Review Mass Effect 3: A Narratological Review

[861129]

Huh. I can't post in that thread. I guess you need to have your account active for a while before posting, then.

 

[Menckenstein]

Hello (emotionally damaged) BioWare fanbabes reading this thread, if you are fun, attractive, nice and don't have a mid section bigger than your chest or hips please register at the Codex and PM me. I have so much to teach you... about RPGs.




Hello emotionally damaged BioWare fanboys reading this thread, please read our cRPG forum and try some of the more "praised" games out. If you truly appreciate good game mechanics and solid stories you're sure to find a treat or thirty and maybe gain some new perspective on what an RPG should play like.

 

[CrustyBot]

Hello (emotionally damaged) BioWare fanbabes reading this thread, if you are fun, attractive, nice and don't have a mid section bigger than your chest or hips please register at the Codex and PM me. I have so much to teach you... about RPGs.

 

[861129]

This is such a stupid way to do it, but if IsaacShep from over there should by chance read this, or one of us posting there need it...

It was forshadowed in LOTSB. Liara mentions that old Shadow Broker already knew Protheans had other plans. It is thanks to his research and Liara's expertise that she finds the Crucible plans on Mars.

It's still out of nowhere and nonsensical given that the other Prothean communications were stored as flashbacks in the beacons, a format too sophisticated for the present cycle to understand without Shepard's cipher. Somehow the Crucible plans were stored in an understandable way so that they might show up on the nick of time, but it never dawned on the Protheans to give a plain warning in the same way about the Reapers despite the proliferation of ruins and artifacts they left behind. (or to point out the location of the plans, or to hide more copies around, or...)

Of course, this is still just a single point out of the harrowing clusterfuck of the overarching storyline. (if it is to be judged as a serious narrative, which it shouldn't.)

 

[Xor]

Oh look, one of them actually replied with an argument.

While it is true that you get 'stand-ins' for dead squadmates from ME2 or Rachni, there are quite a few consequences in it. Mordin's replacement - Padok Wiks will not become a War Asset after taking Renegade path during Genophage arc. Grunt's replacement can never survive Rachni Queen extraction. Only Grunt can and he has to be loyal. Jack's replacement (one of her best students) will die trying to save Rodriguez and the teacher of the students will already be dead before you even arrive in the Academy. Tali's replacement won't do anything for peace - you need Tali alive AND not exiled to be able to achieve peace at all. Collector Base decision makes it easier to save Earth in the endings, if you 'stick' to the same kind of moral choice. If you don't, it will be harder. The fake Rachni Queen will betray you and kill Crucible scientists if you extract her. Udina as the Councilor is indeed an example of no consequences & railroading though.

What I'm getting from this is that the survival of your squadmates from ME2 and ME1 will either affect war assets (which are useless), or in the select cases of Tali and Wrex it will make their peoples' respective plots harder to resolve. Still doesn't seem very impressive for a game that was supposed to have thousands of variables or whatever bullshit the marketing people came up with.

 

[evdk]

Also Tali and Wrex storylines were acknowledged in the review as the only places where C&C works so using them as an argument against it is a bit asinine.

 

[TNO]

Hello all.

As fun as it would be to go to the Bioware forums, I honestly don't have time - I'm 'elite' enough to be doing a medical degree atm. I did laugh reading through the thread, though. I'm happy to reply (or concede fault - I'm not perfect) if someone has some particularly cogent disagreement. So:

While it is true that you get 'stand-ins' for dead squadmates from ME2 or Rachni, there are quite a few consequences in it. Mordin's replacement - Padok Wiks will not become a War Asset after taking Renegade path during Genophage arc. Grunt's replacement can never survive Rachni Queen extraction. Only Grunt can and he has to be loyal. Jack's replacement (one of her best students) will die trying to save Rodriguez and the teacher of the students will already be dead before you even arrive in the Academy. Tali's replacement won't do anything for peace - you need Tali alive AND not exiled to be able to achieve peace at all. Collector Base decision makes it easier to save Earth in the endings, if you 'stick' to the same kind of moral choice. If you don't, it will be harder. The fake Rachni Queen will betray you and kill Crucible scientists if you extract her. Udina as the Councilor is indeed an example of no consequences & railroading though.

Fair, and of course it isn't like if (for example) Grunt didn't survive the company just wouldn't have a leader in the new game. But barring Tali and the Rachni queen none of these particularly change the plot - they just vary your war assets by 25 point ish increments. The collector base (IIRC), just scrambles the cut offs for various endings, which doesn't really have any particular rationale. And I noted Rannoch and Tuchanka had neat bits of cascading dependencies.

 

[Ulminati]

Right, having read the BSN thread again, the general consensus seems to be:

"The review is correct, but I still don't like agreeing with it because RPGCodex hurt my emotions at some point".

