Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Bioware
Year: 2012
Players: Solo (with multiplayer)
Rating: M (for Mature)
Retail Price: $59.99
Category: Science fiction RPG
*** Warning! Spoilers Ahead! ***
For The Bioware Faithful & The Bioware Brain-trust:
Despite my long-term support of Bioware, after playing Mass Effect 3 (ME3), I cannot recommend this game. That alone is very hard for me to write as I’ve invested 150+ hours of game play into establishing a relationship with the Mass Effect universe only to have myself punched in the gut or, in Jack’s words from Mass Effect 2, told to F&%@ off!
The title looks nice, plays well (although I find the weight mechanic to be a bit unnecessary), and the dialog along with the general story are well done. However, it deviates considerably from what I’ve come to expect from a Mass Effect game – the game feels awfully linear and that’s not something to be happy about. While the prior games weren’t completely open worlds, you could at least pick the order of many of the missions you undertook. This was especially the case during the second half of ME2 where you could go about things in any way you’d want.
With ME3 I don’t get this feeling of freedom at all.
This leads to the biggest problem I have with ME3. The ME series was, and is, marketed on the concept and idea of choice. Your choices along with what you do matter and have impact on how the game progresses and the stories of the characters unfold. This latest installment lacks that, and to be honest, comes off as invalidating the entire feeling of choice one has grown accostumed to in the series.
All of your choices have been thrown out the window and you’re given the choice to pick A, B, or C. Sure, options A, B, or C are a choice but not one in which I would end Shepard’s story upon.
All of this is utterly contrary to how the game is promoted. What’s more, it makes me feel if I ever replayed the series I may as well just barrel straight through and ignore all side quests. Why pay attention to them? Why consider the choices I’m making in even the main quest? They won’t matter as you’ll never see any results to them. The only choice that actually changes anything, in the end, is the rather generic and uninspired garbage which could have been written by a ten year old who had never even played the series.
Which leads to another problem: poor writing. Coming up with a clutch magic solution in the last installment to miraculously defeat the Reapers is just all-in-all bad writing. It’s a hallmark of poor writing used by authors when they’ve written themselves into a position in which they can’t concoct a logical way out. The conclusion, as presented, ruins the efforts of the characters in the story. I had expected all the struggles of raising a massive military force and a genius battle strategy, not that. With the loss of their Citadel trap, and the proof that reapers can be destroyed (Sovereign and the Human Reaper), a conventional war was quite plausible, if improbable in victory. That draws out tension, keeps people interested, and is why Star Wars has worked on that level; insurmountable odds but the Rebels still succeeded!
I see all this as bad writing at its worst as the Mass Effect games have never flowed towards dark and depressing ends. I like bittersweet or even just bitter endings so I have no problem with that but this was high fantasy in space. It was always suggested by Bioware that you could save the girl, defeat the monster, and ride off into the sunset if you wanted. You choices were supposed to make this at least a possibility. They don’t.
It let me down in more ways than I can even explain. The way Mass Effect has been written to this point did not suggest this but right at the end, when you’re getting to the satisfying conclusion where you see the culmination of your choices, the game veers sharply to the left and kicks your support out from under you. There’s nothing to suggest that you just have to take this awkward, unsatisfying conclusion and deal with it. The final 10-15 minutes we see a complete 180 from the storyline of the rest of the franchise. It’s the equivalent of the Rocky saga ending, after stirring training and pre-title bout fight montages getting us pumped up, with Rocky eaten by a whale just prior to the big fight.
The available endings lack closure, finality, or any real substance. They’re just poorly done and smear the way I’ll remember the series. After three games I expected a much more well thought-out and fulfilling ending, not this. Some epilogue, conclusion, and by golly I wanted to see my Sheppard walking down a street on earth, Bromance Garrus, and whatever LI I chose for that play through while I hear about how the choices I made changed the galaxy.
Instead, I get everyone my character cares about missing – or dead – and some old guy telling his kid a fairy tale with my Sheppard being screwed any way you shake it. It was completely off the flow of the game and felt utterly forced to be bitter and negative for the sake of, well, being bitter and negative. I suppose that’s writing but it certainly isn’t not good writing. Cutting out this old man portion and having a resolution that would allow you to have Sheppard survive and be with at least some of his friends and loved ones would have done worlds of good toward fondly remembering the Mass Effect experience. Sure, that finale may have been bittersweet but at least not just bitter. I could see it now. Some people died that you knew, a lot didn’t, but you won and have the rest of your friends to work with to start picking up the pieces.
Because I know anyone who invested their time and emotions into the first two games would be utterly dissatisfied with the way this game ends and would no doubt make them feel the way I do, I can’t recommend this title as it stands to anyone. Just as I can’t recommend Dragon Age 2 to anyone either. As it stands after the quality of Bioware’s recent games, I will be taking future releases with a grain of salt and reserving my purchases until I hear whether the trend at Bioware is continuing.
I would strongly urge the ME writing team to go play Dragon Age Origins. This is an example of making choices matter; both in how the finale plays out (including your support during the final battle), as well as altering both the in game ending (the coronation), and the epilogue text. Honestly I always prefer more cinematic story telling in games though over text.
If you have never played the Mass Effect series you could go one of two routes. You could play 1 & 2 while avoiding 3 at all costs and that way you will be left wanting more. Or, your second choice, play 3 only and be prepared for a massive downer of ambiguity in the ending that will not leave you wanting more but simply better.
That choice is yours…
