Bad sides of Mass Effect 3, beside the ending

Aria will be wicked hard to resist, particularly for my Girl Scout.

Yeah, she's pretty awesome.

YAY! Another thread derailed into talking about the relative sexiness of Asari women! WHOOT!

Oh, err.. Back in my day RPGs were uhmm...pixilated and made sense! Now a days it's all about shooting guns behind strategically placed boxes and space ninjas! *shakes fist*

No, I really meant it. It's a good day when a thread is derailed into talking of the Asari.

Oh, well...the asari are pretty sexy. And they're pretty bad ass too.

Yes, yes they are. Biotic blue all the way, baby.

What's the saying? "Once you go blue, nothing else will do."?

1. Many Choices = No Difference
- Save/Sacrifice Council
- Save/Destroy Collector Base
- Save/Kill Rachni Queen
- Anderson/Udina elected Councilor
- Rewrite/Destroy Geth Heretics
Whatever variation there was between these seemingly major choices was extremely trivialized. After almost five years and 300+ hours spent playing the past two titles, this is perhaps the most painful slap in the face kick in the balls yet. The fact that no attempt was even made to explain these things only adds insult to injury.

2. Exploration and Side Missions
The side missions of ME1 were rich in classic Bioware story-telling goodness. Almost all tied back into the main plot lines in intriguing ways and most were quite memorable, even with the recycled environments. And though ME2 had more beautiful, compelling environments, I would be lucky if I could tell you what even one side mission was about.
I had hoped ME3 would incorporate the positive aspects of it's predecessors. Instead, the bulk of it's side missions felt devoid of any impact and importance, initiated by simply eavesdropping on the Citadel. What could have been awesome and engaging became a chore, reminiscent of planet scanning in ME2. To further frustrate things, we have Reapers chasing us...

3. Dialogue
The cut-scene conversations that helped make Mass Effect a truly unique and cinematic experience was drastically reduced in ME3, opting instead for linear banter with almost no player input. This is fine for one-off encounters, but no replacement for the Dialogue Wheel. And as others have said, I was rarely satisfied with Paragon/Renegade options. No more was my Shepard a ruthless veteran soldier getting things done his way, but now a morally ambiguous politician who has to make everyone happy. "Do you take pleasure in committing genocide, Shepard?" "Depends on the species, Turian."

4. War Assets
It was a little disheartening to see all that I had worked for be given a numerical value. Back in the day this would have happened behind the scenes. This is made even worse when these hard-won assets are not even visualized in any meaningful way during the final battle, and have relatively minor influence besides...

5. Dream Sequences
If Bioware was trying to allow the player to explore Shepard's mind, they failed. I am Shepard. And in my dreams, Shepard is crushing Reapers like junk cars at my uncle's scrap yard.

6. Phantom Jack
What an incredible disservice to such a wonderful character...

7. Tali's Face
This is one I would never have noticed, if it hadn't been brought to my attention by the online community. But ignorance is not bliss. Did they really think they would fool everyone? What an incredible disservice to such a wonderful character! Shame, Bioware, shame!

8. The End
It's impossible to ignore.

These are all (minus the ending) relatively minor details in the overall scheme, and my opinion is but one of many, yet still I cannot ignore these things. Hundreds of hours, hundreds of dollars on novels and every DLC released. The chasm between what Mass Effect 3 could have potentially been, and what it actually became is far too deep and wide to cross with an "Extended Cut".

Bioware is, or at least was capable of making the best RPGs in the business. That is now up for debate. And while I don't believe ME3 to be the best in the series, it still ranks highly on my list of favorite games EVER, flaws included!

1. Gears of Effect 3
Honestly I never played the first one but it seems that as the series goes on it is becoming less and less rpg and more and more shooter.

2. Udina as Councilor no matter what.
This just seems lazy on the part of the writters. You could just of had Anderson of been the councilor just on Earth to visit the alliance base when the reapers attack. Udina could still run a cue as the assistant and the choice would still matter.

3. No "I told you so"
After I saw the Turian Councilor do his big "Ah yes Reapers" speech I was hoping for an I told you so. It never happened so WTF.

4. The Quest system is complete and utter SHIT!
There is no updating the quest in your menu to show you where your at in the quest and that is just lazy.

5. Dialogue
Whatever happened to the conversations from Origin where you could spend twenty minutes or more talking to your people just asking random ass questions. Now you get a few little one lines when you click them WTF

6. War Assets and Old friends
We spent all that time finding war assets for what? These should of been used in the final battle and given at least a moment. It was very disheartening to see all that I done amounted to nothing.

7. Dream Sequences
If you want to show how stressed Shepards mind is then male that clear get a dream expert to write a few bad dreams people would of had. Talk to a few soldiers about there dreams when their on the front. Hell even take a page from normal people.

8. Jack
Ok the fact that Jack is more normal made sense so that isn't what pissed me off. First of all she never should of grown her hair out. Secondly if you forget about the Grisome mission there is such a piss poor pay off. This could of been a heart breaking cut scene where you realize that she has been lost to Cerberus and they finally finished what they started on Pragia. This could of been the saddest boss battle ever and instead it just is a cameo. Now yes the audio you find is sad but you should of been forced to see it not just hear it. Much like if you shoot Mordin you have to watch him struggle and die.

