affecting mass, 3

[chaosblade]

so, i've been playing mass effect 3 during my bouts of 'i've been studying too much, time to be lazy.' i finished it a few days ago, and gave myself some time to try and accumulate my thoughts on it a bit

Comments

[unclejam]

I have not gotten through 2 so I have not played 3, but boy have I heard people talk about it. Boy!!

From what I've heard the ending is dumb and gives you less choice-agency than Human Revolution did, although I think some people have an image in their head of every single branch on the tree of possible decisions they've made up to that point meaning a substantially distinctive ending. Which would probably not be affordable for Bioware to do. What seems as if it would have worked a lot better is:

* Have three or so primary endings to the main story which should ideally all be different
* After that resolves, Fallout-style summary of the ultimate fate of people who you touched base with who did not get, you know, completely wrapped up in their storylines
* close out video

I also gather there is a weird anti-technological progress vibe which implies that blowing up the gates that let you have stellar travel outside of the immediate area is a Good Thing somehow. Which is weird, because there is at least one element of the galactic community (the asari) who would have been IN THEORY capable of building new relays?? So what is the deal here guys.

[chaosblade]

The ending is just... weird, which gives a lot of credence to the theory that's been running around about it. There's no real anti-technology message behind the ending, even, because if you take it at face value it demonstrably proves that the mass relays are a Good Thing (with the mass relays destroyed there's literally like, millions of aliens stranded on Earth, with at least like 2/5s of them unable to live in Earth's environment). there's a really vague, ill-conceived, and brief message that 'TECHNOLOGY WILL EVENTUALLY REVOLT IF YOU GIVE IT THINKY BRAINS BECAUSE YOU ARE PUNY FLESH CREATURES'

the argument falls apart pretty quickly based on what, exactly, is delivering it

i dunno, the vibe of the ending is ultimately less any specific message and more 'what the fucking fuck, guy'