(no subject)
Okay, so I've had a day to process the ending, so here's some good/bad thoughts on my first impression of the game overall.
GOOD:
-- Thane's death scene. It was sudden, but it made poetic sense. He died protecting civilians from a killer, saving thousands of lives in the process. He gets to go out like a fighter and not wasting away in the hospital like he hadn't wanted to. I know some fans will be upset over it but, frankly, I'm kinda glad he died. A cure would've felt... idk, cheap, hammy.
-- TRAYNOR, HOW ARE YOU JUST THE MOST PERFECT, YOU ADORABLE LITTLE FKAFJKSDLFS;DFSASAD YESSS *___*
-- Cortez is also just the cutest, though also super sad, I can't wait to romance him.
-- The dialogue on the ship is equal parts commentary and equal parts actual conversation, and I like it. It gives the characters more mobility around the ship, more interaction with squadmates, and that's awesome. ME2 was a lot of guessing about "what would so and so think of so and so", but to get clarification in ME3 is gonna make a lot of fanfic writers and fan artists happy.
-- Rannoch looked like Utah! XD
-- Jack being a teacher is just perfect. I love that she didn't lose her edge, but that she had matured a bit and had found a reason to work for something. Also loved her new outfit and such. *_*
-- Rannoch and Tuchanka were, imho, the best parts in storytelling, my hats off to them. Also, the Citadel attack was just waaaaaaay too cool.
-- Speaking of the Citadel, it's my favorite environment EVER. The attention to detail, the design, the conversations, everything about it was phenomenal. It seriously couldn't have done better unless it had come with cake.
-- Mordin's death I'd known about from spoilers, but... nothing prepared me for how it ended. The singing. The cure release. It was... dare I say, perfect. I think I'm gonna cry, every time.
-- Brokering a peace between the quarians and geth = FUCKING. SATISFYING.
-- I was worried about bringing in new characters this late into the game, but Vega and Javik are AMAZING. Javik is hands down my favorite atm; the way he's basically the mirror to Shepard if they had failed, his attitude, the way the Protheans get knocked down from there ~mystic ancient race~ pedestal and shown to be just as organic as the rest of the universe. Ohhhhh man. And Vega is just so adorable, he's precious and I love him and you should too.
-- GRUNT'S SCENE. BEST SCENE, OR BEST SCENE. God bless our little tube baby.
-- Stabbing Kai Leng and shouting "THAT'S FOR THANE, YOU SON OF A BITCH" = the most gratifying thing I've felt in a Bioware game to date.
-- Having Buzz Aldrin in the final cinematic was a nice little nod, very fitting.
-- pats_quinade is responsible for 80% of my tears in this game. I GOT ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE PTSD ASARI, BY THE WAY. 8'[
And now... the bad.
-- Thane's death was great. The reaction to Thane's death, or rather the lack of one, was not. I went from watching Shepard's love interest die in front of her, to her cracking jokes with Ashley in a matter of minutes. No one said a word, nothing hinted at Shepard possibly grieving or getting over it or anything, it just went on as if he'd never existed. And considering the things I've heard about Jacob's romance? Color me intensely nervous for Milo's import and any other Shepard with an ME2 romance. ;_; Just let me know the Jack one turns out okay, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease.
-- Is it just me or did the Rachni get dropped like a hot potato. You go from securing their help to... not even seeing them at all in the ensuing plot stuff. Mrr.
-- The above can be KIND OF forgiven. The rest really can't. It only exists within the last 10% of the game, but it's enough that it feels like 50%. The paragon ending is atrocious. Destroy the Reapers! At the cost of technology! Doesn't sound so bad at first but then you think about it. You just destroyed the geth, the race that dropped everything to come help and who's finally achieved their freedom. You just ruined the lives of anyone with medical implants, like Kaidan or Jack. Quarians who depend on the mechanics of their suits to live at the moment? Fucked. All the species on Earth who can't get home now, including all those now fertile krogan? Yeah that's gonna end well! Everyone aboard a ship at the time, or in a moving vehicle, or aboard a space station? Dead. You literally kill billions of people, entire races. It's like the more I think about it, the worse it gets.
-- The crash landing of the Normandy is just... ugh, wow. So if you took the 'destroy Reapers' option, you just marooned everyone on the Normandy. That means any of the aliens get to die alone, separated from their people forever. All the humans who just fought to protect Earth and see it again? Nope, never going home, gonna have to deal with it. And that's IF the majority of them even survive on a totally alien planet.