7. Love interest
If you didn't Romance Ashley, Garrus, or Liara this game treats the romance like a joke. Would it have been so hard for them to write the code that whoever you romanced was in your squad. It wouldn't have had to of changed the story that much.
Or even had given you a love scene between Shepard and them at some point. Honestly other than Liara the love scenes are a joke.
Now I'm not asking for a Witcher style scene, thought it would of been nice to see the love between these people as if they were real.

8. Cerberus
Ok this just pissed me off in the game I wanted to fight the Reapers and they're like put on the back burner for Cerberus. Then the Cerberus boss was basically a Wesker/Cell ripoff named Kai Leng. EPIC FAIL Bioware I really wanted a final battle with the Illusive man. He earned and epic battle and I earned the right to crush him.

The thing that struck me as most disheartening is that Shepard seemed to be the only competent person in the galaxy, and that everyone else relied on her to do things. It destroyed my suspension of disbelief, because while it worked on ME2 (there was a reason for Shepard to follow TIM's orders), it worked because it wasn't on such a galactic level. But on ME3, everyone's sitting on their arses while waiting for Shepard to rescue kiddies, kill baddies and play Space Indiana Jones with lost artefacts.

Then, the romance. God, I hate the romance. I have to agree that Bioware was so desperate to have positive PR that they forcibly included bi and gay token characters so they could take a superior moral high ground. The new romanceable characters are BORING and underdeveloped. The Yeoman? Boring. The shuttle pilot? Okay, a little more developed because of his romance with his dead husband but he ends up being just his romance to his husband. The reporter? BORING. And god help you if you didn't romance the "ideal" mates in ME1\2, because, guess what, the people who professed their dying love to you will not be at your side. Or will be too busy dying (Stupid Kai Leng.)

Also, goddamned day 1 DLC.

Also, no face importing abilities without a whole LOT of tinkering and competent knowledge of how to do it -- and PC. I pity the console players.

Also, the Collector's Edition was a bloody joke. I recently acquired at half price (ie the price of ME3 CE) the Crysis 2 Nano Edition: special edition of the game on tin case, main character statue, special Nano Edition exclusive artbook (twice the size of ME3s) and a laptop backpack created specially for the game. Oh sure, back then it was twice the price of the ME CE edition, but admittedly, let's see us what CE brings: a sample from the large artbook they put for sale, the day 1 DLC and a bunch of useless digital items, the digital version of the soundtrack, a postcard version of a much larger print they put for sale, and a patch. Wow, EA's letting their standards slip, since Crysis is theirs too.

Everyone else already mentioned all my gripes with the game, so I'll leave my rant at this. I can say that I didn't like the game that much, and the ending wasn't what made me constantly lose interest in playing.

Yeah, I was overlooking all these things until the "end" hit me. Then it all fell apart, alas. There are great moments, yes, but overall, uh, this plot-and-consequences boat would sink faster than you could say "ow".

A shame, really. I was so eager to start playing, never been so worked up over a game before. In retrospect I would gladly have waited another year to get what they promised and a worthy ending to my Shepard's story. How did it all go so wrong?

I seem to more and more be leaning towards "nah, ME3 didn't happen, I will fill in the blanks over time in my own way, making it the climax it could be" while borrowing the good bits. Shouldn't have to, but they dropped the ball and it fell straight through the floor.

That said, if they would truly fix the ending I would no doubt enjoy the game again. Do I think they will? Not really. Do I still hope they will? Heck yeah! They got the chance now, I honestly hope they take it.

The sad things is they had a couple really great stories they could have expanded on and made mini games of there own. Like Wrex and his people that was a great story. The quarian and Geth was a great story but the rest just felt like filler. And tali's face really pissed me off!

OMG...totally this. What's the matter with everyone. Why isn't Shepard the only soldier in the galaxy then? Everyone talks a good game about planning and being prepared, but pretty much just sits back and sips latte while Shepard goes out and does EVERYTHING.

Just so you don't get me wrong, I still think that ME3 is a great game minus the ending.
The fact that I didn't notice most of these shortcomings before I started to think about it kinda proves it.
But why would you settle for anything less than perfect? Especially when Mass Effect trilogy got so near to perfection, before they screwed it all up.

We all know our choices from ME1 meant nothing in ME2. Some people were pissed but I wasn't really surprised. They would need to alter the game significantly in order to reflect different choices, and that takes a lot of creativity, a lot of work and a lot of money. So I was OK with it.
But then Bioware came out and said "No, no. You don't understand. Your choices DO matter. They will all play out in Mass Effect 3. It's the final game of the trilogy and the story can diverge in many different directions so everyone will get a different experience."

And from that point on I really expected my choices to make a difference. They didn't.

Yes, the Thessia mission has been poorly handled. I was so excited to see Liara's homeworld and the asari history. And then... only one mission? WTF. I wish they had a mini story like the krogan and quarian.

The Thessia homeworld mission was so on rails too which is what I really hated. Too linear. Too...nothing.

More expansion on the Tuchanka and Rannoch missions would have been great too. At least they were slightly less linear.

Sometimes i wish you could go to Thessia before the Reaper invasion, to see how it was. To see this beautiful asari homeworld being swarmed by reapers was heartbreaking.

Was also too much race centric, from a writting perspective.
I mean in ME1 Humans were all racists but in ME3 it is ok to see Earth in shamble, no word concerning Batarians + Humans reapers everywhere and suddenly Asari reapers pop and Thessia attacked and the game goes all ZOMGBADBAD POOR ASARI.
I really love Liara but on this very point i really disliked her lines, even more because Garrus was in my team and even if he was sad for his fellow Turians he was keeping self control.