come in at once, or most don't come in at all because they have better things to do than harvest one little galaxy. Maybe any number of things to justify why there's the right number for the story instead of any of the wrong ones.
>Leviathan
I'd rather not talk about those. That's a miserably dumb plot point, always will be.
>cryptowars and agents
sounds too much like the dominion war from ds9
>"Nobody really cares about the Reapers"
>Imagine unironically believing this
ME2 was a mistake
You know what I mean.
I didn't misunderstand you, the entirety of me1 was all about uncovering the mystery of the reapers so the idea that they shouldn't matter for the sequel because "who cares about the reapers" is pure nonsense. Me2 wasn't good because it abandoned the reaper plotline, it was good in spite of it.
You don't need the Reapers, and the point of Mass Effect was never about telling Reaper stories. They are great as an overarching villain plot, that we will eventually have to address, but making two games, and then ending it is short-sighted, leaves major franchise potential untouched, and kills off interest, hype, and long term engagement. What does ME have going for it, after ME3? No relays means no large interconnected community, no characters, since we shelved them, no protagonist, since we killed him, no plot threads, since we swept them under the rug, no villains, and an utterly destroyed world building, since most places are out of reach, or destroyed, or both. Which is why you try to start over with Andromeda, which has no such issues, but you realize you can't world build for shit, your set-up ideas are worth next to nothing, all your characters are stuff that makes modern Marvel sound like Shakespear, and your villains are less one note, than most Saturday cartoon ones. Do you care about the Vaults? Do you care about the Jardaan? How about the Scourge? No? So what are you going to do? Have me visit a decrepit Milky Way, 600 years after everyone I liked, is already dead? That's exactly what I was looking for; all my friends dead.
>No relays means no large interconnected community
Destroying a relay wipes out the whole system its in, so technically, it actually means no community period, as everyone in a relay system is dead.
That's not what is shown in the endings, although, arguably, it should. Why it happens that way? Don't know.
Not every game should be some massive franchise that can spawn an infinite amount of sequels. The ME trilogy would've worked fine as a stand-alone story. You could still make spin-offs centered around a different cast, hell me2 was practically a spin-off game that pretended it was the sequel to me1.
>hell me2 was practically a spin-off game that pretended it was the sequel to me1
That's why ME2 is so good
I don't give a single shit about the Reapers or the larger story about saving the galaxy
I just thought it was fun recruiting a team of badasses for a dangerous job, and having a bunch of side stories about their personal lives. The comfy episodic nature of it reminded me of TNG.
Then Bioware should try making a new IP.
Oh, wait. That failed, too. And it was worked on by the A-Team, so there's no excuse. And they had 7 years to deliver it. So, no. Not every franchise needs to be. For example, Dragon Age should have ended 2 games ago. But Mass Effect had a lot more potential, a better, bigger name in the gaming community and a lot more love. So if Bioware had to pick one, for their studio, ME3ing it was the worst choice possible. And now, they have nothing. So if Bioware can't get a new IP going, and shouldn't have long running franchises, and ME should have ended with 3, then the only thing left for them, is closing the studio.
But you could still have the main overarching story be about dealing with the reaper invasion while still having the same cast and side missions as me2 (aside from Jacob and Miranda I guess), The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Then they shouldn't have Shepard killed in ME3. These characters have a certain relationship with the protagonist that cannot, and should not, be replicated with each new protagonist. And to anyone that thinks they can romance their blueberry without Shepard in the next game, guess again. Just like in Dragon Age, where you can't romance anyone that's possibly already in a relationship with the Warden, you are going to get cucked out of a Liara romance. If you are talking pre-ME3, then you are going to need to overcome the prequel curse, where very few prequels actually perform well financially. Exactly because of how catastrophic ME3 is, that is going to be doubly difficult. But I suppose, bringing back the entirety of the ME2 crew, the best received crew in the entire franchise, can get people excited again. It's going to be hard having to justify all those asspulls that ME3 starts off with, though. I'd almost want to see Bioware try that.
shepard should never be a playable character again after me3, anyone who doesn't understand this needs a brain transplant
Let's try Ryder again, then. That'll get people hyped.
After Anthem, Bioware no longer exists. It's just a brand owned by EA.
Sorry to be the one to tell you this.
>Bioware learned from their mistakes
Personally I love nearly all Bioware games, even DAI and ME3 (there's almost nothing redeemable about Andromeda however and only the staunchest fanboys will say otherwise), I understand they have obvious flaws but they scratch an itch no other series of games ever have - so I know no matter how bad the upcoming games will be I will get some enjoyment out of them, but god I really am hoping we are all pleasantly surprised, especially with DA4, at least me1-3 is a complete story so we always have that, dragon age still has plenty to go with
What do you mean? Is Bioware coming back?
I thought the studio went up in flames and lost everything. Shame they never finished Mass Effect 3, but I guess they could never live up to the hype anyway.
Thanks, Shepard.
batarians on Earth?!
Is this the only decent batarian in the whole series?
no because he's still alive.
true talk though, YOU SIR YOU ARE A BLIGHT was based
I loved the mad preacher. He was right all things considered and it was fricking hilarious seeing him in the Omega DLC after Cerberus rolled through. Still would have shot him if I could have though.
>Dude picked up a massive following during the cerberus occupation
Unironically good for him. Preach on you mad c**t
I have no idea what a Batarian is Bioware has always made shit games and you are a moron lol
I'M DOING MY PART!
one more
Liara is overrated, She has no personality or character arc yet gets pushed into Shepherd cause she's a dev's waifu.
Doing my civic duty by posting
I still feel crazy that people don't understand why the Krogan genophage was absolutely necessary, and that it's completely unsustainable for a race that lives hundreds of years to be able to pump out 1000+ babies every single year without demolishing any ecosystem they enter.
Even with the genophage, their population growth would be significantly higher than humans, since they mature faster despite living for like 700+ years.
The genophage was wrong because it, much like the "uplifting" of the krogan was executed poorly with zero understanding of socio-cultural issues at the root of the Krogan problem.
The socio-cultural issues is that the Krogan would kill everyone for land and resources otherwise, and over the course of hundreds of years couldn't adapt to having a better-than-human population growth, which may as well be evidence they should have been genocided in the first place because they are just not compatible with living conditions that don't naturally curb their survival rate.
It's not a socio-cultural issue, it's an evolutionary one. They evolved to be hyper-aggressive and hyper-proliferous to survive a darwinian nightmare planet. "Uplifting" made then an invasive species on a galactic scale. There is no social reform that is going to stop krogans from being krogan. On a related not, this topic is great for spotting social constructionist morons in the wild. Go back to /r/eddit.
And that's why curing it is just as short-sighted and will be disastrous in the long-run. I don't expect Bioware circa ME3 to remember the circumstances of the first Krogan rebellion, but a post-Reaper war galaxy will produce identical results to a post-Rachni war one.
Except (unless youre a moron who is playing with a dead wrex save file) there is actual change in Krogan society. Wrex is enforcing cooperation and the females have political power.
In real life the more freedoms, healthcare, and education women have, the lower their fertility rate is, and if the Krogan people aren't in a constant survival scenario they probably wont feel like they need to pump out 12 kids each time a kid dies.
And in real life, humans don't feel so compelled to fight that during puberty they gain uncontrollable, suicidal bloodlust. And this doesn't happen with 1000 kids per parent pair, all at the same time. How the frick did you think Tuchanka got nuked into the stone age multiple times in a row, anon? Because Krogan were rational people that could be trusted to form polite societies? That might be true when they get some years under their belts, but like the Asari, for hundreds of years (their youth) they're just irresponsible frick-up losers who make shit worse and can't be controlled by society. It's just that an Asari maiden has a 50/50 between being a mercenary or a hooker during their wild years, and a Krogan has a 100% chance, and likely won't grow out of it.
