This, one ties a few loose ends the other fleshes out an interesting character.  Omega add a few new enemy types, but only during the DLC, and the two rifles you get you may already have as I did, the Chakram Launcher and the Valkirie.  Both are heavy and ammo mods are useless with the CL.  The Argus and Batarian shotgun from Leviathan are pointless and useless.  If you have no DLC yet buy the first weapons pack.

Problem is it still all feels contrived. Leviathan and the EC try to make sense of the clusterfuck of an ending they had with the original ME3 ending. It's pretty clear they pulled all of this out of their ass rather than having an idea of where they were going throughout the series. That always bugs me. I prefer a coherent storyline that fits together.

Yeah the Leviathan DLC tries to make as much sense as possible given what was already out there and all of the questions it left unanswered, but I'm still disappointed with the series being wrapped up the way it was as I'm sure many fans still are.

I still don't know if I'll be buying anymore Bioware games given what they did to ME and Dragon Age. If I do give them anymore money it won't be unless Dragon Age 3 has amazing feedback from users and critics.

Agree on all counts.  I'm in a wait and see mode with the new BW games.

Yeah....Bioware has gone from "Must Pre-Order"  to "Gamefly before you buy" on my list. And that really makes me sad....I loved KOTOR and ME1, they were truly special games. I can't bring myself to re-play ME3, much less DA2. And besides the lower game quality, the "all gay all the time" agenda they've gotten on the last few games really wears on me.  

I feel betrayed when I play one of their newer games.  Baldur's Gate is still on my hard drive after all these years, but I have no desire to play anything made after the first Dragon Age again.  Mass Effect 3 broke my heart... it was a fucking cash in at the fans expense.

Too be fair if you can mitegte the pissed off let down feeling it was still a great game.  Just wish the ending was more fleshed out and your choices were more relevant.  Would have been nice to have a more diverse and larger squad too.

I'm resurrecting this necro thread.  New SP and MP DLC, probably the last ones.  Supposed to have a lot more interaction with ME1 and ME2 characters and LIs.  Drops March 5th, $15 for the SP DLC.

Citadel and Reckoning DLCs

I just finished ME3. I put off buying it until it hit the bargin bin because of all the complaints.

I'm not going to read through 15 pages of crying, bottom line is it wasn't as bad as I expected. I half expected the Earth to kerplode, and the reapers to gang rape the Normandy crew.

My biggest complaint is I must have ADD, because I didn't pay attention to the holo-boy, and just limped toward the shiney light at the end and got the synthesis ending instead of the control ending I wanted.

So then I fired up google to view the control ending, actually the extended ending which was a bit better. I get the complaints that the endings were all the same, but if it wasn't for my lack of following directions, I would not have never known better.

I also get that folks feel cheated because the endings really were not based on any of your decisions throughout the series, which has always been a selling point of ME.

At the end of the day, it's just a game, and I enjoyed it. I honestly don't remember any of the decisions that I made in the prior ME games, except that I banged Ashley in ME1, and I banged Ashley 2 (don't recall her name but she looked like Ashley) in ME2.

Thought starchild was bad writing personified.  A rogue AI preserving organic life by creating reapers to protect from AI overrunning the galaxy.  why not just exterminate AI directly.  The Leviathan DLC fleshes it out a little more.  Preferred the control ending myself.  

Don't get me wrong, it was definitely not a good ending, but I just wasn't too broken up over it.

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but the three ending options seemed to be stolen straight out of the original Deus Ex.

I see the "Star Child" as sort of a space Bloomberg....it thinks it's answer is the only possible correct one and exterminates the galactic races before they can find their own solution, or worse show it up by finding a way to live with AIs peacefully, like Shepard can make happen if he does the right things. I prefer the Destroy solution, myself...if ever a group needed killin', it's the Reapers. I wouldn't believe them when it came to the Control solution, and I sure as hell wouldn't want "synthesis" with the greatest war criminals the galaxy has ever...or will ever...seen, either.

To cut them slack it is hard if not impossible to come up with unique and new content, especially in sci-fi.  But Sovereign and Harbinger, and the reaper on Rannoch telling you "you cannot comprehend" makes you think it would be something more complex than a rogue AI.  Perhaps building into a bigger story.

They are probably already working on another Mass Effect series, here's to hoping they acquire better writers and Vega is not the protagonist.

Destroy delays or potentially loses what the Reapers acquired.  Cycle after cycle of civilizations with different technological and societal evolution, the reapers "archive" so to speak would be the galactic jackpot.  Ultimately the reapers are a tool of a rogue AI, an AI you replace as controller.  Starchild said "Replaced by you".  Also you cannot really apply morality to a tool.

That's because they were pulling the story out of their ass as they went along, by their own admission.  The main writers never had a pre-planned plotline that they expanded out over 3 games.  Hence, the shift from hints of huge topics in 1 and 2 like dark energy and stars going out early (the entire Haestrom mission in ME2) and the idea of reapers as an unfathomable enemy, to it all boiling down to a  mis-programmed AI at the end of 3.

