"Oh Boy," the collective internet sighs, "That game again."
Yes, that game. I'm not here to talk about the controversial ending that everyone hated so much Bioware had to amend it with an "extended cut" DLC. Rather, I'm here to put the whole package under a microscope.
Those who have been following The Digger may know that I have acquired for myself a brand-spankin' used PS3. This means that I can go through and tackle Eternal Sonata once more, but in the meantime, I have been able to pick up a number of fantastic exclusives to the Playstation library. I've been enjoying my fill of Ratchet and Clank Future, inFamous, Hyperdimension Neptunia, and I sunk in 112 hours to play Persona 5 to completion (it was really really good guys, go play it). More importantly, I have been considering which games would be worth getting again on a different console. Standing at my local Gamestop, deciding between the Kingdom Hearts HD Remixes and getting the Mass Effect Trilogy again so I could play 3 online without needing to subscribe to Microsoft's pay-only online services, I stopped and realized-
Would I even want to?
I mean, whenever I played it on my Xbox, I quite literally had to disconnect my wireless attachment every single time I started the game. If the Xbox was connected to the internet while the main menu loaded, the game would lock itself into an endless loop while loading the main menu. Mass Effect 3 released in 2012. I'm not the only one this has happened to. This issue still hasn't been fixed.
Then there's the matter of the game having been produced by Electronic Arts. They're like that asshole uncle that pisses you off every time he opens his mouth, but whom you (grudgingly) have to admit has done cool stuff. Command and Conquer Generals was my first (and still favorite) real-time strategy title. Dead Space 1 and 2 were simply marvelous with their atmosphere and worldbuilding. I find their shady-as-hell business practices in poor taste, and the only parts of Dead Space 3 that I really liked were the resource bot's personality and the post-game epilogue. Both were paid DLC microtransactions. I had to pay extra for the enjoyable parts of the game. What kind of backwards money-grubbing asshattery is that?
All railing against EA aside, Mass Effect 3 does very much feel like the next logical installment in the trilogy. The world is still there- the Asari, the Genophage, the Relays, the tension between the Geth and the Quarians- and it all feels familiar. The three major differences from the past two games are: one, the combat has improved. Two, everything has gone straight to hell, courtesy of the Handbasket Express. The series' robotic Big Bads, the "Reapers", are out in force and have the power and numbers to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy. Every major subplot will be tied up as Commander Shepard makes a mad dash to stop all the galactic infighting so that every Milky Way race we've come to love can unite against a seemingly impossible foe.
Number three: it's depressing.
Remember all those party members you had in Mass Effect 2? You're back down to 6 options, three of which return from previous titles. Remember the quirkier members of your squad? They'll probably die heroically. You know, for the plot. Earth is getting destroyed by a Reaper invasion when you start the game. The first world you visit is the Turian moon, because their homeworld proper is getting destroyed by a Reaper invasion. The Asari homeworld? Getting destroyed. Krogan homeworld? Getting destroyed. The Quarians? They started a full-on war with the Geth for funsies, which led the machine race to join up with the bad guys just so they could survive- and by the end, guess who shows up on the Quarian/Geth homeworld? Oh, and if that wasn't bad enough, space-racist terrorist organization Cerberus is back, and they're screwing everybody because their leader thinks he can gain control over the Reapers. Some decisions in the game give you the option to screw over another race in favor of gaining a lot more support for the resistance.
Sure there are sweet moments here and there- a chance to hang out with Garrus later on has him and Shepard sharing bro-time as they try and one-up each other on the Citadel. Romances are still a thing. You pick up Mordin later on, and if you stop by the med bay you can get some amusing moments out of the banter between him and Eve. But on the whole, it's just... dark. So dark and so hopeless that it's... it's tiring. It does a very good job of illustrating the sort of heavy impact that a war has on those who are caught in the crossfire. You can walk through a spaceport-turned-refugee camp, and stand in front of a memorial wall with dozens of photos of those who were killed in the invasion or are otherwise missing. There are makeshift medical tents set up nearby. The place fills up with more NPCs as the game progresses. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate a dark story. But Mass Effect 3 is overwhelming in its hopelessness.
