Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Maynard Weighs In on Mass Effect 3
I had the pleasure of playing through the Mass Effect trilogy, culminating with Mass Effect 3 recently released this Spring. I took my time and savored the game that I had spent sooo many hours navigating...from Mass Effect 1 through the finale. And while I cannot definitively say it's a better game than any of the one featuring Yours Truly ("MegatonMaynard versus the Space Zombie"...in stores this Christmas), I did thoroughly enjoy the ride.
The music, graphics, combat, and power usage was well done. I wasn't a fan of dodging Reapers throughout various systems, but I understand where Bioware was going with it. And while the game itself was enjoyable, Bioware made themselves such a mammoth hole to fill in ME3 that it was virtually impossible to do so. And it shows.
Many were critical of brief appearances of Miranda, Legion, Jack, Jacob, and others from ME2. Because Bioware made it possible to kill any on of these characters off in ME2, they obviously had to severely limit their game presence in ME3. They did so by replacing them with new characters and old friends to make up Shepard's squad. Faces like Vega and EDI replace the possibly KIA Miranda and Jacob. Ashley/Kaiden and Liara, old favorites from ME1, return to the Normandy in place of Jacob and Jack. And while some of these are understandable (Thane is dying and Miranda is on the run from everyone), the way in which these characters were marginalized is troubling to many. Yet it's necessary and i have no issue that that, though I, like many others, would have preferred a better endgame for my romance with Jack and Miranda than a passing scene.
The end of the game is another issue. Many have taken exception with how Bioware handled the ending, leading many of us to question what we were seeing, what choices we have, and making sense of the resolution. The ending was lacking in clarity, an issue that Bioware is addressing in their Summer DLC extended cut release. But while the extended cut promises more clarity, it does not address many people's concerns about how flawed the ending was.
Personally, I can live with it but I need some clarity. I'm still not sure what exactly happened at the end. I was very disappointed with the resolution to the Illusive Man . I still think Bioware should have ended the game and then added DLC in which Shepard hunts down and destroys the Illusive Man, making the game playable after the End Game and setting up the galaxy for more Mass Effect games later. However, the way it ended was less than satisfying for me. I do not place myself into that niche of angry gamers who feel betrayed but i do feel that Bioware threw an ending together that while is ended the tale of Shepard, did so in a sloppy and slapdash manner.
I'm not sure about you, but my Shepard deserved better.
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