So it's that long awaited thingy I was going to write about the Mass Effect series, and it's going to be a disappointment... I think that was meant to be a joke about the reaction to Mass Effect 3. It's not going to be detailed or well researched since I'm barely mustering the effort to do anything these days, but it will be done. Also not going to bother recapping story or anything like that, too much effort.
EFFECT THE FIRST
Mass Effect was at the time something quite different from what I'd played before. Not wholly unfamiliar, but it was not the kind of game I'd been playing. In retrospect it's rather like a throwback to old 80's and early 90's types of role-playing computer games: epic story, underdog hero, gear progression, lots (and lots) of talking (but now fully voiced like living in the future). Oddly enough, while I think there is merit in older RPG styles and implementations, I must be getting old because Mass Effect now just feels so bloated.
Most of it is busy work - the story itself is fairly long and the side stuff usually quite short, but all that side questing feels necessary since you need the XP otherwise you'll have a hard time getting through the story since you'll not be a high level. Example: early part of the story where you get to choose which mission you take, well to me the obvious first choice was to go get Liara (daughter of early confirmed villain Beneziah). However, after going through all the stupid crap to actually rescue Liara you then have what I guess amounts to a boss fight against some mercs led by a Krogan who will kick all manner of excretions out of you unless you've levelled up sufficiently (or put it on the lowest difficulty setting, which is another nuisance these days where it seems like you (I) need to play in the lowest difficulty for it to be fun; like "easy" = fun, "normal" = hard).
So the game can really drag on which kind of sucks, since a lot of the side stuff is where the fun actually is - exploring a planet's surface in the Mako, scouting uncharted worlds for resources and information; not always essential to the plot, which is why it's fun, but when you must to do it to level up, well it becomes a chore rather than an indulgence.
I didn't mind the gearing up, or even the skill selection since it allowed you to play a certain way and support strengths/weaknesses with gear and squadmates. But again, when you must do this, it gets annoying. Combat was... well it was there, at least. About the only thing that made it interesting to me was that guns never run out of ammo, they just heat up, so it was a different kind of weapon control rather than just "empty the mag". They killed that for the sequels, but at least they also streamlined the combat ("streamlined" doesn't necessarily mean "improved").
Oh yes, the talking. So. Much. Talking. Again, the number of options available in dialogue (also reduced in the sequels) would not normally bother me if it weren't for the fact that most of it is irrelevant. There's such a simplistic karma system (and it's not alone) that you'll stick to the "Paragon/Renegade" choices to ensure that there's a point to your even bothering to talk in the first place. At least the streamlining of the dialogue for the sequels works, since it was unlikely they were going to make that many variables be accounted for in character interactions.
In sum: fun at the time. Now I'd like the notion of replaying it, but not the reality.
ME TOO
Well they kill you in the opening sequence, that was unexpected (unless you watched all the promotional material, I guess).
The story here seems so much more focused, not so much in a good way, because it makes you and all your actions seem smaller. Hell, the environments feel smaller (most of them actually are, too). The importance of your mission is relentlessly hammered into you, yet the game and it's world (well, galaxy) seem so much smaller than in the first game. I'm not quite sure how this happened, maybe it's just because you spend less time on the Citadel and interacting with the Council than in the first, coupled with the smaller environments.
Pretty much no gear progression here, there are slightly better versions of each weapon type that you can purchase going through the game, but they're not so spectacular that it matters. Your own progression matters a little more because of this, despite the reduced number of skills and that all active powers now share a cooldown rather than have their own. This I think was supposed to make you rely more on your squad, since they introduced power combos here, but they didn't really get that right until ME3. So combat is a lot more cover-based action shooter than the first, even though the first was still technically a third-person cover based shooter as well.
They did make your class selection more significant for combat though, with each class getting a unique power that was supposed to define them and their playstyle. So you cloak your sniper, or warp your Vanguard into your enemy's face before shotgunning them into oblivion. It worked better than class distinction in the first game, but was again something that was more refined in ME3.
A little less conversation, a little more shooting people in the face. The Paragon/Renegade system got an upgrade with the "interrupts" that can occur during dialogue. They were heavily scripted, usually it was one or the other, not many places where you could use either one, and those situations usually presented the interrupt that tied with your preceding dialogue choices (the immediately preceding choices, it wasn't so sophisticated as to recognise your entire persona, but given that you would be going all good or all bad for the most part, it doesn't really matter). Generally, the Renegade options were more fun and entertaining, even if it does reveal your inner sociopath.
And the tedious resource collection that was essential for upgrading the ship which was essential for not letting all of your crew members die during the final mission. The crew loyalty missions were fine, there was character development and backstory contained within them. But instead of exploring worlds for fun and seeing what was there, you're firing probes at them to get minerals. NOT ENOUGH MINERALS! It's like playing Starcraft again...
ME2 really focused on the one mission that is stated from the beginning, the only reason the game is as long as it is, is because of recruiting your team and then gaining their loyalty. The actual "story" is really short this time around, and with a larger cast of characters, the world feels smaller? It's strange, but BioWare accomplished it here.
In sum: more "fun" to replay, but damn does it take a long time to make sure no one dies in the final mission.