Another example would be going from ME1's portrayal of cerberus, which was never fleshed out more than a couple of minor non-memorable sidequests and the illusive man was never mentioned once, to ME3's cerberus where they have somehow morphed into the main enemy, taking the place of the reapers for a large majority of the game.  Heck, the final "enemy" of the trilogy that you have to defeat isn't even a reaper like harbinger (who was the main antagonist of 2, even into the Arrival DLC), it's the illusive man.

I can see the logic in wanting to get a hold of the records of the millions of species exterminated by the Reapers....I just think that losing it is an acceptable sacrifice if it means taking out the Reapers and that AI once and for all. Losing EDI and the Geth is sad, too...but Shepard's orders are to stop the Reapers no matter what the cost, and at the end he gets two or three choices, presented by the leader of the Enemy. Shepard has no way of knowing if he is even being told the truth and they are trying to manipulate him into doing what they want, or just playing a game for their amusement. The Reapers can and do lie and deceive...how does Shepard know what they are telling him is true? Or Clintonian parsing of words? If I'm only getting one shot I'd vote Destroy and hope they weren't lying. If they're lying the choice doesn't matter...everyone is already doomed and it can only be hoped the Yahg do better next cycle. If they were telling the truth.....

....well, to be honest I wouldn't be all that inclined to listen anyway. There is only so much one man can take, and the Reaper's tactics and deeds are so revolting to me and if I were Shepard I'd see them all dead no matter how high the price was. After seeing what I'd seen across the three games, I doubt I'd be able to seriously consider any option but Destroy, especially when the other two options require me to take a leap of faith by killing myself via electrocution or jumping into a energy beam whilst hoping they weren't blowing smoke up my ass. Nope, I'd go with exterminating the Reapers and breaking the Cycle...or if they were lying, making one last gesture of defiance before the hammer falls on my head.

So, in short I see where you're coming from, I just don't think I'd be capable of deciding based on pure logic...wanting to make them pay and eliminating the threat permanently would be my motivation at that point.    

I'll just put in my two cents.

I would describe the end of Mass Effect 3 as an epic failure.  What's even more amusing is the way that Bioware says that 'Synthesis' is somehow the GOOD ending  Synthesis is an abomination.  The player had spent the entire game fighting synthesized lifeforms.  Control is megalomaniacs.  Destroy is the only reasonable option.  Despite the horrifying collateral damage, it was the only good option because it ENDED the threat once and for all.

From a stylistic viewpoint I hated the conclusion of the series, however.  I detest grim, depressing endings.  We should've at least had the option of a good outcome if we made the best choices during the game.

Frankly, after Dragon Age 2 and the complete debacle that Mass Effect 3's ending was, I'm done with Bioware.

This is kinda old and came out before the expanded ending (which I still haven't seen) but he make some great points.







 

I agreed with his original video, but not his second one.  In another video, he praised the end after the Extended Cut.  Personally, I thought the Extended Cut was just more bad content and didn't improve much of anything.  JMO.

Tend to agree, failed to flesh out the story anymore or provide clarity on what followed.

The Citadel DLC was a great bonus but still the way the 3 game series concluded sucked balls.  You can tell 1.  Bioware was rushed to deliver an unfinished game and 2. writing went from half-ass to bad.  Choices and the story arc of said choices were all but maid irrelevant.  From this point on all EA games are rent first for me and anything Bioware will have to be hailed as damn near perfect for me to even try it much less buy it.

Here is to hoping Fallout 4 or Elder Scrolls 6 or both are really in the end of the year pipeline, because I do not see much that interest me near term.

I've actually grown to hate most modern story driven video games.  Which sucks, because about all I care for in games are those that are either 1) strategy or 2) story based.  I'm getting really tired of all this depressing shit I see in the writing of this stuff these days.  Mass Effect 3 is a perfect example of this.  And while I enjoyed the first two Starcraft 2 campaigns (chiefly because they weren't as dark and depressing as Blizzard scripts usually are), my pessimistic side tells me that Blizzard will fully and completely screw the pooch with the conclusion in the final installment.  I fully expect things to end poorly for the main characters; it would be par for the course for Blizzard.

Personally, I think the new Battlestar Galactica influenced writing in the industry too much, and has ruined about the last ten years worth of visual scifi (gaming, TV, and movies).

I've been a fairly dedicated gamer for about 25 years now, but I can see that coming to an end if this sort of trend doesn't change.

Bioshock infinite.  If you like story based games and you haven't played that yet, you owe it to yourself.

Rented it, didn't even finish it, and that was with 3 days off in a row.  Its good but hardly the masterpiece it hailed to be.  The first games story really annoyed the fuck out of me since it was a veiled attack at Ayn Rand and individualism.

You'd think they would have noted how everything else Moore has tried to do with BSG....like Craprica and ret-conning Adama into the first "Colonial-Cylon War"...has flopped. Once you learn the real star of the series is the invisible space monster who wiped out four entire civilizations to get it's jollies even Tricia Helfer can't wiggle her ass enough to save it.

Are you talking about BSG or ME? I guess the only difference would be visibility of the space monster

BSG, of course...there wasn't a invisible space monster per se in Mass Effect....just a demented AI and it's servants. In BSG they (both Colonials and Cylons,who were both victims) never had a clue what was being done to them by their invisible space monster "God", much less find a way to fight back against it.