 

[sgc_meltdown]

I think the reviewer was trying to find fault and did not give the game a chance so cannot trust what he said.

That's an excellent point. Why not a counter-article just for extolling the positive merits of the Mass Effect setting and beyond? Fair and Balanced is cool these days, very cool. Note that I cannot contribute sadly because I haven't developed a drinking habit yet for personal reasons.

So, no one has answered yet. What kind of game do these "esteemed gentlemen" consider to be a good game? It sounds to me like their standards are just unfeasibly high, especially when you consider the amount of development time ME3 got.

you guys should get yourself some feasible standards

 

[jiduthie]

Why isn't "esteemed gentleman" one of the post-count titles?

Also, Amioran is a gift that keeps on giving.

 

[Secretninja]

I don't think that they can be described as elitists, they're just lonely nerds who spam smilies and reaction images from 4chan in an attempt to be funny. I finally read the review despite my initial trepidation and I enjoyed it, the author employed a nice vocabulary that never felt forced, why can't the rest of the site be like that?

:facepalm:

 

[Aeschylus]

You know, I think people are too hard on Mass Effect. It provides endless entertainment, and you don't even have to play it.

 

[Temaperacl]

Right, having read the BSN thread again, the general consensus seems to be:

"The review is correct, but I still don't like agreeing with it because RPGCodex hurt my emotions at some point".

Sort of - to be fair, of those who read the review, the majority seem to be positive. Of the ones that read and disagree (or paritally disagree), most have specific issues they disagree with. If those reasons are valid or not, I am not going to spend the time to evaluate, but certainly some of them seem reasoned. Of course, there is also a good portion of posts which takes a direct "RPGCodex? Ignore (And maybe post a response anyways)." line.

And then there is Amioran - Based on that thread I'm assuming Amioran is trolling, but it is more fun to read Amioran's posts assuming that they are serious.

 

[sea]

Very good breakdown. Appreciated both the detail and the overall fairness. Where I disagree, at least a little, is in the conclusion - if you enjoy Mass Effect's cover-based shooting, and its characters, then Mass Effect 3 still does provide some fun. The main story sucks horribly, but I don't think that makes every other part of the game completely moot. I would never pay full price for the game, but I can't say I especially regret the time I spent playing it.

 

[Oriebam]

Did I hear a request for more quotes?














...



















fuck you

The fact that this review said Male Shepard and Aller are the 2 worst VA makes me wonder what the hell are they on about. Aller I can accept but Meer is not the worse at all.

The reviewer is technically right in terms of what he said about the game. The story is a cliche, and we all know it.
But every story is a cliche, and anyone claiming otherwise is a fool.

It depends on how the story is told, and this is where I disagree with the author, points were good, points were bad, but points overall made it story worth telling. For me, my biggest peeve is the charge that characters had no depth to them. I have done several articles on the depth characters have had in Mass Effect, and why it's important to the entire franchise. Let's face it, most of us played the game because of the characters surrounding it. The story was always a throny issue following typical tropes of high-fantasy good vs evil and Space Opera logic, but the characters kept us coming back for the fives years. At least, for me.

So the reviewer is right in most respects as to what problems the series has, but for me, he is missing the point overall on what made the game worth playing. If he didn't like thats fine, but a lot of his charges are at best, subjective statements.

Wow. Just, like, totally WOW! Yeah, the review is solid and critical (a critical eye is NOT an auto-bad-thing) but what I never read or heard was that Bioware actually had the GALL to call this "hard science fiction". This is "hard scifi" the way Star Wars was, which is to say, it is NOT hard scifi. You want hard scifi you have to go with speculative stuff extended from REAL science. You don't get to make up magic sh*t like "mass effect" and "eezo" and "biotics" and call that "hard scifi". No it is NOT.

Hard scifi = Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Jack McDevitt, Stephen Baxter, and some Neal Stephenson. NOT Gene Roddenberry, NOT NOT NOT George Lucas. Space opera and space fantasy are in no way, shape, or form, hard scifi. They are as soft as a limp willy. They make bogus sh*t up from whole cloth and don't even begin to worry about physics, natural law, reality.

Mass Effect, the series, has NEVER been hard scifi. It is pure, unadulterated science FANTASY. It is precisely the same NON-science as all the other Bioware stuff with outright magic, dragons, wizards, etc.

Sheesh. Hard scifi my left testicle.

Strangely enough, I never heard that from any of the devs either. Anyone have a link? Regarding science fiction as a whole, I don't necessarily see it as falling into one of two categories. I prefer to see it as a sliding scale, and Mass Effect falls somewhere in between the two extremes, similar to Star Trek.