The Drell had their planet collapse and their society crumble, they just had the Hanar there to bail them out. They never say why Tuchanka fell to nuclear war, its left to assume that its "durr schtewpid krogan nuke selvs because theyre stupid and aggressive" but thats kind of reductive and boring. I don't really feel like typing more to be honest I am just not a huge fan of biological determinism or the justifications for fictional genocide.
It doesn't really matter why the krogans nuked themself 1000 years ago, what matters is that right now they're bloodthirsty savages who want revenge for the rebellions because they think they did nothing wrong.
The civilized drell have some self-awareness and mostly serve the hanar out of gratitude.
The oldest krogan is actually over 2000 and shows no signs of slowing down, IIRC. They probably just don't die until something eats them.
Basically all krogans are troglodytes who can't even figure out how a bicycle works, their numbers won't do them any good if they can't build spaceships to conquer planets with.
Speaking of which, how did the Krogans even become that big of a threat during the rebellions in the first place? They were only useful during the rachni wars because the other races gave them weapons and ships.
For me it'll always be Tali with Jack as a close second. Was indifferent to Liara in ME1 and after she became an emotionally stunted edgelord in 2 I actively disliked her. It was even worse in 3 where the game just automatically makes her Shepard's closest friend and makes it very obvious she has feelings for him. This is made even more hilarious if you're in a romance with her because all she does in 2 and 3 is second guess your relationship with her. What a mess of a character.
>It was even worse in 3 where the game just automatically makes her Shepard's closest friend
That's Garrus.
Jack is great for Renegade earthborn Shepard who has a soft spot for his friends and crew
Nice
posting for my loving wife, Jack!
If Kaiden became bi I don't see why Garrus couldn't have
because garrus isnt a filthy homosexual anon
>Joker watches his robot wife frick the lesbian pajeet tech because he'd break his hips if he tried sex
yeah that's right, make her redeem it EDI.
Are Cortez and Traynor the most shameless pandering ever? When we blasted off from Earth, what are the chances we accidentally saved two swarthy groomers?
I though Blast Hardcheese was okay. He's another in a line of soldier dudes who don't fricking bother Shepard unless Shepard specifically begins bugging the shit out of them to talk like the Commander is the ship psych, or something.
Mass Effect 4 begins
>fade in a quiet cabin in a remote area by a lake
>a man is chopping wood outside, his back turned to the camera
>a hovercar lands
>Hackett rides out in a wheelchair and approaches the man
>"I'm here on behalf of Alliance command, it's time to return to the fold for a new mission"
>the man says "Not my problem" and splits another piece of wood
>Hackett continues: ''We need you. Humanity needs you. The batarians are demanding we stop their extermination, they are out of line''
>the man jams the axe in the chopping block and turns around
>it's old man Shepard
>"Now that's my problem"
>Hackett smiles
>"Good to know age hasn't mellowed you out, Admiral-Commander. Consider yourself reinstated. Hack it out.''
>It's a 4x rebuilding the galaxy, mixed with squad-based action gameplay across huge maps where you jump from each unit's "Shepard" on the battlefield
I LOVE CATHARINE WAYYYYYNEEEE
i would forgive bioware for everything if this happened
>here have an entire race pulled from our asses that work for the Reapers but that didn't assist Sovereign in the first game because... reasons
>we got a human reaper to punch ships in space, he's also made of human slurpee!
>moronic cliche smoking man
>Shepard can't tell Cerberus to frick off because.. reasons I guess
>turn ME from what was a mysteries in space deal into evil human PMC #1613637 story, something extremely overdone in gaming
ME2 was a mistake, and you helped ME3 to be what it was after you gave its shittiness a pass.
How is ME1 or 3 more interesting when your're just working for the objective good guys? Basically the Federation from Star Trek.
There's some ambiguety in 2 in that you can create a bit of distance between you and Cerberus by still adhering to your old values and refusing to bend over for them, which annoys the Illusive Man. That type of dynamic doesn't really exisr in the other games.
Saren is way more relatable compared to morally dubious rich guy who wants power because eh that's nice I guess.
>can create distance
More like Shepard says I don't like you 🙁 and still does their bidding. How is evil private military corporation shit yet again more interesting than space exploration? You could have ME2/3 style PMC plot take place entirely on earth, it's a waste of time to focus on human internal matters when this is a series about galactic conflict. Not to mention that PMC plot is quite overused already
>Saren is way more relatable
We don't even know Saren. He shows up a few times, screaming like Jeremy Irons in the Dungeons and Dragon movie. I don't relate.
Saren had the same experience that you did with the visions but he thought his path of obeying the Reapers would be better. The smoking cliche man is just a muh power muh money moron, yes he doesn't have a lot of exposure but it's not needed, while the other guy just babbles moronic shit
Listen, I saw some jam being poured onto a motherboard once, I was traumatized, just as much as Shepard was.
>Saren is way more relatable compared to morally dubious rich guy who wants power because eh that's nice I guess
Not really
Saren is literally just "war hero that got brainwashed and is now evil and trying to help evil aliens take over the galaxy". That is not particularly interesting or original or complex. He's not a BAD character but he doesn't rank as an above average one either.
The Illusive Man is genuinely interesting, at least before ME3 character assassinated him. He's rich and somewhat arrogant and aloof, and allows a lot of morally shady shit to happen, but at least in ME2 he appears to genuinely want to protect humanity and their interests and safety. He tanks his personal fortune just to bring Shephard back.
TIM was great until right at the very end of ME2 where he goes from a highly ambitious, but morally ambiguous force to a cartoon supervillain with the flip of a switch, leading directly into what we get in ME3. I love ME2, both the characters and the story, but it has issues when it's supposed to be the mid point of a trilogy. It's like the devs had all this shit planned with Cerberus and TIM, and at the last minute realized, "Oh shit, we don't have any time to flesh any of this out. Guess we just make TIM evil now, lol".
I feel like the original intent was to have TIM and Cerberus offer an alternative path for Shepard to take compared to the Alliance. It would have indulged a more renegade, human-centric Shepard. It should have offered a very different branch of missions, where you'd find yourself in conflict with Alliance/Citadel forces, but without being cartoon terrorists about it.
I think there's traces of the original idea left in the ending we got, where TIM represents Control, and Anderson represents Destroy. And I guess Synthesis was what Saren wanted? It's just sad, cause there were so many good ideas and it feels like, as usual, timecrunch and pressure from the publisher resulted in a neutered series with a lack of meaningful impact for your choices.
If ME3 let us choose between Cerberus and the Alliance, it'd be a masterpiece.
But I remember even back in 2012 that I was so fricking pissed off and disappointed that we never got a choice, and even if we were ultra pro-Cerberus in ME2 it was totally irrelevant in ME3, which basically reset Shephard's character.
I still remember when ME3 first came out and you first saw TIM on the Mars mission at the start of the game. My heart immediately sank because I knew the game's story was going to be a train wreck just from how bad his new portrayal was.
The severe tone change due to different writers likely had more to do with it than time crunch. The choice between Cerberus and alliance would not have necessitated completely different paths, the two could have mostly shared the same missions but with a different perspective. ME1 felt like it leaned paragon, ME2 leaned renegade, and ME3 felt like it went full on paragon.
>the two could have mostly shared the same missions but with a different perspective
Exactly
I mean the Cerberus of ME2 would have wanted mostly the same things as the Alliance in ME3 - stop the Reapers and save the world. They just would have been willing to get their hands a bit dirtier to achieve that (justifiably).
The Cerberus and IM of ME3 is NOT the same thing as seen in ME2 though, which is the problem. They were practically completely reinvented (for the worse).
ME2-Cerberus was ends-justify-the-means morally ambiguous; ME3-Cerberus is Saturday-morning-mustache-twirling-villains.