MASSIVELY EFFECTING
I actually like Mass Effect 3 a lot more than my original review would let on. Probably because, more than the previous two, it actually made me feel something. Or maybe it just happened to come along when I was suffering emotional instability. The Paragon/Renegade thing is so far streamlined in this game that there aren't really any "neutral" responses any more. But beyond that, this time around being a Renegade actually feels like you're the bad guy. All Renegade decisions (and Renegade decisions inherited from the previous games) feel like the wrong choice. Sure the game still lets you go on after doing it, but instead of making you feel like a badass or even just a likeable dick, now you feel like a supervillain, abandoning many to die, condemning species to extinction, classy stuff.
Needless to say, this did not aid my mental state. On the other hand, being the good guy felt overwhelming emotionally as well, but at least I wasn't sacrificing all my friends to a damn near impossible to see "greater good". So, it actually feels like your choices matter in this game, until you get to the ending, which is why everyone hated it. The two complaints about the ending that I usually see are that it was perfunctory, which was addressed (somewhat) by the "Extended Cut" free DLC; and that after three games worth of stuff, everything came down to the "war assets" counter in the third game and a simple dialogue choice of which ending you'd like. Without enough war assets then you don't get to choose the ending, but you'd have to speed-run the game to not accumulate enough, especially after the Extended Cut reduced the required amount for maximum readiness.
But everything, story-wise, up to the ending was, as stated above, massively effecting, at least to me. Game-wise, well...
Combat was more finely tuned here but still much like ME2 in style. Powers still share a cooldown but now your weapons (or lack of) affect cooldown reduction, meaning you can play more powers-based classes (tech, biotic) more effectively on your own, and the return of weapon mods means you can just run around with a pistol boosting your powers, or armed to the teeth with high-powered guns and forget about powers altogether. I'd not recommend the second approach though, since you need to be in cover quite a lot otherwise you die a lot. Higher difficulties are actually easier with powers rather than guns, at least for me.
As mentioned in my first review though, combat it really just filler for continuing the cut-scenes or getting to new conversations. The fact that you can win a fight, nay, you must win a fight in order to witness a cut-scene where you get the crap kicked out of you is really galling.
Interactions are a hell of a lot more limited, there don't seem to be as many "interrupts" as before, and not quite as many charm/intimidate dialogue choices. They also seem to be tied to the generic "reputation" counter rather than the specific Paragon/Renegade meters, meaning that for the most part, you can play either way you want in a single play-through if the mood takes you. I was attempting such with my recent play-through, but haven't mustered the will to keep playing it, which leads me to...
TRILOGICALLY
There are so few real variations between character interactions that you end up replaying really long games to see minor differences or hear a few different lines of dialogue. The series, as a whole, is a real slog to replay, I'm surprised I managed it as many times as I have, but most of that has not been recent, so it's probably a combination of personal issues as well.
The music was great across the series, interesting to hear the progression there (I'm fairly certain they all had the same composer).
The scale of the games went up and down, ME3 really did manage to get back to a real sense of significance and large scale impact.
The characters were always a high point, well written, well acted, fun to have around and chat with.
One place they really botched it was with the Reapers and their origin. Apparently there were different ideas but then certain people left the company so they came up with something else, which happened to be quite stupid. Original ideas aside, with what was included with the Leviathan DLC for ME3 you could of still made it somewhat logical: instead of them being machines created by the apex of biological evolution to prevent the loss of lesser "thrall/tribute" species to their own machines which, surprise, then turned on their own creators to prevent them being destroyed by machines (and the Reapers are too dumb to realise that they turned on their own creators and thus actually failed their task but they think it's OK because they've preserved every species they've harvested) - just make it so that they were just trying to preserve those species from natural attrition, and the machines had the insight that they should "preserve" their creators as well, just in case.
But no - "hmm, these organics keep getting destroyed by their own machines, let's make some machines to destroy them first, but preserve their genetic code, and hope that those machines don't then do what we seem to think all machines do, which is to turn on their creators and destroy them". My way is using the exact same setup and framework, yet manages to be infinitely less stupid. Hell, even if it were just a rip-off of the Borg where they were using other organisms to further improve themselves it would've been less stupid.
So yes, I'd prefer not to have to sit through another "machines will destroy us all" story, they are mostly garbage, pandering to people with technophobia, in a computer game... I'm all ironied out.
Overall, everything is still a straight line and it gets more noticeable every time I play it. I mean, I'll play new ones if/when they make them, but I don't know if they'll generate the same enthusiasm for replay like they did originally.
TACKY
The multiplayer for ME3 was alright I guess. Could be fun, short-form so not necessarily a huge time investment. Bastard hard sometimes though. And tying it to the single-player war readiness thing was kind of annoying, but it does mean that I've got so many assets available that I don't need to do the small side missions any more.
But EA will pull the servers soon enough and you'll never be able to play it again, who knows, that may inadvertently pull the authentication servers and you won't be able to play the game at all. And I bet even after that, EA will still leave the ME trilogy available for purchase through their crappy Origin shop.
A SHORT AND DISAPPOINTING ENDING
That was it, you waited two and a half years for it. Enjoy.
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