Oh, and since the RPGCodex elitists are watching (and commenting, playing the victims' part as I said they would):

"What a ****. Too bad it's in the game owners' circle jerk section. It would be fun to hear him explain exactly how he thinks Mass Effect treats 'the philosophical theme "order vs. chaos"' meaningfully. "

Already we have the first insults, good. I expected nothing better.

Apart that you can create an account without problems (this is the general discussion, you don't need to have a game of Bioware to use this forum part, so please don't play the part "I cannot... or... or... I will... I swear I will") then as I said I already explained all this, so if you are really interested (and you do not just want to insult and have the last word to look good at the eyes of the other great "experts" there) you can find those threads.

But to have a meaningful debate with me on this point (that goes above the usual insult or "I am right no matter what you say" reply) you would have at last to know the theme, a thing you obviously don't (given the fact that you don't have any idea of what I'm talking about and you either believe I'm making it up). So, apart insulting me and pretending you are right with your "friends" I don't think you will have nothing really serious to add, but you can at last try.

Just two little hints: the major occidental religions are funded on the same philosophical theme (i.e. in the term of narrative of the same, the bible and the coran - the fall from heaven of Lucifer is a typical example). Most major philosophers wrote and debated about the theme (Kant, Shopenahuer, Nietzsche, Adorno, Heiddeger, Sartre, Ouspensky, Hegel, Csikszentmihalyi etc. etc.) and it is espounded in many books (as the Paradise Lost of Milton, for example, or the Ulysses of Joyce).

I didn't read this post


but is he saying Mass Effect is too deep for us?

Lol yeah. Those guys need serious help. At least they don't need to get jobs and move out of moms basement cause the only games "the codex" deems worthy can be played on 50$ PCs from craigslist.

This community can be tiresome, but that hive? ugh.

hey buddy at least we don't buy dragon age sex toys and pillows

Due to a busy schedule I won't be actually be playing the game for another month at least, but in the meantime, I'll leave this comment from RPG Codex.

The first was a lost oppertunity. The second was carried mainly by the BRO moments with Wrex, Mordin and Garrus. The third looked like a steaming pile of ****, set off warning bells. If everything i've read and seen on the internet so far is even remotely correct, I dodged a bullet by not even contaminating my interwebz with a pirated copy.​

the **** butthurt is delicious, mind you. I like how they accuse us of liking no games whatsoever, even though this forum has a long and prestigious list of things we generally love​

Link for butthurt ****s who are too afraid to search the forum on their own:​

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/list-of-the-must-play-games.55367/​

You can add Jagged Alliance 2, Vampire the masquerade bloodlines, Deus Ex, System Shock 1+2, thief 1+2 and UFO: Enemy unknown (XCom UFO defense in kwanzania) to the list of games that we generally around here.​

Please calculate the time needed for you to spot a single game released post-2004. I'll award you with cookies for it. Virtual cookies. That follow your browsing history forever.

Almost incredible how one can manage to parody one's self.

I would ask the OP what s/he considers members of r/gaming or /v/ if s/he considers members of 'RPG'Codex as esteemed, but then I noticed that s/he seems to be a rather active member of the forums.

NO U

 

[Malpercio]

People still care about ME?

Edit: But yeah, that was a good review. I pretty much agree with every point made.

 

[deuxhero]

Let's see what happens.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/323/index/11622803/5#11633288

I have an account for the NWN2 mod community, and even then, it had a permanent Feeblemind effect.

 

[Oriebam]

Now there's some sort of :Lyric Suite: discussion in that thread​

​

​

Damn good review. It shows how heavily flawed most of ME3 and the series was contrary to the fanboys notion that it was "ruined in the last 10 minutes".​

And that right there showed me how very slanted and bias this review was going to be. Sorry, you coldn't have turned me off faster if the terms "death panels" "Liberal media" "baby killer" "obama's socialist health care" and "we need a lee harvey oswald for this era" were all in the same article, and not as a denouniation.

Read up to the part about "the beggining"...it made me rage quit faster than the ending did.

not sure if :

Most of that review's criticisms are true to some degree, but I'd not be so quick to say they ruin the experience completely. ME3 is hardly a perfect game, even aside from the ending it cannot reach the greatness of BG2 and ME2. But it is by no means not worth playing for an RPG fan.

Still, something positive came out of the review. Lots of names in that rpgcodex list of "rpgcodex approved"-list of games and I intend to look through a few of them. Some, such as Torment, Fallout and Arcanum I've already played. But many are new to me.

Of course, seeing Eye of the Beholder listed makes me question just what it takes to make the list - Diablo does the plot-void, no deeper-than-numbered-armour-class-character defining, real-time-with-cooldowns dungeon delving thing much better and is nowhere to be seen on the list after all

EDIT: Flavour for those of the rpgcodex who venture here! Since bioware does too much Only the Chosen One has the Ability to Defeat One True Evil plots, apparently, what about them Dragon Age 2? Pretty welcome variation, I'd agree. Hm, though this is merely for rpgcodex people, please don't make this a DA2 thread now X)

EDIT2: For future reference, Menckenstein, you are the one who will have to PM me and not the other way around kkthx

You might want to ask SMA and the others down in GD for romantic advice, bro

'ey, 'ey, don't be like that, man. It breaks my heart. Literally.