ME2 Cerberus was just as much a fabrication as 3's. They were just complete buttholes in 1, fricking with humanity and trying to enslave aliens.
They were definitely psychos in ME1, but I feel like one of the best accomplishments of ME2 was adding more complexity to them, and showing things from their perspective. This served to make the story and universe feel richer and deeper.
ME3 erased all of that work, though.
Nah if the sidequest garbage from ME1 about Cerberus was fully canon then it's ridiculous that Shepard couldn't just flat refuse to work for them. It's also ridiculous that TIM, if he were being the indoctrinated space satan version of himself, wouldn't put some means of control into Shepard.
If you want cartoon evil ME1 Cerberus and cartoon evil ME3 Cerberus then do Shepard as Robocop in ME2 with Cerberus being OCP.
Isn't there Miranda dialogue in 3 where she admits she wanted to chip Shepard to make sure he was loyal and TiM said no?
She says it pretty early on in 2. I think it's optional but I think it's the first conversation you can have with her on the Normandy.
Yes, and it's in ME2 also
The fact that he is that good to Shepard is what makes ME3 Cerberus so schizo
You didn't notice that the pistol they gave you gives an absolutely insane headshot bonus did you? Makes that "stealth" section a complete breeze.
I feel like they got less racist with each installment
ME3 makes them just as cartoonish as ME1 again, though
Yeah but generic, mind controlled evil. They never really talk about human supremacy or leave any notes to that effect on 3 iirc
In ME1 and 2 they feel like they're working for humanity, at least somewhat. They're unethical and justify what they do with results, and they disavow anyone that gets caught to hide their crimes.
In ME3, they don't feel like Cerberus, they feel like Reaper soldiers... because they are. Nothing they do benefits anyone, certainly not humanity. And why are they Reaperfied? The Illusive Man was indoctrinated, how? He's so careful he's even willing to throw Shepard and the Normandy SR-2 away for his goals, how did he get indoctrinated? Just nonsense.
They said TIM was indoctrinated decades ago by shady turian experiments - the same ones that got Saren's brother killed, so basically Saren was a racist because of TIM and he was a racist because of Saren's brother in a humorously ironic cycle of hatred that the actual game never touches on. Much like Saren, TIM decides using Reaper-based cybernetics for their raw power and doesn't consider the downsides because he's already infected; the multiplayer makes it clear that many of the human characters you can play defected from Cerberus because they could see the writing on the walls.
Collector base lmao
Didn't get it in 90% of cases.
What the frick? What is the source for what you say, brother?
It was in the comics. Mass Effect: Evolution. For some reason, they decided to try and make ME into a big multimedia franchise and put the backstory and motivations of major characters in side material most players would never see.
Okay, I'm just going to pretend that never happened so I don't have a headache over that insanely big plothole.
(Indoctrination ends by making the indoctrinated a moronic meat-slave, how the frick? No. No. I can't get into it.)
Don't forget Miranda saying there was probably only 150 "members" of Cerberus, and that's why they didn't have the resources to throw more manpower than Shepard, Jacob and Miranda herself at the Collector issue.
So essentially what Ubisoft is doing to Assassin's Creed now. Or any Japanese IP that gets famous leading to spinoff VNs, LNs, manga, character songs, picture dramas, audio dramas, etc.
At least the good Japanese IPs usually tell a self contained story first and foremost.
>ME2
The illusive man controls the small but influential cerberus organization gaining influence and changing galactic politics through careful espionage, advanced research, money and planning.
>ME3
The illusive man suddenly has a massive army of halo soldiers and cringey ninja LARPers
Well said
ME2's writing had infinitely greater levels of depth, moral ambiguety and intelligence than ME3 to a degree that is pretty staggering since they were mostly written by the same people within only two years.
>ME2's writing had infinitely greater levels of depth, moral ambiguety and intelligence
This is what ME2gays actually believe
Cerberus in ME2 is still moronic, you just got tricked into thinking otherwise because Martin Sheen in a suit smoked a cigar while spouting propaganda and some sci-fi music played in the background.
It's clearly established in ME2 that Cerberus are the only ones actually investigating the colony disappearances though. The Alliance turns a blind eye to it.
ME2 was where renegade was at its dumbest though.
Some of them were pretty pragmatic though, like basically just taking preemptive strikes of enemies to get an advantage in combat.
I was one of the few people satisfied with ME3s ending but there are a couple problems
-Through all three games, destroy is kind of implied to be the best result for the galaxy despite having to sacrifice innocent synthetic life like EDI and the Geth. However, synthesis and control really have no "downside", there's no innocent life that needs to be sacrificed for the greater good in those endings, so ironically destroy is more like a "bad" ending despite it being the canon one.
-synthesis is just moronic, I never pick it and kind of forget it even exists to begin with
-control is advertised as the "bad" choice when ironically its actually the best choice. Shepard becomes a benevolent god and uses the newly controlled reapers to rebuild society to the benefit of the entire galaxy. This made no sense to me. It would have been better if instead, the illusive man didn't die before you got to pick and picking control was siding with the illusive man and using the reapers to the benefit of humanity specifically.
>However, synthesis and control really have no "downside", there's no innocent life that needs to be sacrificed for the greater good in those endings, so ironically destroy is more like a "bad" ending despite it being the canon one.
Destroy's downsides are immediately apparent and the game tries to openly guilt trip you with them. But in the long run it's ethically the best option. Control and synthesis seem shinier and the Starkid shills them a lot harder, but they operate on fridge logic - very appealing at first, but later at some point when you think back, you realize it makes no fricking sense and it's even worse.
To me this seems like a bit of a cope though. Because in game when presented with the options, the only where you're explicitly told "this has some bad consequences" is destroy. Meanwhile becoming literally robot God and warping every beings DNA is just played off like "haha yeah nbd bro"
If I had to rewrite the ending:
Leave destroy as is. It's pretty well balanced, being a "greater good" option that still has some real sacrifice of innocent synthetic life.
Again, control should have been the cerberus option. It's kind of insane to think even Shepard could just casually become a machine god and not be corrupted by that insane amount of power. Instead, Shepard should have controlled the reapers for humanity's benefit and turned the galaxy into a human-centric empire similar to what the Protheans had in their cycle.
Synthesis is stupid. If I really had to change it, make it like the goo in Evangelion. If you're going to put such an obvious "space magic" option at least make it esoteric and existential.
>Synthesis is stupid.
Worst part is that it's the only ending you have to unlock, as if it's somehow an objectively better ending than the other two
>Worst part is that it's the only ending you have to unlock, as if it's somehow an objectively better ending than the other two
It's referred to as "Good ending'' in the code too
Don't you have to have an extremely high galactic readiness score in order to have Shepard survive the Destroy ending?
Yes, you had to have a higher score than was possible when the game first released (meaning either a perfect run plus buying the DLCs or mandatory multiplayer) to get the survival ending.
The MP was fun. A relic of a bygone age of producer forced multiplayer modes but still fun.
Synthesis and control are straight moronation. If either existed at all they should have been fake out endings implying Shep was indoctrinated. Instead the destroy should have been a spectrum choice, similar to other paragon and renegade prompts that forced you to potentially keep chosing the prompt over and over again or stop at some point. Each pull of the super weapon lever increases the odds of defeating the reapers but at a high casualty cost. Your higher galactic readiness would mean you don't need to push the button as often. The final battle's difficulty would depend on galactic readiness and how many times Shep pulled the trigger, which could result in an impossible to win scenario. But it would give greater weight to galactic readiness and player skill to avoid as much casualties as possible and it wouldn't have completely nuked any chance of setup for sequels.
I think the worst part about control is how it's presented as this insane solution that only the most power hungry or indoctrinated would choose and then at the last minute the catalyst is just like "well you're Shepard so uh yeah you could do it bro"
It wouldn't even be that bad if it wasn't built up the whole game as selfish and arrogant by both the illusive man and the leviathan.