NICE.
-- I also feel like the "SYNTHETICS WILL NEVER LIVE WITH ORGANICS" thing was such bullshit after Rannoch. Hello, wanna meet the entire race of synthetics that I brokered peace with who are helping me to fight back the Reapers? No? Okay. :|
-- The complete lack of closure regardless of what you choose. We spent years getting to know our comrades, our love interests, our background characters. And that amounts to. Jack. Shit. There's a difference between being a little vague about their ending, and being flat out blank on the matter.
-- The final scene should've been Earth. Period. The last cinematic would have worked great, or even BETTER, if it had been in a future London or Vancouver or a ship overlooking Earth, to bring it full circle. You can't spend HOURS on a game where your #1 priority is "GET BACK TO EARTH AT ALL COSTS", and then not actually show how the damn planet ends up. ._.
-- And frankly, the tone of the ending is the worst part. You spend three games with one overall theme: hope. Hope that you'll stop the Reapers. Hope that you'll see an end to the krogan/salarian/turian conflict or the geth/quarian war. Hope that you'll get a happy or at least a full ending. Hope that Earth and all the other races will be okay. Instead, we got a ham-fisted "no matter what you do, you're fucked and you can't end this happily" at all. It feels like a grab for drama and falling flat on its face. The ending needed to be more varied, to have more choice and, overall, to stay true to the idea that if you work hard enough, you can win your battles. That's the biggest disappointment at all.
Overall:
It's a wonderful game... if you quit right before the final decision, and that's how I'm going to play it, tbh. I shouldn't have to headcanon the rest of the stuff, but there it is.
The stuff preceding that is damn near perfection. But the last section is just so jumbled, so bleak, so unexplained, that it completely threw me off anything that had come before it and is really coloring my views towards replays. Everything feels pointless.
Why bother to romance anyone if you're just going to die and leave them alone.
Why bother saving the geth when you may have to destroy them.
Why bother saving the Citadel from Cerberus when all those millions of people are murdered by TIM later.
Why bother dying to defend Earth and your comrades when you don't even get to see what happens to t hem.
And so on.
I'll probably learn to ignore it in time... but it's still going to smart for a long while that we didn't get the ending we were promised.
GOOD:
-- Thane's death scene. It was sudden, but it made poetic sense. He died protecting civilians from a killer, saving thousands of lives in the process. He gets to go out like a fighter and not wasting away in the hospital like he hadn't wanted to. I know some fans will be upset over it but, frankly, I'm kinda glad he died. A cure would've felt... idk, cheap, hammy.
-- TRAYNOR, HOW ARE YOU JUST THE MOST PERFECT, YOU ADORABLE LITTLE FKAFJKSDLFS;DFSASAD YESSS *___*
-- Cortez is also just the cutest, though also super sad, I can't wait to romance him.
-- The dialogue on the ship is equal parts commentary and equal parts actual conversation, and I like it. It gives the characters more mobility around the ship, more interaction with squadmates, and that's awesome. ME2 was a lot of guessing about "what would so and so think of so and so", but to get clarification in ME3 is gonna make a lot of fanfic writers and fan artists happy.
-- Rannoch looked like Utah! XD
-- Jack being a teacher is just perfect. I love that she didn't lose her edge, but that she had matured a bit and had found a reason to work for something. Also loved her new outfit and such. *_*
-- Rannoch and Tuchanka were, imho, the best parts in storytelling, my hats off to them. Also, the Citadel attack was just waaaaaaay too cool.
-- Speaking of the Citadel, it's my favorite environment EVER. The attention to detail, the design, the conversations, everything about it was phenomenal. It seriously couldn't have done better unless it had come with cake.
-- Mordin's death I'd known about from spoilers, but... nothing prepared me for how it ended. The singing. The cure release. It was... dare I say, perfect. I think I'm gonna cry, every time.
-- Brokering a peace between the quarians and geth = FUCKING. SATISFYING.
-- I was worried about bringing in new characters this late into the game, but Vega and Javik are AMAZING. Javik is hands down my favorite atm; the way he's basically the mirror to Shepard if they had failed, his attitude, the way the Protheans get knocked down from there ~mystic ancient race~ pedestal and shown to be just as organic as the rest of the universe. Ohhhhh man. And Vega is just so adorable, he's precious and I love him and you should too.