Yeah, that "NO U" was uncalled for. I'll tone it down

It has something to do with thrombi and insane blood pressure within the coronary arteries which already happen to be clogged due to all that salted pop corn consumed during the reading of codex threads., I think.

good to see you find our board entertaining. What about yours?

The thing is:

you like generalizations, they apparently make you feel better about yourself

The /v/ crowd endorses piracy and enjoys n***** jokes.

You don't have proof of that statement nor can you possibly prove it, because /v/ is an anonymous board.

I could just as easily make the same generalization about piracy or whatever on the BSN. "hurrr BSN has sexual fantasies about alien sweat and plays Biowaru games for the romances and secks"

tolerating/ignoring racist jokes/piracy does not make you a pirate or a racist... and jokes/piracy are only (very) arguably wrong. Don't try to make this an argument about racism.

we also have several members who are actually quite upset at racism, and one or two who absolutely abhor piracy or some shit

Redditors think that they are hot **** for playing videogames on a desktop PC.

Do you have proof of this? from what I hear reddit has all sorts of people

and this "generalization" thing is not very nice and makes you look dumb, try not to do that in future discussions

You do both.

proof? You seem to think that : guy who complains about the effects of consolisation = elitist nerd who's bragging about having bought a desktop PC

Not to mention the logic of your brilliant joke is kind of broken(and further shows your ignorance of the matters you bring up) by the fact that /v/ also does the same kind of "hey guys I own a desktop and I don't like this consolisation thing very much" comments you speak of, probably even more often, in fact

No, I mean, really. You top two of the most ridiculously inane things humanity has to offer.
Holy duck, that's almost impressive. Not in a good way, but impressive nevertheless.

I think you're silly too, wat'cha gon' do 'bout it

Anyway, since you look like you're going to answer :

Please calculate the time needed for you to spot a single game released post-2004.

Notice the section of the forum that thread is in. We here have a different consensus on both what games are good and what makes a game part of the genre, though if we have a real consensus at the latter is very arguable. It's kind of like having different interests and shit. umad

You come off as very prejudiced : "you HAVE to consider games released post-2004 RPGs AND like them or else you're retarded and ugly" though I do think the list may not have been a tasteful choice

Also, the parody thing with all the :monocle: gentlemen of prestige stuff is intentional. durrr

Actually, that ticked me off. You do post here don't you? Show yourself!

 

[Valestein]

The drones there can't get over the 'dex being critical of their beloved game. Tisk tisk.

 

[toro]

Off topic: Probably I'm an imbecile, but F3 NV should be on that list. Is the only RPG that gave me the same feelings as the first fallouts and even if it was just briefly, the game is quite solid.
And where is Evil Island? FFS

Edit: It's a shitty list. Where is the official one? Is there one?

Edit2: Is not shitty per se, but good games are missing.

 

[DragoFireheart]

This review further cemented my decision to not buy the game. I had a gut feeling Bioware would flop: I'm glad TNO wrote this review. 10/10.

 

[Vamp]

Good points, hard to argue against most of them (plus i'm too bored to do so) BUT...you can make almost any game/movie sound like shit if you try hard enough. Granted you don't really have to try all that hard to point out ME plot failures but I think as a whole the series is better than the sum of its parts.

 

[hiver]

Good points, hard to argue against most of them (plus i'm too bored to do so) BUT...you can make almost any game/movie sound like shit if you try hard enough. Granted you don't really have to try all that hard to point out ME plot failures but I think as a whole the series is better than the sum of its parts.

not a bad trolling attempt... 5/10

 

[Ulminati]

Off topic: Probably I'm an imbecile, but F3 NV should be on that list. Is the only RPG that gave me the same feelings as the first fallouts and even if it was just briefly, the game is quite solid.
And where is Evil Island? FFS

Edit: It's a shitty list. Where is the official one? Is there one?

Edit2: Is not shitty per se, but good games are missing.

It's one posters opinion though mostly inoffensive and considered a decent selection 'round these parts even with many entries missing. I suppose you could dig up the prestigious KKKodex GOTY polls for 2010, 2009, 2008 etc. (As far as I recall the 2011 one kinda died out from the fact that 2011 was a crap year for vidyagames overall).

 

[Roguey]

Huh. I can't post in that thread. I guess you need to have your account active for a while before posting, then.

Yep, thanks to all the racist fucks who kept harassing Stanley Woo your account has to be around for 30 days or 24 hours if you have a registered game in order to make a post.