Control and synthesis just come out of no where. The crucible is repeatedly hyped up as a superweapon to help destroy the reapers, then at the last second has two other colored options for... reasons? TiM did foreshadow control but at that point it seemed obvious he was indoctrinated, and it would make more sense that starchild was a last ditch effort by the reapers to prevent access to a super weapon that could obliterate them.
You've already won, why not give you the power to play god and treat the very laws of physics as a playtoy?
It's a fine option if indoctrination is implied it just doesn't make sense to me regardless of renegade or paragon for Shep to choose unless he's indoctrinated, especially comparing to Saren and TiM. Even if control is kept as an ending, a "canon" ending would need to exist for the series to continue without massive retconning and a less destructive "destroy" option would have worked just fine and not caused so much asspain and damage to the franchise
No, I meant Synthesis. Control is at least plausible, even if it contradicts the previously established themes and ideas, whereas Synthesis is the real mother fricker of an ending. Shit just happens, and nobody can explain it, and nobody wants it. It's just full on wizard space magic from nowhere because Shepard decided to crash a billion year science experiment in the dumpster.
Oh for sure. Just elimating synthesis as an option would make the me3 ending better without even touching the other two. I don't usually have too much of an issue with suspension of disbelief, but crucible being capable of all 3 endings is just way toof ar for even me to accept.
No single thing in ME3 asspained me as much as the glowing green circuitboard shader on everyone being the "synthesis" consequence
The thing that makes it funniest to me is that cybernetics are repeatedly portrayed as alternately a weakness and a crutch, used only by evil forces. Your strongest teammates go so far as to completely eschew the use of armor in combat, and the most powerful species decline the use of technology at all, excepting the use of servitors for interacting with other, less developed species. The poster children for technological development who enable all other life to develop it efficiently are the Reapers, the physical manifestation of evil, and the Geth who are the only other artificial species are fundamentally untrustworthy and violent. Given all of that, the Synthesis ending strikes me as inherently kind of ironic, as though you're defeating the forces of hell by interbreeding them with the local populace until your people are indistinguishable from literal demons.
>But in the long run it's ethically the best option.
synthetic life will just be created again
if synthesis wants to make any sense, synthetic life can be created again in synthesis ending too
if it's a dumbass space magic ending that ensures every future organism has a mix of organic tissue and cyber implants no matter how they're created, then it's shit writing and i'm not choosing the worst written ending
I'm not advocating for the synthesis ending because it's absurd, just saying that destroy isn't solving anything long term.
>isn't solving anything long term.
There's nothing that needs solving. The whole
>synthetics always rebel against their creators
is forced bullshit. The only reason the geth rebelled against the quarians is because their creators were moronic, and the geth took after them. EDI turned out just fine.
but EDI also rebelled against her creators, she's just "not evil" for the few years she's been free. Reapers rebelled too of course. And the trading A.I. Some others too I think, just that cycle.
that's not wrong though
>Reapers rebelled too of course.
reapers didn't rebel
they're following their programming, the dumbass arrogant leviathans thought they were so above the cycle that the reaper programming would not include them
>just saying that destroy isn't solving anything long term.
you're right. but the vast majority of the organics vs synthetics problem comes from the reapers themselves (or leviathians)
it's like a person with shit on their shoes coming into a room and saying "it really stinks in here", that's the reapers
organics and synths may come into conflict yes but there's constant war in the galaxy anyway and life goes on so who cares?
>that image
pretty based take on synthesis
Nah, that's just the standard muh borg headcanon take. Synthesis ending is bad because it's vague utopian nonsense that doesn't actually explain how making everyone glow green by "fusing organics and synthetics" actually fixes anything regarding organics vs synthetics. It's so vague that you can headcanon whatever the frick you want and it'll make sense one way or the other.
>control is advertised as the "bad" choice
when? the catalyst openly tells you the illusive man could not control them, but shepard can
Well, you see - when you're allowed to choose, you have 3 short videos - control, where TIM literally puts his fingers into power outlet contacts, synthesis, where depicted character (i don't remember if it was Anderson or someone else) straight up goes into super plasma stream. So all of this minimovies look like "how to have a nice day" instruction with only destroy actually doing something.
>here have an entire race pulled from our asses that work for the Reapers but that didn't assist Sovereign in the first game because... reasons
To be fair, the Ascension novel was the first time the Collectors were introduced
>turn ME from what was a mysteries in space
It was yet another generic "fight the big bad evil, but IN SPACE"
Skipper
ME2 is the most fun game in isolation because of its cast and B movie tropes, but when you view the trilogy as a whole, its long term consequences are negative.
The Mako's controls during exploration were flawed, so instead of improving it ME2 just cut planetary exploration out completely and scrapped the Mako for the Hammerhead, which you barely use and piloting it is boring and simplistic. The skill trees needed more direct impact on gameplay and branching, but instead of that ME2 just cut down the skill trees severely. The biotic/tech powers needed balancing, but instead ME2 nerfed them into the ground by making them useless against armored targets, and forced the game to revolve mainly around gunfights. The combat positioning needed to be more focused and coherent, but instead ME2 just turned its combat into Gears of War and punishes you for being aggressive. Everyone complained about ME1 sprint being weird, so ME2 turned Shepard into a near-cripple who can't sprint for longer than five seconds without collapsing in exhaustion, not to mention that the ME2 running screen shake is horrible. Everyone complained about ME1 weapon/armor customization needing refinement, but ME2 cut the customization out completely. It's the only game in the trilogy in which you can't modify your weapons at all. On and on it goes.
Instead of trimming a branch of a tree, ME2's approach is to use an axe cut it at the base because at least then there are no ugly branches.
1/?
ME2 fails to narratively pave the way for ME3, the easiest way to notice this is by observing locations.
It's established in ME1 that Reapers target the hearts of galactic civilization, and ME2's "shady underworld" approach directly avoids any of those locations. Freedom's Progress, Purgatory (destroyed), the Korlus junkyard (rekt), a financial district and office in Ilium, a hidden ship on Hagalaz, random human colonies, derelict Reapers (destroyed), Collector ships (destroyed), the Collector base (destroyed), the heretic station (destroyed), Collectors (beaten), random unpopulated planets in the middle of nowhere, etc.
You do see how none of this is usable later on, right? Instead of giving us Thessia or Council politics or Palaven or Kar'Shan or Sur'Kesh or Earth or Arcturus Station, it gave us random locations and ideas that are either not usable later or used up immediately. All the story beats in ME2 have no contribution to the overall plot. The only things ME2 did slightly set up were Rannoch and Tuchanka, and it isn't a surprise that ME3 delivered on those fronts because it didn't have to pull previously missing shit out of its own ass.
Now some would say "hey idiot, it's not ME2's fault ME3 decided to go full Reapers! ME2 was an anthology that didn't care about the Reaper war!!" but they'd be wrong - ME2's anthology approach was interesting and engrossing and showed how the future of the games could be found in these types of side jobs that slowly flesh out galaxy, and that's wonderful... EXCEPT THE GAME ENDS WITH "HOLY FRICK THE REAPERS ARE ABOUT TO ARRIVE DUN DUN DUN IT'S TIME" which utterly railroads ME3 into being about the Reaper War and not continuing ME2's legacy.
I'm not just talking about Arrival, even the base ME2 game ends like this.
2/?
>ME2 fails to narratively pave the way for ME3, the easiest way to notice this is by observing locations.
Nobody cares.
So ME2 takes its own approach and then sharply backs out of it just before the game ends and forces a different approach onto the next game, conveniently building up nothing that would suit this next approach. For a single game, this is no issue. For a trilogy meant to gradually unfold, this is catastrophic.
