Yeah, I agree with you, man. I finished the game in the summer of 2015, and it was an absolute slugfest. The combat mechanics for the Xbox 360 version are so restrictive and limiting on the player's movement and control. Once you press A, your character bends forward like a hunchback, and the animation looks stiff as hell. Everything is auto-done for you, so your character essentially turns into an AI as he attempts to get into a striking position, but often times he's blocked by other characters as you watch helplessly. Your character continuously attacks without you ever pressing a single button on the controller - no blocking, no dodging, no real combat techniques you can employ. Not to mention the last encounter is one of the most pathetic excuses of a final boss fight that I've ever seen - it’s basically just spamming the A button for 20 minutes since each catapult hit does almost no damage against the Archdemon dragon.
Combine all this with the fact that not only is your character not voiced in the dialogue sequences despite this feature being in Mass Effect, which came out over two years before this game, but also how this game's visuals somehow look worse than Oblivion, which came out 3.5 years before!
If you want to play a solid RPG, stick with the first two Mass Effect games, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Oblivion and Skyrim, and the last two Witcher games. This game is just downright pitiful by comparison.
Exactly correct. This is part of the reason why I'm skeptical about Andromeda after ME3 was somewhat lackluster to me, especially with its appalling ending, and I'll most likely wait until the game is heavily discounted before trying it out.
@jaoman9: You can blame that on the fanboys who keep buying the game, not necessarily the developers. Their annually high sales indicate to them that people enjoy the game, and thus they're given no incentive to change it too much lest they alienate the fans. Sure, most critics praise every COD game, but COD4 generally received in the 9-10 score range as opposed to the 7.5-8.5 you see for current COD games.
The majority, or at least the plurality, of players who have played all or most of the COD games will tell you that COD 4 is the best COD game for the time it was released (or MW2 or COD2). Obviously it lacks the same amount of content compared to the newer games, but it was very innovative at the time and contains the best maps and is the most well-balanced multiplayer experience compared to the games that came after because of its simplicity.
@jaoman9: Maybe because I find it to difficult to believe you think COD4 is terrible when it was critically acclaimed by essentially all COD fans who played it as well as critics, and was one of the FPS games that revolutionized class-based multiplayer. Nearly all modern FPS online shooters are the successors in some way of the design decisions COD4 introduced. All of the recent COD games are basically perfunctory, uninspired versions of it that require less skill to excel at.
@ferna1234: Wow, these are some terrific ideas you've presented here. The problem is they came from you and not the writers. These are all great themes, motifs and symbols you've attributed to the ending, but unfortunately they were shrouded by the abundant amount of narrative inconsistencies and ambiguities present throughout the ending. The problem is that thematic and symbolic coherence are products of narrative coherence, not substitutes for it. All of those ideas are great on their own terms, but when the story doesn't make at all, it loses the audience's willing engagement and attention. I think you've put more thought into your response to me than the writers did into the ending of the game.
If you have the time, I'd definitely recommend watching Mr BTongue's videos on Youtube pertaining to Mass Effect 3. Here's the first one:
@texasgoldrush: That post by Weekes was made his own account, and was unfortunately removed only a few days after its release. I remember because I was one of the people who saw it on the site. Most people were speculating about it because they see the content but not the source. Since the source has been removed, it's not now possible to confirm or deny its validity. However, there are really only two possibilities: his account got hacked, or he wrote it, and I'd wager it's much more likely that he wrote it. That's just my conjecture, but I should've screen-shoted the page while it was still available to prove it. That being said, much of the content in there is valid in terms of why people were disappointed with the original ending.
I wasn't trying to argue with you about the theme you brought up, and you use some solid evidence to support it. However, how that specific theme relates to the ending isn't one of the issues I had with the ending.
My apologies, I forgot about the ending where you lack enough EMS. It's just that I would guess only a minority of people received that ending because it is rather difficult to accrue so little EMS, especially if you've ported over your character from the previous game(s).
Regarding the Catalyst:
1. Perhaps, but as far as I recall (I haven't touched the game in roughly 3 years so I could be wrong about this) this was under the assumption by the characters and by the player that the Catalyst was the Citadel itself. It was not hinted at all that the Catalyst was the AI deity in the form of the child from the beginning of the game.
2. Yes, that Protean hologram on Thessia hinted in as brief a manner as possible in one half-baked throwaway line that there was some sort of master controlling the Reapers, but this idea was never brought up again before the ending. Given that this one line occurred several hours before the ending itself, most players likely forgot about it afterwards because it wasn't discussed or elaborated upon. Moreover, none of the actual events throughout the trilogy before the ending indicated that the AI god child existed at all. It has no correlation to any of the events prior to its last-minute introduction into the story.
3. The only reason that Shepard is able to solve the problem is because of the Catalyst. The Catalyst is the character/plot device that propels the plot forward. He is the one who took Shepard into his lair, and he is the one who presented him with the choices. Without him, the Reapers would not have been defeated during this cycle because Shepard would've still been in the room with Anderson, so yes, his actions function as a solution to the plot's conflict.
