Mass Effect Legendary Edition remaster trilogy

[J1M]

I'd have trouble believing it was anything but licensing.

I just repeated what I read before release, don't really know how it works or why would they lie about it.

The training facility was the second DLC to be added to the game, though PS3 players were not able to partake due to the source code being lost. While the team would have liked to include Pinnacle in the upcoming remaster, the reason behind its exclusion was honestly beyond their control.

When speaking with game director Mac Walters, he confirmed that the entire ordeal of trying to get the code was "an emotional roller coaster." The team tried to contact everyone and anyone that had any connection to this DLC. When BioWare and EA contacted Demiurge, the studio responsible for this DLC, hope surged only to come crashing down once more when the backups for the code sent over contained almost all corrupted data – even vital links were missing.

Walters added that in order for Pinnacle to see a revival, it would have to be an entire remake; made from the ground up and entirely from scratch. "It would basically take us another full six months just to do this with most of the team we've got," he told us. "I wish we could do it. Honestly, just because this is meant to be everything that the team ever created, brought together again - all the single-player content. And so, leaving it all on the cutting-room floor, it was heartbreaking."

bioware employees making up some ridiculous lie to cover for something nobody would care about seems like something they'd do tho

Happens all the time when product managers talk to journalists and neither of them understand technology.

 

[Lemming42]

Wow, there's some insane shit in ME3. Conrad Verner is on the Citadel and has a mini-quest, and at the end, he tries to leap in front of you to save your life and take a bullet for you. But then Jenna (the undercover C-Sec agent working behind the bar at Chora's Den in ME1) shows up and reveals she sabotaged the guy's gun so Conrad survives. The fuck? I assume if you didn't save her in ME1, she's not there and Conrad dies or something. It's impressive that such small stuff from ME1 is being brought back up but it's also so bizarre and out of place.

Speaking of which, such callbacks to ME1 are endless in this game. Makes ME2 feel even more like kind of a weird waste of time.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Wow, there's some insane shit in ME3. Conrad Verner is on the Citadel and has a mini-quest, and at the end, he tries to leap in front of you to save your life and take a bullet for you. But then Jenna (the undercover C-Sec agent working behind the bar at Chora's Den in ME1) shows up and reveals she sabotaged the guy's gun so Conrad survives. The fuck? I assume if you didn't save her in ME1, she's not there and Conrad dies or something. It's impressive that such small stuff from ME1 is being brought back up but it's also so bizarre and out of place.

Speaking of which, such callbacks to ME1 are endless in this game. Makes ME2 feel even more like kind of a weird waste of time.

He shows up in me2 too, there's a bunch of ways his story can end.
He's on the asari planet in me2.

 

[Nutria]

I think I always told him to fuck off in ME1 and he did, so I never saw any of this content. But I was pleased to learn that there actually was a consequence to that choice. It's one of the subplots that they really did well across all the games.

 

[Caim]

Hahaha what the fuck is this DLC with the sushi bar and shit. Don't get me wrong, this is ace. It's like what Mass Effect 2 could have been if they'd just committed to going full retard and treated the entire thing as the joke that it clearly is.

I've just reloaded the game like six times just to see what every party member would say when brought along to the casino and forced to wear stupid formal clothes. Love that there's a different joke each time and a different reaction from Brooks. Shepard walking in on Garrus' arm fucking killed me. 10/10

Citadel going all out as a massive joke that it's in on makes it one of the best pieces of DLC ever released for a game. It has fun with the series and serves as a proper send-off and the true ending of Shepard's adventures.

 

[Mikeal]

Man people shitting on Mass Effect reminds me of my first time on Codex, when I joined due to thread with people shitting on ME3.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Hahaha what the fuck is this DLC with the sushi bar and shit. Don't get me wrong, this is ace. It's like what Mass Effect 2 could have been if they'd just committed to going full retard and treated the entire thing as the joke that it clearly is.

I've just reloaded the game like six times just to see what every party member would say when brought along to the casino and forced to wear stupid formal clothes. Love that there's a different joke each time and a different reaction from Brooks. Shepard walking in on Garrus' arm fucking killed me. 10/10

citadel dlc, sold as stand alone spin-off, would have been no doubt the best mass effect game, and among the best games ever. it's absolutely hilarious.

 

[Lemming42]

Leviathan DLC was very good and felt quite close to the style of ME1's "let's copy Star Trek but add some shootouts" tone. Although I get the feeling the war should just immediately end now. I've got this ancient pre-Reaper race on my side who can just knock Reapers out of the sky. That translates into 400 war points. What? Like, 400 is substantial, but the war should just end right now. We've won. I've won it for us. The Reapers should beg for mercy, I should be added to the council, and a parade should be held in my honour daily. Like it's literally over. The Leviathans can just shut Reapers off. 400 war points? The same as three Alliance fleets? The same as like 10 Zaeeds? No way.