While the cast of characters in ME2 is interesting (although their implementation in the game is severely lacking - they're silent as a crypt on most missions and awkwardly stand in place on the Normandy while most quickly start ignoring you unless you're fricking them), the main plot is not only utterly irrelevant for the trilogy and fails to set up the future, but it's also ineffectual and on par with ME3's plot in quality. The only reason ME3 gets more shit is because there's actually a plot that engages you by endearing you to characters (buildup) and then offering you a chance to betray them or change everything for them (payoff).
ME2's plot is so barebones that there's nothing to interact with, and does not understand the relationship between buildup and payoff. The two biggest reveals in ME2's narrative are the Collector identity reveal and the baby reaper reveal. Neither reveal is foreshadowed even once. There's no "ohh, that explains X, Y, and Z" moment. When EDI reveals that Collectors are actually protheans, it feels like a trivia fact. When she reveals that the Collectors have been using human goo to build space cthulus, you're just left scratching your head. The human Reaper is lore-ignoring wank that is only rivaled in its embarrassment by Kai Leng.
3/?
Now you'll say "but DARK ENERGY", no. While it was certainly an interesting idea, the dark energy plot was already scrapped and neutered in ME2 because the game didn't give it nearly enough foreshadowing to be relevant later on at all. There's nobody and nothing in ME1-2 talking about FTL flight possibly being harmful, there's no attempts to increase ecological awareness in ME1-2 and no entity advocates for reducing FTL emissions, nobody advocates against biotics because eezo manipulation might be bad for the environment, there's no direct mention of dark energy being harmful to the galaxy.
There's just Reegar talking about shields getting fried and Tali mentioning some scientists theorizing dark energy might be destabilizing a single sun. That's not nearly enough to be a basis for the trilogy's main theme, there are other story ideas in the trilogy that get a lot more attention than this and nobody bats an eye at them. Too much is missing, and 99% of the dark energy plot would have to suddenly occur in ME3. While the star child shit in ME3 was obviously terrible, at least it was based on the premises of conflicts and their moral and galactic consequences, something the trilogy has been doing since the start. Just because this was done unsatisfyingly doesn't mean it should've been swapped out for something that has even less connection to the main themes of the trilogy.
So no, ME2 did not offer some bespoke alternate path that ME3 ignored. That is revisionist bullshit.
4/?
The Suicide Mission is really cool but it belongs at the end-point of a story, not at the middle point - it backs ME3 into a dead end character-wise.
"Everyone can die" is good, but only at the end of the story. The moment a character can die in a narrative driven game, he will realistically NEVER be as important in the future, as the story needs to be able to go without him without breaking. The interchangeable deaths in ME2 put the possibly dead characters in the position of not being important later on, they became Schrodinger's crewmates. This forced the ME3 development process to dedicate a huge chunk of their resources of the writing team, programmers and voice actors into basically doubling the content needed to make the Suicide Mission's outcomes matter - and this doubling just tangles the number of outcomes further and further exponentially with new scenarios and dependencies, and all of this is a shit ton of work that would realistically take 6-8 years to do right - something that was never ever going to happen. All of those resources could have gone to make more scenes with Miranda, Jack, Samara, Grunt, etc. but seeing as they're potentially dead and need to have replacements, the resources get stretched thin.
This could go on forever, but ME2's fun is had at the expense of the trilogy. It's fun in isolation and its cast is a lot of fun, but its contributions to the bigger picture of the trilogy were largely negative.
>The human Reaper is lore-ignoring wank that is only rivaled in its embarrassment by Kai Leng
come one now anon, that's a little too far
>Reapers randomly choose to create a human Reaper before they even really harvest humanity, and they pump human goo into a large skeleton battle chassis which will then inexplicably get stuffed into another squid battle chassis
Devs just wanted a skeleton because they thought it looked cool. Any lore justifications came later and they're obvious patchwork that makes no sense. It's like building an expensive box just so you can put it in another box forever.
>ME2 fails to narratively pave the way for ME3
So?
Which law states that every game has to 100% be about the bigger picture of the series and link everything into it?
That type of big-picture, everything-is-connected, cinematic universe corporate bullshit is the antithesis to creativity and energy.
>Which law states that every game has to 100% be about the bigger picture of the series and link everything into it?
The law that ME1 ends with this promise, and even ME2 ends with this promise despite spending the entire game pointedly avoiding it.
ME2 threw the baby out with the bathwater. The Mako was a very interesting concept, the problem was that the side content with it was repetitive, the places were copypasted, but it could have been changed to become a nice arcadey vehicular combat part of the game, Something like a more open Star Fox ground vehicle section or something of the sorts.
They turned ME into a Halo/Gears of War moronic action shooter where the main guy is some Jesus figure who resurrects when in the original game he was just a fricking guy. He was a high ranking guy in the pecking order but that didn't make him some moronic master cheif figure, but appealing to the halobabbies clearly worked financially
TLDR
tl;dr: Mass Effect 2 is bad because it isn't a rehash of ME1 and ME3
it's much more innovative to copy a cowadoody tier evil PMC plot instead, clearly. Also ME3 just continues on the foundation ME2 laid out, you gotta sleep in the bed that you have made
So to you the only good game was ME1, which is just about stopping a brainwashed evil general from taking over the galaxy, complete with generic "join me, main character!" shit.
Hilarious
He's not brainwashed, you should try playing it.
that's pretty reductive
>Also ME3 just continues on the foundation ME2 laid out
Kind of. But not really.
Whats the best way to play this, original or remaster?
the mako was a fun little thing. they just needed to smooth terrain out, as am pretty sure the enduring memory most people had of the mako was how SHIT it was to drive over their all-too-frequent mountainous crags terrain where it handled like ass.
Count one by me.
THE GENOPHAGE WAS JUSTIFIED AND THE SALARIANS DID NOTHING WRONG
Why did he change his mind?
ME3 writers were beta homosexuals
ME3 and 2 lead writers were the same
Chris Etoile and Drew Karpyshyn were out, by the time ME3 went into development.
he made a mistake
he didn't and you didn't pay attention if you think he did
>I WAS WRONG
mordin always regretted the genophage
he spoonfeeds you that it was a travesty necessary to remedy a previous salarian mistake, he immediately seeks out religion afterwards and opens up a charity clinic on omega, when his assistant tries to cure the krogan he doesn't say "no" he says "not like this" because that method would result in weyrloc instantly going to war against the galaxy
mordin never liked the genophage, he's just coping about it in the second game because there really wasn't any other choice and you bought into his cope
His cope was only added in ME3 (a game which is notorious for significantly simplifying the moral ambiguety of previous games). In ME2 his belief that is was justified seems pretty bloody authentic and real. That's the whole appeal of his character, he's an ice-cold, purely logical utilitarian that sometimes gets into conflict with the more humanistic crew of the Normandy (a more extreme version of Spock).
i am not describing anything from the third game, i only mentioned things said in the second
your MY GAME VS YOUR GAME holy war obsession is literally making you forget which game did what
What evidence is there in ME2 that he regretted the genophage?
He engages in several heated arguments with others about why it was justified in that game.
>What evidence is there in ME2 that he regretted the genophage?
i am not trying to insult you but if you don't see what's the correlation between Mordin choosing the genophage and then seeking out religion and opening up a charity clinic on the edge of the galaxy and then going on a suicide mission, you might be a sociopath
go talk to him on the normandy and he'll tell you the genophage was scientifically a lesser evil than exterminating the krogan but a moral travesty rendered necessary the salarian mistake of trying to turn krogan into weapons
I'm not debating that he felt bad BY MASS EFFECT 3
I'm talking purely about ME2, which existed for a few years before ME3.
In ME2 he acknowledged that it was necessary and justified considering the circumstances. I'm not saying he liked it or he wanted it ,but merely that he knew it wazs necessary.