Remember when I said that the most enjoyable parts of Dead Space 3, I had to pay for? This is also a problem with Mass Effect 3. The Prothean and Leviathan DLCs give us the opportunity to chase mysteries instead of problems, the Omega DLC lets us revisit the titular hive of scum and villainy from Mass Effect 2, and the Citadel DLC is an amazing breath of fresh air and a wonderful send-off to the fans, which- most importantly of all- injects some much-needed humor and positivity back into the game.
The thing is... all of these feel like they should have been included from the start.
Leviathan explores the origin of the Reapers. Prothean allows us to finally meet and talk with one of the mysterious disappeared precursors who had such a huge impact on the galaxy. Omega is a great excuse to hang out with badass alien crimelord Aria T'loak and stick it to Cerberus. Citadel gives us a space to rest and escape from the horrors of war, play some minigames, jump into a combat simulator with no galaxy-ending consequences if we lose. It feels like Bioware planned them all along, and they had to be relegated to the realm of DLC because they weren't finished on time. Which I... guess is okay, if that's actually what happened. I'm cool with that. It's still a little disappointing though.
Then there's the online component- the online component that I didn't get to play because I had to disconnect my 360 from the internet if I wanted to boot the game at all, and even if I did plug the wireless dongle back in there was no way I was paying both Microsoft AND Electronic Arts for the privilege of playing online. I already paid for the game and the single-player expansions, the least you guys could do is drop the bloody online pass. And even if I WAS crazy enough to drop more money on your broken, depressing, incomplete game- what the hell makes you think I'm giving you my personal info to sign up for an Origin account just so I can drop into the multiplayer?
And can we talk about those segments where everything slows down? The dream forests, the final push to the beam, the part where you have to shoot down the killer gynoid before it tears into you? Those suck. They suck. They aren't fun, they're frustrating in their slowness. The dream forest is supposed to be a representation of the mental toll the war is taking on Shepard or whatever, but that explanation always came off as pretentious to me (which is part of the reason I ascribe to the idea that Shepard was originally supposed to be fighting off Indoctrination- because then it would have made sense for it to be in there).
ALL OF THAT ASIDE, here is my quandary as it were: Mass Effect 3 isn't a bad game.
I don't hate it at all, despite how I may seem. The combat is solid, even with a crap ending it does a great job of closing out the trilogy, it stays true to the feel of the previous games, and it tugs at the heartstrings in ways its predecessors couldn't. It's good. But, it has so many issues that I don't know that I want to invest in it again. On one hand, I'd feel weird about having just the first two, but on the other, it's kind of a hot mess. I don't know if I like playing it or not, and that is a very weird place to be.
Yes, that game. I'm not here to talk about the controversial ending that everyone hated so much Bioware had to amend it with an "extended cut" DLC. Rather, I'm here to put the whole package under a microscope.
 |
| Strap in. We got another long one. |
Would I even want to?
I mean, whenever I played it on my Xbox, I quite literally had to disconnect my wireless attachment every single time I started the game. If the Xbox was connected to the internet while the main menu loaded, the game would lock itself into an endless loop while loading the main menu. Mass Effect 3 released in 2012. I'm not the only one this has happened to. This issue still hasn't been fixed.
Then there's the matter of the game having been produced by Electronic Arts. They're like that asshole uncle that pisses you off every time he opens his mouth, but whom you (grudgingly) have to admit has done cool stuff. Command and Conquer Generals was my first (and still favorite) real-time strategy title. Dead Space 1 and 2 were simply marvelous with their atmosphere and worldbuilding. I find their shady-as-hell business practices in poor taste, and the only parts of Dead Space 3 that I really liked were the resource bot's personality and the post-game epilogue. Both were paid DLC microtransactions. I had to pay extra for the enjoyable parts of the game. What kind of backwards money-grubbing asshattery is that?
All railing against EA aside, Mass Effect 3 does very much feel like the next logical installment in the trilogy. The world is still there- the Asari, the Genophage, the Relays, the tension between the Geth and the Quarians- and it all feels familiar. The three major differences from the past two games are: one, the combat has improved. Two, everything has gone straight to hell, courtesy of the Handbasket Express. The series' robotic Big Bads, the "Reapers", are out in force and have the power and numbers to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy. Every major subplot will be tied up as Commander Shepard makes a mad dash to stop all the galactic infighting so that every Milky Way race we've come to love can unite against a seemingly impossible foe.
Number three: it's depressing.
