I predicted, and to some extent was wary that ME3 was going to be little more than a glorified ME2 expansion pack and to an extent I was right. Technically very, very little has changed since the previous instalment. Where ME2 offered significant visual improvements compared with its predecessor, 3 adds pretty much nothing. Even in terms of game play, the only real difference I can think of is that they brought back a degree of weapon micromanagement, which was very welcome as far as I was concerned. And they got rid of the fucking planet scanning, but only just, because you still have to perform a perfunctory scan in order to locate artefacts or whatever shit you need to locate for a lot of the tedious Citadel side-missions. Indeed, the stupid micro-machines galaxy map remains unchanged, including having to refuel the Normandy. Although now there's the added "feature" that when you scan a system for stuff to collect, you increase the Reapers' awareness of your presence. Raise it enough and they suddenly appear (in micro-machines form) and chase you out of the system until you complete another proper mission. Which really adds nothing to the game except minor annoyance.
But that's all just details. The important thing is that getting into the rhythm of ME3, assuming you're coming into the game having played the previous episodes, and preferably importing an existing Shepard, has that comfortable feeling of slipping on your favourite, snug coat on a cold day. There was something of a bump on the way in, however, as for some reason ME3 failed to reconstruct the look of my Shepard. What the fuck, Bioware? You managed perfectly well when I imported her into ME2, what's the problem? It took me 3 attempts to craft her look from scratch before I was satisfied with the likeness. It really irritated me that it was broken, though. And it also irritated me that she lost her all-important renegade scars from the previous game and I had to start over. They may sound like small issues, but these games are supposed to offer a certain continuity and it's not like there should be any technical limitations given that ME2 & 3 are basically built on the same engine and assets. Having these problems is like taking away "your" Shepard and replacing her with an imposter.
But once I was in, it was business as usual. And business is good. The ham-fisted, one-button-does-everything controls aren't great, there's still too much "no you fucking moron, I wanted you to take cover not vault over the rock". But there's action, and shooting things, and some talking, and some more shooting things, followed by more talking. It's definitely Mass Effect.
One thing I could have done without was Kai Leng, a tiresome token sword-wielding Asian assassin who is taken from the Mass Effect novels apparently. Every appearance was jarring and awkward, as they tried to crow-bar a new (to the game) character into the plot for no good reason. And in typical Batman/Joker style, he manages to slip away every time you've just about caught up with him, resulting in him massively outstaying his welcome. One mission would have been more than enough, thanks all the same.
And so the ending. Ah, yes. After many hours spent carefully guiding your personal Shepard through the complexities of galactic diplomacy and conflict, not helped by The Illusive Man's determined pursuit of his own agenda, whatever the fuck that might be, friends made and lost along the way, potentially whole civilisations reconciled or wiped out at the flick of a dialogue wheel.
And Bioware pissed it all away at the last moment.
I've read suggestions that the ending was "written" (or more likely, shat onto the page) by a couple of the leads working in isolation from the rest of the writing team, and I can believe it. I could also easily believe that those leads were two of the less talented of the writers, and that on top of that they were blinded by smugness and ego to produce something bafflingly disjointed from absolutely everything which had gone before it.
I can't even be bothered to describe it in detail, there are plenty of other sources for that, but suffice it to say that every decision you made on the long journey from Eden Prime in ME1 counted for exactly nought at the final reckoning. I bet the writers thought they were being clever and abstract and innovative, as if this was their "2001: A Space Odyssey". They really weren't.
And it was going quite well. I was having fun fighting through the tough final battles, especially against those teleporting Asari bitches which are the ME3 foes I love to hate, and I even liked the bit where Shepard is knocked out by an explosion, and comes to in a slow-mo scene reminiscent of the nuclear blast in Call of Duty 4. Except without the protagonist dying. And then you're (eventually, because Shepard's taking her fucking time at this point) beaming up to the Citadel like you did in the Mako near the end of ME1. And then, well you might as well switch the game off at that point. Naturally The Illusive Man shows up to spout some more pointless shit and argue with Shepard for a while. And it's all downhill from there.