-- GRUNT'S SCENE. BEST SCENE, OR BEST SCENE. God bless our little tube baby.
-- Stabbing Kai Leng and shouting "THAT'S FOR THANE, YOU SON OF A BITCH" = the most gratifying thing I've felt in a Bioware game to date.
-- Having Buzz Aldrin in the final cinematic was a nice little nod, very fitting.
-- pats_quinade is responsible for 80% of my tears in this game. I GOT ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE PTSD ASARI, BY THE WAY. 8'[
And now... the bad.
-- Thane's death was great. The reaction to Thane's death, or rather the lack of one, was not. I went from watching Shepard's love interest die in front of her, to her cracking jokes with Ashley in a matter of minutes. No one said a word, nothing hinted at Shepard possibly grieving or getting over it or anything, it just went on as if he'd never existed. And considering the things I've heard about Jacob's romance? Color me intensely nervous for Milo's import and any other Shepard with an ME2 romance. ;_; Just let me know the Jack one turns out okay, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease.
-- Is it just me or did the Rachni get dropped like a hot potato. You go from securing their help to... not even seeing them at all in the ensuing plot stuff. Mrr.
-- The above can be KIND OF forgiven. The rest really can't. It only exists within the last 10% of the game, but it's enough that it feels like 50%. The paragon ending is atrocious. Destroy the Reapers! At the cost of technology! Doesn't sound so bad at first but then you think about it. You just destroyed the geth, the race that dropped everything to come help and who's finally achieved their freedom. You just ruined the lives of anyone with medical implants, like Kaidan or Jack. Quarians who depend on the mechanics of their suits to live at the moment? Fucked. All the species on Earth who can't get home now, including all those now fertile krogan? Yeah that's gonna end well! Everyone aboard a ship at the time, or in a moving vehicle, or aboard a space station? Dead. You literally kill billions of people, entire races. It's like the more I think about it, the worse it gets.
-- The crash landing of the Normandy is just... ugh, wow. So if you took the 'destroy Reapers' option, you just marooned everyone on the Normandy. That means any of the aliens get to die alone, separated from their people forever. All the humans who just fought to protect Earth and see it again? Nope, never going home, gonna have to deal with it. And that's IF the majority of them even survive on a totally alien planet.
NICE.
-- I also feel like the "SYNTHETICS WILL NEVER LIVE WITH ORGANICS" thing was such bullshit after Rannoch. Hello, wanna meet the entire race of synthetics that I brokered peace with who are helping me to fight back the Reapers? No? Okay. :|
-- The complete lack of closure regardless of what you choose. We spent years getting to know our comrades, our love interests, our background characters. And that amounts to. Jack. Shit. There's a difference between being a little vague about their ending, and being flat out blank on the matter.
-- The final scene should've been Earth. Period. The last cinematic would have worked great, or even BETTER, if it had been in a future London or Vancouver or a ship overlooking Earth, to bring it full circle. You can't spend HOURS on a game where your #1 priority is "GET BACK TO EARTH AT ALL COSTS", and then not actually show how the damn planet ends up. ._.
-- And frankly, the tone of the ending is the worst part. You spend three games with one overall theme: hope. Hope that you'll stop the Reapers. Hope that you'll see an end to the krogan/salarian/turian conflict or the geth/quarian war. Hope that you'll get a happy or at least a full ending. Hope that Earth and all the other races will be okay. Instead, we got a ham-fisted "no matter what you do, you're fucked and you can't end this happily" at all. It feels like a grab for drama and falling flat on its face. The ending needed to be more varied, to have more choice and, overall, to stay true to the idea that if you work hard enough, you can win your battles. That's the biggest disappointment at all.
Overall:
It's a wonderful game... if you quit right before the final decision, and that's how I'm going to play it, tbh. I shouldn't have to headcanon the rest of the stuff, but there it is.
The stuff preceding that is damn near perfection. But the last section is just so jumbled, so bleak, so unexplained, that it completely threw me off anything that had come before it and is really coloring my views towards replays. Everything feels pointless.
Why bother to romance anyone if you're just going to die and leave them alone.
Why bother saving the geth when you may have to destroy them.
Why bother saving the Citadel from Cerberus when all those millions of people are murdered by TIM later.
Why bother dying to defend Earth and your comrades when you don't even get to see what happens to t hem.
And so on.
I'll probably learn to ignore it in time... but it's still going to smart for a long while that we didn't get the ending we were promised.