Thoughts about games and the gaming world

I’ve been meaning to write this post as soon as I finished Mass Effect 3 but it seems really difficult when I finished it at 2 a.m. two days ago. Also being sick doesn’t really help motivate me to write my first blog. Anyways lets get down to the nitty-gritty of this game.

I wanted to get it out as soon as possible so here it is: Mass Effect 2 is a better game than Mass Effect 3. There are many reasons including the controversial ending this game had (will get to that later) that made me believe this is true. Mass Effect 3 was suppose to be the closure to a story of Shepherd and his team that we’ve been following and developing over the past 5-years. It was suppose to be an amazing end of a journey. What it turned out to be was a long chore helping out all the important species of the Galaxy. Not that helping out species in the Galaxy is boring but the way Mass Effect 3 handled it seems too ridiculous for what it is.

In this whole game, Shepherd is tasked with uniting the species of the Galaxy to form a universal army to take down the Reapers. In context it sounds like an amazing game. But the part where I’m uniting the galaxy seems too ridiculous. I know Shepherd is probably the most important living being in the Galaxy of the game but I can’t believe that he is able to solve all the problems the Galaxy had in less than a year. I say less than a year because the game does not tell how long Shepherd’s quest is but it is hard to believe that Earth is still alive from Reaper’s invasion after a year. Anyways, throughout the game Shepherd is solving all the problems like the Genophage of the Krogans, the war between the Geth and Quarian, the feud between Krogans and Turians, and even some Asari problems thrown in to the mix. I believe in the developer’s mind, most of these problems had to be solved. However I can’t see it as how everyone is asking for Shepherd to help them with their problems before helping him fight against the Reapers. Can’t they just wait until the Reapers are gone? If Shepherd can’t help them then does that mean that they won’t help Shepherd fight against the Reapers which means they are left out fighting the Reapers for themselves? Wouldn’t that mean they’re likely to be extinct with their problems still unsolved? Questions like these came up as I was playing the game and it really ruined my play time with the game.

Another thing I didn’t like was how useless and mechanical most of the decisions that were made in previous titles were for this game. They pretty much did the same thing as Mass Effect 2 where most of the decisions that I did for saving someone life is reflected by an email message. However, unlike Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3 holds a greater weight in using all the decisions that were done in previous games. Most importantly was who survived during the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2. The way they handled it in Mass Effect 3 feels very mechanical. I had all my squadmates survive the mission in Mass Effect 2 so I clearly saw how it didn’t really effect anything in Mass Effect 3. Whenever you meet them again in the game, they fell like they could be replace with any new character in the game. I even was told that certain scenes were replaced with some random character if that character died in Mass Effect 2. It’s understandable that BioWare had to handle it like this. If only 50% of gamers had all the squadmates alive then the other 50% would not see that part of the story if they had created specifically for all the gamers who had those squadmates alive. It makes sense but games like Witcher 2 had branching stories where gamers who picked certain decisions would not even see unless replayed. I wanted something like that but it seems BioWare had limited budget and time to do something like this.

As for the ending, I didn’t really mind it. It wasn’t a great ending by any means. I hate endings that has obvious choices for you to pick which ending you want to see. The ending basically comes down to Shepherd picking three buttons to choose what kind of ending the gamer wants. They may not look like buttons but they are buttons. The ending also left a lot of questions too which I don’t think will be answered with whatever Mass Effect games that will be coming out later on. I’m not even sure if they will include what the gamer chose as an ending for later games. It was a bad way for Bioware to handle an ending that should have been the Swan song for Shepherd.

So with all this talk, what about all the pros? There weren’t many this time around. The graphics looks better than previous games. I tend to look at all the amazing Lens Flares that BioWare had created for almost all light sources in the game. It really brought out the SciFi aspects of the game. I also really like the combat of this game. I felt like I was getting more powerful as I leveled up. By the end of the game I was charging through every enemy and pulling enemies every 1.5 second. It was an amazing feeling to be so powerful to take down 4 brutes in less than a minute. Other than these pros, I don’t think there were much improvements from the second game.

As I said before, Mass Effect 2 was a much better game than Mass Effect 3. But as a gamer who’ve been following the tale of Shepherd for 5 years, this game is necessary to play if you want to find out how the story of Shepherd ends. It may not be a great ending but it is necessary to complete. BioWare is creating a new ending for this game but I would finish the game before the new ending comes to see what BioWare visioned for the game. You may come out disappointed but it is still a game that is needed to be played.