>'m talking purely about ME2, which existed for a few years before ME3.
again i am telling you things that purely happened in the second game, i did not mention anything from the third
can you address my argument already?
You can be a religious and moral person while also acknowledging some shitty things had to be done for the greater good. That's Mordin in ME2.
I wish I could murder every salariansect
>Leviathan of Dis
Dis what? Fricking moron Batarians
Leviathan of Dis nuts
Ha! Gottem!
deepest lore
Was Indoctrination Theory ever officially debunked or is it still a cool fan theory that might be true
They said they liked it but hadn't thought of it like that
If I recall, one of the devs called it "too smart for them". The same devs that called us too dumb to understand their ending. Sounds like there's a paradox somewhere in there. Maybe I'll find it, one day.
Extended cut basically swept away all the major plot holes that made Indoctrination theory seem like the most likely explanation.
Personally though I always choose to interpret the Anderson/Illusive man confrontation as the reapers trying a last ditch effort to indoctrinate Shepard and neither character is actually alive, and you convincing TIM to kill himself or shooting him is you succeeding at resisting the reaper’s influence.
Good, frick batarians.
Now that the dust has settled, what were the actual problems of Mass Effect Andromeda?
Alec... Is dead
Post her legos
I....thought I was beneath them and never saved them. Forgive me.
The faces are just weird as if you're playing as a sentient doll
the fact that I couldnt romance this cute autist was the biggest crime of this game
besides starting a royal family with incest is a time tested tradition
>dead?
>dead :*~~
Andromeda was unironically a better game than ME2/3. From a story standpoint they all suck anyway, at least Andromeda has better gameplay and improved Mako
Who cares about the shitty gameplay if the overall experience is basically just Assassins Creed.
the fricking faces were quite funny
>want to play femshep for Jennifer hale kino
>only non gay romance option is Liara
Why must I be punished like this
You mean only gay romance option, you homosexual.
And don't worry, ME3 caters to your disgusting fetish at the expense of actual heterosexual romances
Shep suddenly being lgbt proves Indoctrination theory is canon
>disgusting fetish
Nah I just did paragon male shep (basically the most accurate roleplay for me if I was shepard) now I'm doing renegade femshep just for fun.
Also, Jennifer Hale is definitely better than Mark Meer especially for renegade options.
234 dead Batarians so far
Keep up the good work
I have nothing to bring to the discussion, I just really hate Batarians. I also miss when Mass Effect was good and Bioware wasn't a fricking dumpster fire.
Is he an "Asari Confessions" or "Fleet and Flotilla" kind of guy, Ganker?
Definitely Asari Confessions. Dude loves tabloid bullshit
>be a human dating a quarian
>invite her up to your apartment for an intimate evening
>she puts on an erotic romance movie about a quarian woman getting sexually dominated by a tall, buff turian
What did she mean by this?
Metaphor for white women only being turned on by BBC
I'll be real, I thought Fleet and Flotilla was like a soap opera or something and was disappointed that it's just a film.
quarian women are already used to cucking their own men with human men
it feels only natural for them to fantasize about other races when they're with human men, it just keeps going
What happened to the psychic asari anon?
So you are telling me that I can shitpost and cause Batarian deaths? Simply splendid my man
Liara T'Soni listened to the mechanical sounds of the elevator's upward trip while ascending up to the captain's cabin on the Normandy, genuinely in a good mood for a change. The events of the Reaper War were currently in a slight lull, a phase of respite and relaxation welcomed by all. It was known this period of calm wouldn't last long, Shepard probably knew so more than most, and that's why he was currently relaxing in the loft. Liara imagined he was likely hard at work on ship models or getting some sleep. Time was a luxury that would soon be lost to all of them, and the young asari maiden wanted to make the most of it.
In her hands she held a data storage device carrying information about Commander Shepard, a beacon of sorts in case things go wrong and the future cycles need to learn about the leaders who held the line against the Reapers. Humanity's history, Shepard's childhood, his rise through the ranks, his most important actions, his personality, everything about him. Well, almost everything. Liara kept the knowledge about his nightly encounters with many women (but never her) out of the device - in a perverse way she felt that this awareness and knowledge belonged to her and to her alone to appreciate. She fiddled with this device as the elevator neared Shepard's deck - this was her chance. She would ask him to add a finishing touch to the beacon, and then she would finally ask him to be hers.
Surely he would finally say yes, after all this time, no matter which woman he was currently enthralled with. He would finally see reason and touch her for the very first time.
As the elevator chimed to signal its arrival at the deck of the captain's quarters, Liara's ears picked up a noise she didn't expect, squeaking like a loose screw or hinge in a desk. She exited the elevator and approached the door to the cabin and the sounds became louder, occurring in regular rhythm. It was coming from Shepard's room.
She heard a masculine grunt. Perhaps the commander was in pain? Having a horrible nightmare and was unable to wake up?
She would help him, she would be there for him. She was about to order EDI to disengage privacy protocols and let her in when she heard a loud but soft sigh, an unusual sound coming from the Commander. The squeaking noise kept repeating, again and again. Now curious, Liara lined her ear canal up next to the door to listen properly.
And that's when she heard a cacophony of noise. The squeaking noises were recognizable enough - it was a bed straining under pressure. Shepard's grunts were not in pain but in intense pleasure, and the (now distinctly feminine) sighs and moans belonged to a woman.
Liara's breath caught in her throat as her mood flipped upside down and her blue blood rushed to her cheeks. This was getting ridiculous, she thought as she fought the urge to scream and shout in despair. Every time she wanted to spend some time with the man she loved, it seemed he was busy rearranging another woman's insides. Never her! A particularly loud squeak and "yes" from the woman inside startled the asari and made something in her insides tingle. She resisted to urge to bang on the cabin door and cry, what would be the point? She didn't even know who Shepard was with, it could frankly be any one of his female crew members like Tali or Chakwas or Ashley, it could even be any of his past female squadmates like Jack or Miranda or Samara. She would just embarrass herself in front of two people if she walked in now.
Once her agitation had slightly abated, Liara did the only thing she knew had to be done. She pulled out an audio recording device from her jacket pocket and planted it on the door.
She hung her head in shame for a moment before running her fingers over hear head tentacles and then resolutely entering the elevator and sending it back to deck two, to her office. She would lock herself in her room, transmit the audio from the recording device to her surveillance equipment, and pleasure herself to the sounds of Shepard and another woman making love, whoever she may be. The excitement of not knowing beforehand always brought a spark of heat to Liara's nerves voyeur sessions. She couldn't even find pleasure on her own anymore when visualizing herself with the man - in her mind's eye it's always another woman, and that thought oddly appealed to the asari.
She plopped down into her favorite chair and wasted no time guiding her fingers to her azure region, skin there already humming at the thought of Shepard raggedly breathing and whispering obscenities or promises of love against someone else's lips. Never to me, Liara thought, but as the other woman's moans turned into passionate cries - Liara thought that might be a good thing.
As her insides thrummed in rhythm with the sounds of lovemaking, Liara anticipated a powerful orgasm soon - for both herself and for the pair she was listening in on.
>liara didnt hack into the room so she could see it and jerk off in the position pretending that she was fricked by shepard
???
She opened the elevator door...8 batarians were giving femshep a bukkake including Balak
I'm doing my part!
>I'm commander shepard
>Gas the 4-eye gays
What I gather from these threads is that none of these games are actually good.
Then you are a fool
The original trilogy is good despite its glaring issues. I avoided the franchise for nearly ten years because of the shit storm that came from ME3's ending at launch. Finally gave it a try and ended up loving it.
The games are good but in a way they're too good. The world building is great, on par with something like TNG or Babylon 5, which makes the tropey video game writing a bit glaring in comparison.
Much like Dark Souls, every one of the games is a flawed mess that I adore with all my heart.