At this point I would like to talk about so-called Indoctrination Theory, which is the height of fashion when it comes to attempts to rationalise the current end-game. In reality it's mostly a bunch of Mass Effect pseuds trying to twist and distort any and all insignificant plot details to justify a pathetic "it was all a dream" get-out clause. Ah, yes, the ending was shit, but don't you see? It was all an illusion created within Shepard's mind in response to the Reapers' attempts to control her. Fuck OFF. If you're going to dream away the ending, why stop there? Why not reveal that everything in all three games has just been a continuation of the Prothean vision Shepard had on Eden Prime? That way they can make (and sell) the whole series all over again! Hurrah! Even worse, people appear to be increasingly susceptible to the delusion that "Oh, ya, now that I've seen the evidence for the Indoctrination Theory I'm completely convinced and I, like, really understand the story on a profound level and so I see that the ending is, like, really clever and not actually shit, you know?". NO. The ending is shit. It doesn't fucking matter whether you can explain what was going on. It doesn't fucking matter how many bullshit little details you can twist and torture to fit whichever bullshit theory you subscribe to. "If you sort all the codex entries by length, and arrange them into a grid and rotate it by ninety degrees and then take every 12th letter on alternate lines, except every 8th line, it spells "indoctrination" in Taiwanese." "That pixel in that one texture map in that one cutscene was the same shade of blue as Saren's eyeballs in ME1!" The ending was SHIT. It was terribly written, terribly designed, and boiled down to a three-way choice of coloured explosions. Indoctrination Theory won't change that.
Personally I would have preferred for the game to have ended on a cliffhanger, to be continued in some other form further down the road. If they do bend to the will of the disgruntled rabble and put out some revised conclusion it will almost certainly fail to satisfy anyone. Not least if they rewind the current ending and then play it out differently, but in a paid DLC add-on.
The ending is a lazy load of old shit, but let's not pretend that PC gaming has a rich history of cleverly crafted game endings. Remember how System Shock 2 finished? You may have forgotten, despite the game being one of the mostly commonly cited examples of sci-fi gaming excellence of all time. But that was a game which went to hell in a handcart as soon as the action transferred to the alien ship, and the developers themselves admitted that the final cut-scene was a cheap piece of shit which was all they had time to produce.
Indeed it was. Although it's still arguably better than ME3, offering a more logical conclusion, even if it was a badly-written one. Half-Life, both 1 and 2, had annoying, frustrating endings which offered no closure. Valve's G-Man was the proto-Illusive Man, seemingly able to side-step any notion of narrative logic and appear whenever the writers ran out of ideas to offer idiotic faux-enigmatic nonsense in lieu of actual plot, turning what you thought was going on upside down at the last minute and then... well, nothing really. Half-Life 2's plot especially was always a big fat crock of shit, despite what the fanboys like to believe.
What ME3 does offer is the opportunity to reflect on your own personal journey through the exceptionally well-designed and presented universe, and think about what you would actually consider to be a satisfying conclusion. My femshep was always a renegade, no matter how many times I played the various instalments. Renegade didn't simply mean "bitch", it was quite often more a case of not taking the easy route, nor making the easy decisions, but still having good intentions. One of my favourite sections of ME3 was revisiting the moral questions regarding the Krogan genophage, a potential cure for which I had destroyed in the previous game for reasons I can't remember. But despite being given the option to fake a failed attempt to cure it this time round, it was immensely satisfying to take the position of "No, fuck you, I owe it to Wrex to fix this shit once and for all". But I digress. I'm not a big fan of stories which kill key characters in order to elicit tragedy. Like JK Rowling was overly fond of doing in the Harry Potter books. It's cheap and lazy and tiresome, and the notion of Shepard dying at the end of ME3, while seeming somewhat inevitable, is all the more ineffective as a result of that inevitability. I would have preferred an ending where, despite ultimately sacrificing herself for the good of the galaxy, Shepard survives in such a way as to have to live with that sacrifice, unable to rejoin (in any presently conceivable way at least - potential future DLC!) her friends and especially her girlfriend for any more steamy shower action. Perhaps she could have merged with the Reaper AI, the way she did with Legion and the Geth in an earlier mission, but her physical body is destroyed leaving her trapped, albeit able to control and/or destroy the Reaper threat. Sort of like when the protagonist of FEAR 2 ends up trapped in Alma Wade's disembodied psychological hell, but with more giant robots and less psychic rape. Shepard could become a ghostly digital presence. It addresses the Reaper threat, calls back to a previous mission so it doesn't come completely out of left-field like the ridiculous crucible catalyst child, and doesn't end with Shepard's death, while still offering closure with a pinch of tragedy and of course the all-important opportunity to reprise Mansell's "Leaving Earth" theme.
That's a lot of swearing and insults directed at a game I did, for the most part, enjoy enormously. It lost some of the fat that bogged down ME2, it brought back hints of the good things that had been lost from ME1, it had some interesting missions in interesting environments and some decent foes. Yes, the ending was poorly crafted and nonsensical, but it was at least relatively brief.
