I have been trolled.
Mass Effect 1 is still by far my favorite game in the series despite being a bit rough around the edges. Yeah a lot of people had trouble controlling the Mako, the side quests were long and tedious, the inventory was clunky and a huge management nightmare, and the classes were criminally unbalanced but it was a new kind of game trying a lot of new ideas for the very first time. ME1 had a great soundtrack, great visuals, and promised a trilogy where your choices would effect the subsequent sequels. I also remember the mention of interruptable cutscenes that would effect conversations but that mysteriously disappeared once the game came out.
Next we had Mass Effect 2. My impression when ME2 was announced was that the issues in the first game would be addressed such as fine tuning the Mako, less item micromanagement, balanced classes, and an upgradable Normandy. I was also thinking that the Mako would be ungradable too but that never happened unfortunately.
Too my surprise, ME2 was a bit different than I had expected. Bioware went much further into action gameplay than RPG gameplay. I didn't completely mind the changes only because the gameplay was solid and it was fun, but I was surprised how much more linear the levels were and that if you missed an item you lost it forever.
I liked that a lot more detail was put into the side quests eliminating the tedium completely. I didn't like that the weapon modifications were simplified, the mako was replaced with a boring planet-scanning minigame that was more tedious than driving the mako around on planets, and that the supposed ship upgrades had little effect on gameplay and merely contributed towards the main quest as a check whether you survive the suicide mission or not. On that note I never liked that if you never upgraded your ship, it didn't just blow when you started the suicide mission. Instead you make it to the collectors based regardless (turns out this foreshadowed how little your actions mattered in the series in general). But truth is I gave ME2's flaws a pass hoping that Bioware would learn from the second game and bring more of the RPG elements that made the first game so awesome back.
I had high hopes for Mass Effect 3 because I saw that Bioware was finally bringing back the weapon upgrades and more skill trees that had been absent from the second game. Well when I turned on the game, that's when I realized that Bioware had trolled me. The game went even further into action and even less into RPG to the point where I finally realized the game felt more like I was playing a weird combination of Gears of War and Halo than a Mass Effect game. The game was even more linear than the second and every choice I had made in the first and second game no longer mattered and merely added some mild flavor to the conversations.
For example choices like choosing Udina or Anderson for the human counsel position no longer mattered because Anderson steps down and gives the position to Udina if you chose Anderson in the first game. This method of railroading the story occurs at every single branch where the player had made a choice in past games and stands as one of the most horrifying facts of ME3.
The method in which you recruit your party members is contrived. Every past recruit just happens to be located on the exact planet in the exact location you need to go in order to complete the primary mission. I can think of a dozen better ways they could have handled this. For example the Shadow Broker resources could have been used to send out agents to locate past members. Occasionally you would get a tip on the whereabouts of a member and could participate in a sidequest to obtain that recruit. But if they did this, then they would have had to record dialogue for every single character for every single mission because recruiting would have been more open-ended.
I don't know exactly who is at fault. Was it Bioware or was its Master, Electronic Arts responsible for this? I don't know, but I imagine some high up executives came up with this bright idea of dumbing the game down to the lowest common denominator in order to obtain maximum profits at the expense of everyone else while putting in the bare minimum effort to make the game.
Player choice was an integral part of the game. That's why everyone made sure to import their previous save into the new game. Why did they produce such pile of garbage I don't know. They removed part of the core gameplay and leaving it but an average shooter.
For the most part any good that came from this game was residue left over from the first and second game that they just borrowed. ME3 was lazy. They spent all their money on crappy marketing and and a BS cooperative game mode I couldn't even play because I was on the PC and the glitch allowing players to receive unlimited credits was never fixed. I didn't want to risk getting banned from stupid Bioware because some other guy decided to cheat. Oh and getting banned from coop means you can't play the single player either. So I never bothered with it.
Also since the game was so linear and you get the same crappy ending regardless, I felt like there was no reason to play the game again making story and action modes completely pointless.
Mass Effect 3 is by far the best example of a great franchise that had lots of potential that was ruined by greedy people. The same fate happened to Dragon Age 2 where coincidentally your choices didn't matter in that game too. I would really love to meet the person reasonable because I imagine they had their hand in both of these games. I would like to punch in the face and perhaps a kick in the balls.
Because of Mass Effect 3 and my disappointment with Dragon Age 2, I will never buy another Bioware or EA game. I don't know who is responsible although I suspect EA. Screw their DRM and their dumb business practices. I only hope more people begin to recognize that EA ruins franchises and should not support their products. They don't even treat their employees well.
Oh and by the way I am still sick from seeing that halfassed picture of Tali. Biggest troll I have ever seen and symbolically represents what was wrong with Mass Effect 3. It's called laziness!