Remember all those party members you had in Mass Effect 2? You're back down to 6 options, three of which return from previous titles. Remember the quirkier members of your squad? They'll probably die heroically. You know, for the plot. Earth is getting destroyed by a Reaper invasion when you start the game. The first world you visit is the Turian moon, because their homeworld proper is getting destroyed by a Reaper invasion. The Asari homeworld? Getting destroyed. Krogan homeworld? Getting destroyed. The Quarians? They started a full-on war with the Geth for funsies, which led the machine race to join up with the bad guys just so they could survive- and by the end, guess who shows up on the Quarian/Geth homeworld? Oh, and if that wasn't bad enough, space-racist terrorist organization Cerberus is back, and they're screwing everybody because their leader thinks he can gain control over the Reapers. Some decisions in the game give you the option to screw over another race in favor of gaining a lot more support for the resistance.
Sure there are sweet moments here and there- a chance to hang out with Garrus later on has him and Shepard sharing bro-time as they try and one-up each other on the Citadel. Romances are still a thing. You pick up Mordin later on, and if you stop by the med bay you can get some amusing moments out of the banter between him and Eve. But on the whole, it's just... dark. So dark and so hopeless that it's... it's tiring. It does a very good job of illustrating the sort of heavy impact that a war has on those who are caught in the crossfire. You can walk through a spaceport-turned-refugee camp, and stand in front of a memorial wall with dozens of photos of those who were killed in the invasion or are otherwise missing. There are makeshift medical tents set up nearby. The place fills up with more NPCs as the game progresses. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate a dark story. But Mass Effect 3 is overwhelming in its hopelessness.
 |
| I'm Commander Shepard, and this part of the Citadel will ruin your good mood. |
Remember when I said that the most enjoyable parts of Dead Space 3, I had to pay for? This is also a problem with Mass Effect 3. The Prothean and Leviathan DLCs give us the opportunity to chase mysteries instead of problems, the Omega DLC lets us revisit the titular hive of scum and villainy from Mass Effect 2, and the Citadel DLC is an amazing breath of fresh air and a wonderful send-off to the fans, which- most importantly of all- injects some much-needed humor and positivity back into the game.
The thing is... all of these feel like they should have been included from the start.
Leviathan explores the origin of the Reapers. Prothean allows us to finally meet and talk with one of the mysterious disappeared precursors who had such a huge impact on the galaxy. Omega is a great excuse to hang out with badass alien crimelord Aria T'loak and stick it to Cerberus. Citadel gives us a space to rest and escape from the horrors of war, play some minigames, jump into a combat simulator with no galaxy-ending consequences if we lose. It feels like Bioware planned them all along, and they had to be relegated to the realm of DLC because they weren't finished on time. Which I... guess is okay, if that's actually what happened. I'm cool with that. It's still a little disappointing though.
Then there's the online component- the online component that I didn't get to play because I had to disconnect my 360 from the internet if I wanted to boot the game at all, and even if I did plug the wireless dongle back in there was no way I was paying both Microsoft AND Electronic Arts for the privilege of playing online. I already paid for the game and the single-player expansions, the least you guys could do is drop the bloody online pass. And even if I WAS crazy enough to drop more money on your broken, depressing, incomplete game- what the hell makes you think I'm giving you my personal info to sign up for an Origin account just so I can drop into the multiplayer?
And can we talk about those segments where everything slows down? The dream forests, the final push to the beam, the part where you have to shoot down the killer gynoid before it tears into you? Those suck. They suck. They aren't fun, they're frustrating in their slowness. The dream forest is supposed to be a representation of the mental toll the war is taking on Shepard or whatever, but that explanation always came off as pretentious to me (which is part of the reason I ascribe to the idea that Shepard was originally supposed to be fighting off Indoctrination- because then it would have made sense for it to be in there).
ALL OF THAT ASIDE, here is my quandary as it were: Mass Effect 3 isn't a bad game.
I don't hate it at all, despite how I may seem. The combat is solid, even with a crap ending it does a great job of closing out the trilogy, it stays true to the feel of the previous games, and it tugs at the heartstrings in ways its predecessors couldn't. It's good. But, it has so many issues that I don't know that I want to invest in it again. On one hand, I'd feel weird about having just the first two, but on the other, it's kind of a hot mess. I don't know if I like playing it or not, and that is a very weird place to be.
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