 

[Lemming42]

Alright now I'm confused again. We go to the Asari temple and discover a Prothean beacon, hidden away inside the statue!!! This is, apparently, the reason for the Asari's tech supremacy (which is apparently a thing). How? Was this explained? I thought the beacons had two functions:
- to act as a long-range communication system
- to warn people about the Reapers, hence the stock footage montage vision you receive which sparks the plot of ME1
When we activate it, we get a Prothean VI like the one on Ilos that tells us about the Reapers. So when the Asari first activated it, they must have known about the Reapers, and the Crucible, and all that. They just sat around doing nothing for centuries and made this information classified? And the Asari councilor, who seemed to know about this, still didn't believe Shepard about the Reapers in ME1?

Luckily there's no time to think about this because KAI LENG is back! Cue a shitty boss fight where you literally can't win no matter what, like some kind of lame jRPG fight. At least we get the comedy spectacle of Liara being used as a projectile to KO the other squadmate.

EDIT: Ahahaha, back on the ship everyone's sat in the war room in despair, then Vega says we should hit back at Cerberus. Shepard is immediately uplifted, apparently having never considered this before? Then she dumbly looks around the room and says "anyone know where Cerberus is hiding? anyone?", as if fucking Garrus or Ashley might just inexplicably have that information. Nobody ever suggested attacking Cerberus at the source before? They've essentially declared war on the whole galaxy and Vega is the first person ever to suggest doing something about it?

 

[Alienman]

Alright now I'm confused again. We go to the Asari temple and discover a Prothean beacon, hidden away inside the statue!!! This is, apparently, the reason for the Asari's tech supremacy (which is apparently a thing). How? Was this explained? I thought the beacons had two functions:
- to act as a long-range communication system
- to warn people about the Reapers, hence the stock footage montage vision you receive which sparks the plot of ME1
When we activate it, we get a Prothean VI like the one on Ilos that tells us about the Reapers. So when the Asari first activated it, they must have known about the Reapers, and the Crucible, and all that. They just sat around doing nothing for centuries and made this information classified? And the Asari councilor, who seemed to know about this, still didn't believe Shepard about the Reapers in ME1?

Luckily there's no time to think about this because KAI LENG is back! Cue a shitty boss fight where you literally can't win no matter what, like some kind of lame jRPG fight. At least we get the comedy spectacle of Liara being used as a projectile to KO the other squadmate.

EDIT: Ahahaha, back on the ship everyone's sat in the war room in despair, then Vega says we should hit back at Cerberus. Shepard is immediately uplifted, apparently having never considered this before? Then she dumbly looks around the room and says "anyone know where Cerberus is hiding? anyone?", as if fucking Garrus or Ashley might just inexplicably have that information. Nobody ever suggested attacking Cerberus at the source before? They've essentially declared war on the whole galaxy and Vega is the first person ever to suggest doing something about it?

I assume nobody could decipher it, but the tech itself propelled asari far into the future, making them the most prominent tech race. Wasn't it something similar for humans? They found prothean tech on Mars or something, which fast forward humans to the technological level of the rest of the universe.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Yeah, humans found a beacon on Mars that allowed them to start using the mass relays. I think they explained it when they found the second beacon containing the plans for the crucible. TBH, that part doesn't make sense, since didn't the Prometheans lose the Citadel at the beginning of their war? Why would their plan to destroy the reapers use something they couldn't reach anymore?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

iirc yes asari knew about the reapers but didn't tell anyone.
Did you bring liara with you? She explains a lot. Also, bring the prothean companion too because he mocks her the entire time.

 

[Alienman]

Yeah, humans found a beacon on Mars that allowed them to start using the mass relays. I think they explained it when they found the second beacon containing the plans for the crucible. TBH, that part doesn't make sense, since didn't the Prometheans lose the Citadel at the beginning of their war? Why would their plan to destroy the reapers use something they couldn't reach anymore?

Maybe they didn't reach that far into the construction. Every harvested civilization that tried to build it added something to it, and now humanity, by luck are at the end of its construction. How that works I don't really know.

I kinda want to imagine that one civ only managed to add racing stripes to the thing

 

[Lemming42]

Beat the game. Uhhh alright, I'm not gonna defend the ending as such, but I will say I don't see what gets people so pissed of with it. Yeah it comes out of nowhere and yeah it appears to be a very weak and uninspiring copy of Deus Ex's ending choices, but it's not exactly a new low for the series. The Reaper invasion plot already didn't make much sense post-ME1 so it doesn't bother me that the resolution to it is a nonsensical ass-pull. It's pretentious melodramatic nonsense, but pretentious melodramatic nonsense is exactly what Mass Effect has been from the start.