4. The Catalyst is both the solution and the cause of the conflict. He functions as both.
The reason as to why Sovereign got "overridden" is not adequately explained in the narrative in a way that makes sense to the audience, so it would constitute as a plot ambiguity. The only reason I brought up Vigil is because he said something about how his cycle postponed the arrival of the Reapers by sabotaging the keepers in the Citadel. My point has nothing to do with the dead Reaper in ME2, nor his limited knowledge. It has to do with the fact that for some unexplained reason, the Catalyst was unable to let the Reapers in despite the fact that the Citadel is a part of him. This is an enormous plot hole because the current cycle presumably should've already been eradicated before the time period in which the trilogy is set.
Sure, there are several small-scale examples of conflicts involving synthetics versus organics, but nothing that would indicate the ludicrous extent that the Catalyst believes in terms of synthetics wanting to eradicate every single organic organism in the universe. That's simply absurd, and absolutely nothing in the games suggests that's even remotely true.
@texasgoldrush: The motive irrelevant? The Catalyst's motivation constitutes the purpose of the Reapers, which are the primary antagonistic force throughout the entire trilogy. So when the purpose of the antagonist is illogical and implausible, the narrative suffers for it because the audience becomes less engaged. The more far-fetched and implausible character motivations become, the less compelling the narrative is as a a result.
In the end of what? No event or entity that has occurred or was mentioned throughout the entire trilogy supports his argument. Essentially everything he says is based upon faulty, illogical reasoning. Every, or nearly every line of dialogue spoken by him is falsifiable to a large extent. I can certainly prove that to you, but given that I'd probably write a paragraph per each line of what he says, my argument would probably be the length of a small novel, which I lack the time to write out fully.
Why it presents the choices to you doesn't make any sense. I didn't like the ending in part because of the reasons I outlined before to you. Go ahead and re-read that document I sent you earlier, or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs that video will be of help. Here's the next two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT_x64921ls and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NNUImNL9Ok. Enjoy.
I disliked the ending due to the abundant amount of inconsistencies and loopholes in the writing, in addition to the poor gameplay and game design choices during those final 20 minutes or so. The ending lacked narrative coherence in part because the characters didn't act reliably or consistently with how they were written beforehand.
If you love the ending, fine, but don't go deluding yourself into thinking that people don't have legitimate reasons for disliking the ending.
@ZellyPoof: Nothing about the backstory of the Leviathans made any sense whatsoever. I don't recall the specific dialogue at the end of the DLC, but really it opened up a lot more questions than it answered based upon how convoluted it was. Below are some of the questions I had from it off the top of my head.
The Leviathans created the Catalyst to solve the problem of synthetics versus organics, but how is the Catalyst supposed to be any more intelligent or capable at solving the problem than they are when the Leviathans are the ones who created the Catalyst? They're the ones who programmed the damn thing, so they just expect it to contain new knowledge from out of nowhere about how to solve the problem? Also, the Leviathans are smart enough to create a (supposedly) supremely intelligent AI, but not smart enough (or just too lazy) to solve the actual problem itself? The supreme intellect of the Catalyst had to have originated from the Leviathans themselves because they designed it, so why the hell can't they solve the problem without the Catalyst? Don't they monitor their thrall species, so wouldn't they know the specific details of how the synthetics were constructed and thus how to defeat them, especially given the fact that they were vastly superior in terms of physical capabilities by comparison to the synthetics and thralls? And why would they create a synthetic AI to solve the problem when the problem itself is derived from synthetics destroying organics? Didn't they realize they repeated the same mistake that their slaves did? And how did they think an AI would help when the problem involves warfare and physical violence other than simply telling the Leviathans what to do? This idea in and of itself is laughably condescending.
So if the lesser species were enthralled to serve the Leviathans, shouldn't they have just commanded the organics to stop making the synthetic constructs? Now, the details surrounding whether all of the thrall species had begun to make synthetics is frustratingly vague, as well as if the synthetics actually wiped out many thrall species or if they were just in conflict, or how many were killed. Either way, couldn't the Leviathans have just told the remaining thralls to temporarily move to another planet and then just confronted the synthetics directly and defeat them due to their massive physical size and supreme intellect? (assuming their indoctrination doesn't work on synthetics) Even if we're supposed to assume that the Leviathans and their slaves are the only organics beings to have existed in the galaxy at that time, how does the Catalyst believe that the synthetics are capable of killing every organic in the galaxy when they couldn't even finish off the lesser-minded species? The Leviathans were never in any danger from the synthetics, only their slaves were, so where is the Catalyst getting the idea that the Leviathans are the issue? I guess just because the story requires it.
As the Intelligence sought out the means to fulfill its mandate, it created an army of pawns that were dispatched to collect genetic data from species throughout the galaxy, much like the Collectors employed by the Reapers in modern times.
How the hell did the Catalyst create an army of pawns? Did he pull them out of his ass? I thought he was just an holographic AI? How can he create anything? And why weren't the Leviathans aware of this? They just let the Catalyst do whatever he wanted without checking up on him even though he can supposedly provide the solution to the problem? Even if they were aware of this going on, it still wouldn't make any sense. The details we're provided don't seem to clarify any of this.
The Leviathans essentially enslave lesser species, don't monitor the synthetics that those species created closely, don't bother to confront or destroy the synthetics at all when they easily could have, create an AI to help them solve something they should already know how to solve even though the problem started with the creation of AIs, and then don't have any awareness of anything the AI's been doing?
These are only some of the questions I remembered having after completing the Leviathan DLC.
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