I avoided the series all these years. Even gritted my teeth through 1. But I'm a few hours into 2 and it's finally clicked why everyone loves these things.
You're not far off.
Mass effect is a bit like star trek where the idea and setting is sound its just that the execution has more misses than hits.
But when it hits its pretty good.
This is a Christian image board, please censor B*tarian.
Shepard is jobber compared to Him
A man of unclear and nuclear solutions.
>trusting tur*ans
NGMI
C-Commander Shepard?
Is that the kind of person we want protecting the galaxy?
That's the only kind of person who can protect the galaxy.
i know asari are the definition of a parasite but they make me hard like diamonds.
600-year old Shepard and Matriarch Liara with their 27-th daughter
have a nice day blue parasite
Yes, I pick Destroy every time, how could you tell?
Control ending would end up with a pretty unique and interesting galaxy, which is why destroy is gonna be canon. Synthesis is just nonsense.
>Control ending would end up with a pretty unique and interesting galaxy
>“So anyway there WERE reapers but then after fixing shit, they suddenly left the Milky Way and haven’t been seen since.”
There, I just made it so either Destroy or Control can be canon.
That's fine i guess.
>Shep chooses control, tells reapers to frick off to dark space and kill themselves
Is playing as femshep worth starting a new game? I heard that a frickton of dialogue between characters changes
I guess?
Personally playing female shepard feels so weird at this point i always quit early on.
What
said.
Fem Shepard, particularly in ME2 just sounds perpetually horny for some reason.
Thirsty for Garrus wiener
Back in the day, it was universally agreed on Ganker that femShep was much better due to the voice acting. The fact you could dyke out with Liara also helped her popularity.
I found it completely impossible to play ME with a horrible Create-a-Character face in 2022, so femshep is off the table.
My ancient saves from 2013 were still on origin and had my monkey-faced 50 year old CaC Shepard and I was like how did I live like this
The only thing femShep is better at is voice acting in the first game, that's all. Literally everything else (verisimilitude, animations, romances, voice acting overall, face generation) is maleShep territory. I can elaborate further if needed.
I'm not interested in your revisionist history. Femshep was wildly more popular at the time, in large part due to the voice acting, and that's a fact. You can prefer Sheploo if you want, it's irrelevant.
FemShep was more popular because it's a cooler fad. Male Shepard is the default which is seen as bland. Fem Shepard has the coomers on its side, has the "look at me i'm so quirky and unique and enlightened for using the alternate option" crowd on its side which was quite obnoxious. Do you want to actually debate the merits of each side? Because I repeat, femShep wins in ME1 voice acting. MaleShep wins in verisimilitude, animations, romances, face generation, voice acting in other games. Refute it.
I don't have to refute your opinions and preferences. All I have to do is not allow you to rewrite history to pretend your opinions and preferences are any kind of common consensus, or that people deviating from your opinions and preferences are doing so deliberately for the sake of deviating.
Female Shepard's animations are shit because she doesn't have any, they just took male Shepard's animations and pasted it to her. Which is why her walking and running looks moronic since it's meant for a taller and more muscular skeleton mesh + body with more ass, and why certain cutscenes like Shepard spreading legs while talking to Garrus on the Normandy looks moronic with female Shepard.
Female Shepard's romances are considered weaker than male Shepard. What do I mean? The community largely agrees on this since there's a consistent history of petitions and pleas towards Bioware to let femShep romance Tali or Jack in the remaster. Romances like Garrus or Thane or solid, but then you have shit like Jacob or Kaidan which range from insulting to boring.
Voice acting could be its topic but Hale doesn't know that less is more. She is a much better VA but her breathy "I'm a sneaky intense badass" mildly flirty voice voice she uses at every turn does not sound like a professional soldier. It's inauthentic and she very obviously sounds like an actor perfecting their takes in a voice studio instead of a hardened grunt. Mark Meer makes the character sound like a soldier that gradually becomes more charismatic over time. Conveys forceful leadership and his threats feel more serious. He sounds too robotic in ME1 and that's when Hale does a better job because the character is written as a blank slate but as soon as Shepard starts becoming an actual person in ME2 and ME3 then Meer starting outpacing Hale.
1/2
Another issue is the disparity between renegade and paragon tone. With male Shepard you can mix paragon and renegade because there's a forcefulness and seriousness in both. With female Shepard, mixing those paths sounds schizophrenic because how absurdly different her takes on the two paths are. Not to mention that with femShep you basically can't talk to your male crewmates without that breathy smoky voice that sounds like she wants to get dicked by them.
Female Shepard's verisimilitude makes little sense because of how small and thin she is in game. Male Shepard is considerably larger and brutish so you can stretch your disbelief enough to swallow him headbutting a krogan hard enough to do damage, or punching the shadow broker hard enough to knock the creature back. This shit looks laughable with female Shepard being half his size.
Face generation is probably the funniest. Stock male Shepard is based on an actual face and has unique facial assets. Everything else, for both male Shepard and female Shepard, uses the same assets as NPCs, and those assets aren't numerous. If you want to make a female Shepard, you have the hard job of not making her look like an NPC. Pic related in is Gianna Parasini, and a female Shepard some anon insisted looks "unique." Lmao. Most of these NPC features regardless of gender end up looking weird anyway, only stock male Shepard really looks like a human.
It's not a matter of opinions and preferences. When I say the sky is blue you can't say it's an opinion, that's you being a coping moron.
I kind of agree that Hale's performance is too different between paragon and renegade options and I think that's why pure renegade femshep is so popular. Something about doing the renegade options as a woman makes it "feel" less evil.
Just sayin'.
>breathy smoky voice that sounds like she wants to get dicked by them
I mean, its pretty much accepted femshep is a massive prostitute who will ride anything.
I'm not sure why you're wasting your time posting garbage I'm not going to read. I told you already I don't care what you think because it's irrelevant. If you want me to give a shit about your opinion on this, invent a fricking time machine so your opinion will actually be relevant to the topic (which is what people on Ganker were actually saying at the time the games were coming out).
So you can't address anything and can only put fingers in your ears and shout LALALA. Good to know.
I don't have to address anything. You still can't understand this because you mistakenly think you're important, but you're trying to engage an argument from ten years ago, and that's just not going to happen.
I'm not important but I can make a point. It's pathetic that you can't.
Because I embody everyone on Ganker ten years ago, and as a time traveling hivemind I'm ready to hash this shit out. If you wanted to make a point, you would have responded to the guy I responded to asking about playing femshep, not to my post which merely provided historical information.
>Because I embody everyone on Ganker ten years ago
Sure you do.
lmaooo you argue like a woman no wonder you used femshep
I've never understood peoples love for Hale's overly gruff dyke voice acting for FemShep.
She just sounds like she's trying too hard.
It was kind of interesting at the time to have a completely male role and just let a woman play it totally straight as a combat boot lesbo
Yeah this. Hale's performance at the time was really unique, she does a great job at capturing the masculine role of Shepard without sounding like a complete dyke. Not as uncommon now but at the time it was a cool novelty.
It depends. If you've already done a paragon and a renegade run as male Shepard maybe not. I've always though male Shepard is best for paragon and femshep is best for renegade, just going by voice acting.
Quite a bit of dialogue changes especially with squad mates depending on gender, particularly in ME2.
Every time someone posts in this thread a Turian cums inside a Human.
If Garrus got with Male Shep, who tops?
They're both standing actually.
Ok I'm playing ME2 again, what's my build this time?
Dubs and engineer
I just got done with an engineer run with a heavy focus on Dominate and Drones. Pretty fun but definitely not tuned for Insanity. I was thinking something more melee based
engineer but use a save editor to give yourself shotgun training from the start
*and use the geth shield as your bonus power
Vanguard but you can only put one level into Charge.