Having said that, I chose the "Control" ending (apparently I didn't have enough war points for the other endings - I was wondering what the hell I was gathering all those points for), and I don't get what the hell was happening in the cinematic. Shepard merges with the Citadel or something, okay, it's just the Helios ending from DX. But then a blue shockwave fires throughout the galaxy, which is doing Shepard's will or something, and makes all the Reapers fuck off. Okay, fair enough. But then the shockwave blows up all the mass effect relays and destroys the Normandy? Why would it do that? Isn't Shepard meant to be controlling the wave? Maybe she's just as fed up with the Normandy and its crew as I am at this point. Makes even less sense since the subsequent ending slide shows her sending the Reapers to rebuild the relays.

Whatever, maybe it's just because people hyped it up to be the worst thing of all time, but the ending wasn't that bad. It was bad, but only by the usual standards of Mass Effect. Looking over all the endings in the wiki and the one I would have wanted to do was destroy the Reapers at minimal cost and with Shepard surviving, but I had the variant where the resulting blast would have killed everyone everywhere in the multiverse or something.

 

[J1M]

Beat the game. Uhhh alright, I'm not gonna defend the ending as such, but I will say I don't see what gets people so pissed of with it. Yeah it comes out of nowhere and yeah it appears to be a very weak and uninspiring copy of Deus Ex's ending choices, but it's not exactly a new low for the series. The Reaper invasion plot already didn't make much sense post-ME1 so it doesn't bother me that the resolution to it is a nonsensical ass-pull. It's pretentious melodramatic nonsense, but pretentious melodramatic nonsense is exactly what Mass Effect has been from the start.

Having said that, I chose the "Control" ending (apparently I didn't have enough war points for the other endings - I was wondering what the hell I was gathering all those points for), and I don't get what the hell was happening in the cinematic. Shepard merges with the Citadel or something, okay, it's just the Helios ending from DX. But then a blue shockwave fires throughout the galaxy, which is doing Shepard's will or something, and makes all the Reapers fuck off. Okay, fair enough. But then the shockwave blows up all the mass effect relays and destroys the Normandy? Why would it do that? Isn't Shepard meant to be controlling the wave? Maybe she's just as fed up with the Normandy and its crew as I am at this point. Makes even less sense since the subsequent ending slide shows her sending the Reapers to rebuild the relays.

Whatever, maybe it's just because people hyped it up to be the worst thing of all time, but the ending wasn't that bad. It was bad, but only by the usual standards of Mass Effect. Looking over all the endings in the wiki and the one I would have wanted to do was destroy the Reapers at minimal cost and with Shepard surviving, but I had the variant where the resulting blast would have killed everyone everywhere in the multiverse or something.

Some of the reasons there was such a strong reaction:
-Mass Effect 2 had more choices and reactivity in its ending. Mass Effect 3 didn't even live up to the bar set by its own trilogy.
-Game director had literally said that the ending would incorporate choices from the trilogy and "not just be pick an ending with buttons A, B, and C".
-Instead of admitting that they ran out of time to execute their full vision or admitting the promises were impossible to live up to, they publicly defended the ending as an artistic choice and refused to change it to preserve "artistic integrity".
-The story and sequel implications of the ending upset people because it's difficult to imagine a Mass Effect game without intergalactic travel.
-No boss fight.
-None of the choices in the trilogy resulted in Shepard living through the ending.
-The version you played includes the (minor) improvements they made with a free DLC. Including the option to refute the 3 buttons ("yellow ending"). So much for "artistic integrity".

Legendary Edition was the perfect opportunity for them to fix the ending and drive hype for Mass Effect 4. Sad they didn't earmark some of the marketing budget for that.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Marauder Shields is the boss fight

 

[Turjan]

Having said that, I chose the "Control" ending (apparently I didn't have enough war points for the other endings - I was wondering what the hell I was gathering all those points for)...

I think one additional reason why people got upset was that collecting enough war points for the "good" endings meant that you were forced to partake in enough multiplayer sessions.

 

[J1M]

Having said that, I chose the "Control" ending (apparently I didn't have enough war points for the other endings - I was wondering what the hell I was gathering all those points for)...

I think one additional reason why people got upset was that collecting enough war points for the "good" endings meant that you were forced to partake in enough multiplayer sessions.

That's simply untrue. I didn't do that at initial release and I was swimming in war points. People saying that were probably just confused because all of the endings are the same and none of them are good.

 

[Terra]

It is true - depended on your choices, though. My mostly renegade female Shepard could not get an adequate warscore to survive & get the extra scene at ME3's initial launch without multiplayer. Luckily I was on a jtag x360, so save editing was possible instead.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Beat the game. Uhhh alright, I'm not gonna defend the ending as such, but I will say I don't see what gets people so pissed of with it.

