Maybe loved is an exaggeration on my part. But bear with me I will explain.
Honestly after having heard so much about Mass Effect 3 and the way it ended it put me off playing it until I actually played it. And I have to say there were more than enough annoyances and flaws in design like lack of inventory and keeping track of what you had accomplished in the side quests. Also triggering these side quests required you to explore every inch of all the sections in the Citadel even when there was no logical reason to do so. Which is a very old school RPG mechanic and not a problem if it weren't for the numerous loading times. It really tested your patience at times. Other RPG Elements were stripped down to the bare minimum and in light of the scale and grandness of the story I fully understand that. But none of them could sway me from one important fact. From start till ending Mass Effect is epic! You will laugh, cry, get angry and every emotion you can think of that make every minute of this game an unforgettable experience. Which is something most players will agree on. How can you not be! In the whole franchise of Mass Effect the lives you touch upon have impact on your adventure.
Except maybe for the final ending. I guess some people might have hoped to see more of the influence of their interaction with other characters. But as it was for me, it was a good ending. Of course it was a little too minimalistic and perhaps a little too easy. It sure would have been nice to see the aftermath and how the other characters were doing. But if you tried to get most out of the game and partook in every mission, quest or dialogue that was available to you it will get clear of where the characters are in their life and what still was left to do for them. Most of the dialogue options also hinted how it would end for Shepard. Contrary to belief it does pay off to be immersed in the Mass Effect Universe through completing all of the available dialogue, missions and interactions with every console or device that is available. Unlike in previous Mass Effect games even the littlest fetch quests in this last part mattered in the grand scheme of things or were tied to how Shepard was looked at. (In my humble opinion in RPG oriented games it always is worth to do side quests even when it only serves as background of the universe you live in .) So right before the last mission a lot would have had to happen to negate the already full experience I gotten from the game. It did help that I was expecting the worst. Although I have to say that even if I was not prepared for it I would have like the ending since I realized there were only a few ways the story could end. While the story was rich with a most interesting and complex universe filled with even more interesting and beings living within it the story was never far from a predictable affair. Of course I can understand that many things like indoctrination and synthesis won't make sense (unless like I said took the time to interact with everything that is possible because those topics are talked about) and feel like some rushed and thrown in ideas to give you this outcome. Only to me those never felt as insulting as the conclusions to Battlestar Galactica (reboot) and Lost. Big difference was that the whole emphasis of those TV shows was based on the promise to deliver answers to mysteries presented throughout where as in Mass Effect there was no real mystery other than why the Reapers were attacking. And that question sort of became obsolete the moment all creatures (organics and synthetics) were being destroyed. So the question then shifts to how and when will it end. Normally I would agree with endings where too many things are left abstract or too open. In this case however I feel more than enough is explained or hinted which makes it nice to be able to fill in the blanks yourself should you want to.
Isn't that what makes Science Fiction so darn interesting?
Isn't that what makes Science Fiction so darn interesting?
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