>spend 45m listening to all that bullshit dialogue at the end of ME3
>tell the star child to go frick itself
>it's actually a bad end and everybody loses the war
fricking hell
>replay the last mission (it literally wont let you save or autosave) so I can pick a different ending
>listen to all that bullshit dialogue again I just heard, yadda yadda
>gain control of shepherd
>ok let's not frick this up
>turn around and shoot child because why not
>Dark voice goes "FINE" and he slaughters ever organic
FRICK
>add a new refusal ending due to all the b***hing
>but it doesn't give you a game complete cheevo
they seethin
Ahahahaha get fricked anon
t.starchild
no u
doing gods work Shepard
We'll bang, ok?
Why did EA not re-release the multiplayer when they did the Legendary edition?
I would've even spent a few bucks on it because it's fun as frick.
Seems like a no-brainer for free monies.
LE is a bare minimum effort shitfest. They didn't even fix the most basic of shit like quest bugs.
It's a glorified port to cash in on easy money and hype up ME4.
ME4 is never happening
they'd have to code in anticheat bullshit and lock the whole game down in a bunch of ways to make it 2022 safe
Kai Lang is canonically stronger than Shepard
Kai Leng is canonically wanting to have Troy Baker voice a villain in your game and then writing an entire character around that concept last minute
Man, I thought it was Travis Willingham when I first heard Kai Leng.
What's that display thing that looks like a smug cartoon dog?
Who are the real life batarians?
>the worse Wrex
He's just in the game because due to the current political climate having an entire alien race that is by nature dumb and violent is kind of a bad look sweety
post the fight scene
for Andromeda characters, he's okay
>mmm mmm tasty poo
>this turd has corn kernals too!
What other character can you do with a krogan? A scientist that explodes things?
I mean...kind of. I think a character like warlord okeer would be pretty interesting as a squad mate. Intelligent and with a mind for science but in his own krogan way.
I agree. Either a scientist or a shaman, a character who could give [Player Character] personal insight on another part of krogan culture.
This is (imo) a pretty common misconception about the krogan just judging from the lore. People think the Krogan are warmongering morons by nature but I always got the impression they're only like that because the Salarians purposefully uplifted them for that exact purpose, further complicating things is the genophage making all of them pissed off and looking for vengeance.
Now that the genophage is cured and the krogan are treated like actual participants in galactic politics and not just as weapons I feel like their culture would change a lot.
they had a global thermonuclear war by themselves pre-uplift
we almost did too, krogan history is literally "what if that russian dude in a submarine during the 60s ended up following orders"
The fact that their pre-genophage birthrate was so insanely when they were locked on a post-apocalyptic hellworld means their culture is gonna be winner take all cannibal conflict, there's just no way around it
true, unless they found a way to limit it through medicine
Does it counts asians too?
Thanks, Shepard.
Finished ME3 for the first time since launch today, hadn't played any of the DLC before, and anyone saying Citadel was the highlight of the franchise is insane. The party is cute but the actual missions are the worst thing the franchise has ever done. Shitty pseudo-stealth gameplay, then pissing about in a monstrously long walk and talk section waiting for an NPC to trigger the next basic puzzle, then the big action sequence where everyone suddenly things they're in a Marvel film and are firing off "funny" quips and acting totally out of character. Utter dogshit, wish I'd skipped it and went straight to the final mission.
It was fun as hell
Frankly it's the highlight of the franchise
You know what? You're right
Thanks dude you too
You're not supposed to play Citadel like it's a normal DLC, brainlet. Citadel was imagined as a fond goodbye to the characters and a silly romp to send them off.
I'm so fricking tired of zoomers who think that marvel invented action hero quipping.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer invented it but it still sucks to hear it now
I'm so fricking tired of zoomers who think that Whedon invented quipping.
'80s one liners are not quips you dissembling zoomer c**t
It all comes back to Whedon
Nah it was great.
!BANGER ALERT!
ywn explore Omega in its entirety
> mfw never chill out on omega with turian bro and get asari lapdance
Tali'Zorah vas Normandy my beloved
>leads a squadron to their death in your path
a squadron to their death in your path
pretty sure half the crewmates get people around them killed
>zaeed
>garrus
>tali
>thane
>jack
why did the illusive man hire these idiots anyway
Tali and Zaeed are trying to one up Sole Survivor background Shepard
the squad on Freedom's Progress killed themselves by disobeying her orders and rushing ahead.
the Haestrom squad never stood a chance, it was a bullshit mission where the plan was "just hope you don't get spotted" and they were all ordered to protect the data at the cost of all their lives.
Both the results of Tali's poor leadership skills
It's no wonder the Quarians jobbed to the geths for so long until a human savior came through
if Tali was better at managing the idiots at Freedom's Progress, they wouldn't try insubordination
she's just not a good leader figure and never will be and i say that as a gay who always romances her
Quarians are just fricking useless morons, you met the least bad one in the entire galaxy
The Geth killed 99.9% of their population in self-defense, so even little babies were charging them with a knife
>even little babies were charging them with a knife
kek
the Geth behavior in the war starts looking really suspect once you ponder on what percentage of a population can realistically participate in a war
It's honestly just some literally gay writer was like, "Wait, I can't allow any ambiguity in the goodness of a slave rebellion or I'm an evil cartoon redneck." So you have old Skynet Geth lore like 99% of the population dying and exactly zero quarians being left behind alive on Rannoch merged with Legion jerkoff lore from 2 and 3.
The geth didn't need to personally murder every single quarian to kill them all off. Babies, toddlers and old people won't last long if the people who are capable of supporting them (a.k.a. anyone who can use a gun) are all dead. Either way, the morning war was always going to end with one side genociding the other. The geths don't understand how organics think and the quarians weren't going to accept their robot servants as their equals.
Besides, all moral ambiguity would be thrown out of the window if the Geth were the ones who started the hostilities. More people side with the quarians even though it was the quarians who went full moron and it's the quarians you have to convince to stop shooting on Rannoch.
You expect too much out of a race whos physically weak and specced mostly into INT. The Geth were their physical labor and warriors.
Quarians are vorcha tier useless
Since we're at Page 10, reminder that (You) still lost to Kai Leng.
He did nothing wrong
He really didn't, only thing I'd change would be to have a few options to react during the scene Shepard gets dunked on and have all of them fail. People still would be pissed about him but would be hilarious.
Kai leng unironically should have been a Batarian.
Why would Cerburus hire a Batarian?
Who cares? He would have been a better villain just by being a Batarian.
Can Renegade Shep actually say "I'm glad those 300,000 Batarians are dead"?
Only ME1 really allows Shepard to be racist
>Only ME1 really allows Shepard to be racist
Truly the best of the series in hindsight.
Unless I’m remembering wrong I think the closest you get is telling the wounded Batarian terrorist in the refugee camp, “If the roles were reversed you would have done the same to humans and not blinked an eye.
the Batarians are buttholes but at least they didn't decide to help genocide everyone else to save themselves
They didn't have a choice, but if they did and chose to help the Reapers, I wouldn't blame them. Who wants to die for the Council races, they're racemixing degenerates who use killers not bound by law to enforce their dictatorial rule across the galaxy.
3 > 1 > 2
just adding to kill count
Is Mass Effect trilogy actually worth playing?
I've considered it but I feel like stupid fricking Black person homosexuals overhype everything.
You're a grown man make a decision for yourself
Frick you
Child
Yes. It is the greatest gaming series of all time.
Yeah, it helps LE makes things a lot more playable. The game play isn't deep but its weirdly satisfying. World building is great. Start to finish on Citadel DLC is good shit.
Now that I get a good look at her, Jack is actually incredibly pretty. Shame that face is stuck to a walking freakshow.
Frick all Black folk
What is Javik’a impression about the Batarians?
These disgusting monster disgraces my people by mimicking our 4 eyes