One reason that J1M didn't mention was that game journos were defending the ending as being some masterpiece. I think it was the first time they started calling their own audience "entitled manbabies" or things of the ilk. At least the first noticeable time.
I myself didn't mind the ending, but I played the trilogy for the first time after the release of Andromeda, so any of those wounds were long gone. I was more annoyed by Shepard turning emo in the cutscenes and dealing with the dreams of the dead child. It felt like whoever wrote that did so in isolation from the rest of the game. And that scene after all the real endings where some dude is telling his child about all this in future. Completely out of place with everything else.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

One reason that J1M didn't mention was that game journos were defending the ending as being some masterpiece

also the spread of the indoctrination theory, a bunch of the most retarded deranged insane tinfoil hatteries ever concocted into the depth of the most remote asylum, suddenly was the only real and true explanation for everything happening. journos spent months buttfucking themselves with it. then the "fixed" ending came and... well... journos gonna journo.

 

[gurugeorge]

I've never seen so many people overanalyzing such a medicore series.

I can understand it. Mass Effect was pretty stunning when it first came out - as I said in another thread, it was from a time when gamers still believed that immersive games could become an art-form, and in many ways Mass Effect showed some of that promise, especially in the context of it being a s-f epic that dealt with many grand themes that had been floating around in s-f since forever. First time playing through, it felt like a proper gesamtkunstwerk, with the added element that only games can have, of you being the character in the story, shaping it as you go (smoke and mirrors of course, but immersive enough to create a fine illusion, with gameplay that wasn't perfect, but good enough to sustain momentum). But really it was both the part-fulfillment of hopes and aspirations from the 80s and 90s, and at the same time the beginning of the decline, and it's been downhill all the way since then (not just the series, but games in general).

I'm playing through Legendary now. Third time playing through ME, second time through the others, and it now feels like an elegy, a slightly rickety but still captivating relic from bygone times, and the beginning of the poison that's killed gaming.

The reason we all worry it like a once-delicious but now cold meal is nostalgia for what could have been.

 

[Lemming42]

Yeah, it's an interesting series overall. Going into this replay I didn't have much hope for it because most of my memories were of ME2, which I maintain is pretty awful for the most part and has a really unlikeable and irritating tone. But ME1 does an interesting job of trying to establish an all-original sci-fi universe (even if it is mostly concepts lifted from Star Trek and other existing franchises), although everything outside the in-game codex entries ends up being very boring and the gameplay is dreadful. ME3 is fascinating in that I just played it and yet I don't really know what I think about it. Some parts of it were outstanding, some of the ways they brought back minor choices from the previous games were genuinely admirable and exciting, and yet other parts of it were sub-ME2 horseshit.

ME3 made a great decision when it decided to focus on the more interesting parts of the setting - the genophage, the exile of the Quarians, etc. And for the most part, it seemed to do the concepts justice.

It's definitely one of those game series where a large part of the appeal is in imagining all the ways it could be better than it is. It's tempting to play through them again as a renegade character but I imagine that'd just shatter the illusion and reveal that the games play out almost identically regardless of what you choose to do.

 

[Silverfish]

also the spread of the indoctrination theory, a bunch of the most retarded deranged insane tinfoil hatteries ever concocted into the depth of the most remote asylum, suddenly was the only real and true explanation for everything happening. journos spent months buttfucking themselves with it. then the "fixed" ending came and... well... journos gonna journo.

In defense of the indoctrination theory guys, it seemed more reasonable before Bioware turned Cerberus into Cobra in ME3 and forgot the Prothean Beacon altogether.

 

[JDR13]

I've never seen so many people overanalyzing such a medicore series.

I can understand it. Mass Effect was pretty stunning when it first came out - as I said in another thread, it was from a time when gamers still believed that immersive games could become an art-form, and in many ways Mass Effect showed some of that promise, especially in the context of it being a s-f epic that dealt with many grand themes that had been floating around in s-f since forever. First time playing through, it felt like a proper gesamtkunstwerk, with the added element that only games can have, of you being the character in the story, shaping it as you go (smoke and mirrors of course, but immersive enough to create a fine illusion, with gameplay that wasn't perfect, but good enough to sustain momentum). But really it was both the part-fulfillment of hopes and aspirations from the 80s and 90s, and at the same time the beginning of the decline, and it's been downhill all the way since then (not just the series, but games in general).

I'm playing through Legendary now. Third time playing through ME, second time through the others, and it now feels like an elegy, a slightly rickety but still captivating relic from bygone times, and the beginning of the poison that's killed gaming.

The reason we all worry it like a once-delicious but now cold meal is nostalgia for what could have been.

I'm surprised you can stomach playing through it again. There's no way I would ever replay ME. There are far too many better games out there.

I agree that gaming has declined in a lot of ways, but there are still good games being made. Just not by Bioware.