Of interest to almost nobody...
I finished Mass Effect 3 over the weekend.
Rarely have I felt such a phenomenal let down at the end of a game...
Very good game, very very good. Involving some hard decisions and a fair amount of emotional investment in the characters.
Will MAss effect 1 and 2 I had to resist the urge to play again just to see what would happen differently.
Now, Nothing. Nothing at all.
Huge amount of work to get a massive war machine ready to save the galaxy, worried that I'm still only at 50% readiness because success at the single player game is gated on success in multiplayer. Which I've not even bothered with since I'm all about the story.
Already a little keyed up because for the first time in the entire game my character's love interest has shown me something more than polite interest.
Slightly tricky battle, no worse than I've faced in the rest of the game.
A mad dash to get to the save the Galaxy button.
In which the entire squad of people you've been fighting alongside are wiped out in ways utterly beyond the player's control.
But you survive, gravely injured, to press the button and save the galaxy.
So, There I am, on the brink of saving everyone in entire galaxy from being eaten by machines, especially the utterly charming lass I'd promised to spend the rest of my (pathetically short) life with raising lots of little blue children.
I'm offered a choice.
A choice which after playing through with an expression of horrified disbelief, shredding a bunch of data files and perusing the web extensively boils down to
a) Die gloriously,
destroying glactic civilisation but allowing two of your chums to achieve happiness.
b) Die ignominiosuly,
destroying glactic civilisation and dooming one of your chums to death and another to a life of lonliness
c) die pointlessly,
destroying glactic civilisation and, long term achieving nothing.
Oh.
So my defined win condition of "win, settle down with the blues lass and have a peaceful life" isn't possible.
Even the nominal win of "actually save the galaxy", you know, what this entire series of games has been working towards, isn't possible.
and those were the "good" endings.
You don't even want to know about the bad ones...
Rarely have I felt such a phenomenal let down at the end of a game...
Very good game, very very good. Involving some hard decisions and a fair amount of emotional investment in the characters.
Will MAss effect 1 and 2 I had to resist the urge to play again just to see what would happen differently.
Now, Nothing. Nothing at all.
Huge amount of work to get a massive war machine ready to save the galaxy, worried that I'm still only at 50% readiness because success at the single player game is gated on success in multiplayer. Which I've not even bothered with since I'm all about the story.
Already a little keyed up because for the first time in the entire game my character's love interest has shown me something more than polite interest.
Slightly tricky battle, no worse than I've faced in the rest of the game.
A mad dash to get to the save the Galaxy button.
In which the entire squad of people you've been fighting alongside are wiped out in ways utterly beyond the player's control.
But you survive, gravely injured, to press the button and save the galaxy.
So, There I am, on the brink of saving everyone in entire galaxy from being eaten by machines, especially the utterly charming lass I'd promised to spend the rest of my (pathetically short) life with raising lots of little blue children.
I'm offered a choice.
A choice which after playing through with an expression of horrified disbelief, shredding a bunch of data files and perusing the web extensively boils down to
a) Die gloriously,
destroying glactic civilisation but allowing two of your chums to achieve happiness.
b) Die ignominiosuly,
destroying glactic civilisation and dooming one of your chums to death and another to a life of lonliness
c) die pointlessly,
destroying glactic civilisation and, long term achieving nothing.
Oh.
So my defined win condition of "win, settle down with the blues lass and have a peaceful life" isn't possible.
Even the nominal win of "actually save the galaxy", you know, what this entire series of games has been working towards, isn't possible.
and those were the "good" endings.
You don't even want to know about the bad ones...