Why I liked the Mass Effect3 Ending (And why I can understand that some people didn't.)

See, the problem is all about individuality. That's the issue right there. The Mass Effect series built itself up as a series that thrived on the players individual choices, and then gave us three seemingly unconnected choices to the rest of the series when it came to the very end.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Sorry, I do that sometimes. SPOILERS FOLLOW.

The Vitriol that spawned in the depths of the interwebs after Mass Effect 3 came out was staggering in its intensity. People were complaining to EA and Bioware, ranting on Youtube and coming up with theories as to how it couldn't possibly be the real ending and they were all hiding it from us to make money of DLC. Since Bioware are now releasing a free DLC pack that expands on the endings, that holds a certain amount of water, but I don't think the "indoctrination theory" does. It's just a little too convoluted for my tastes, and a little over-reaching. I could be wrong, but hey.

I honestly think a lot of the reaction has been very overblown - some people are taking this game far too seriously; at the end of the day its still a game. I got called a "game hater" on twitter a while back fro daring to defend EA over some peoples reaction - a nifty trick for someone who started gaming on a tape drive Amstrad. People threatening to hit EA with lawsuits for false advertising and voting them the "Most evil company in the world" went somewhere beyond fanboyism into the downright asinine, but I can still understand where a lot of people were coming from. Yes, the Ending featured a pure and simple Deus Ex Machina (Something I'm not really opposed to) and yes, it didn't really feature a 'happy' ending (Which I suspect will be expanded upon in the free DLC) but I don't think that was really the issue.

I think, as much as anything else, the problem descends from the fact the choices aren't clear cut. If you click on that link to the indoctrination theory, it goes on about how Anderson is shown as the Renegade choice and the Illusive man is shown as the Paragon choice. What that says to me, rather than a convoluted theory, is that the game is illustrating that not everything is as cut and dry as we may like. Lets not forget, destroying the reapers would also destroy the Geth - who can be allies by that point - and of course, EDI. It's Genocide of a species. The second option is controlling the Reapers, but sacrificing Shepard's life to do so, again, not a clear cut choice. I'm enough of a completist that I also got the third option, to create the new form a life that was a synthetic-organic hybrid, therefore rendering the reapers obsolete.

Some people have pointed out that this is giving into the Reapers but I disagree: the Reapers seek to exterminate or dominate organic life. What the third option represents is peace between the two, but again, its not a clear cut choice.

It's a difficult decision, I sat there for a good few minutes before I made my choice. I won't tell you which one, but I was lucky in the fact that it actually fit into my style of playing. I can understand that for a lot of people that wouldn't have happened. My ending was bittersweet, certainly: I would have liked the happy ending with Liara and the "little blue children", but hey thems the kicks, and we can hope we get that closure in the expansion.

And that brings me back to my opening gambit: it's all about individuality. Those three endings weren't as bad as everyone thought, but they in no way matched up to the three games that came before them. Those game were based around long-standing choices that shook the universe; the final endings weren't. I still think the reaction was disproportional to the supposed offence, but I can understand where people are coming from. 

Mass Effective...

I got Mass Effect 2 off my wife for christmas, and after having completed it on saturday night, I started thinking which one of the two games is actually better. Mass Effect is a truly great franchise - a sci-fi opera that is firmly building towards being one of Bioware's great acheivements.

I absolutely loved the first game. the combination of third person action and RPG spanning an entire universe was something that made me love the entire universe and it's characters. The whole series is also wonderfully ambiguous, with a firm way to play the way you want.

But which of the two games is actually better?

Well, the second game ups the action stakes. The tactical system is half arsed in the extreme, with the characters you direct to stay in a position rarely bothering to actually fucking stay there but they certainly fight well. Half the time I found myself hanging back in a support position, allowing the other two members of the party to move forward and assault the enemy. Ironically, when they were out of my control, they often tended to move better tactically and fight back enemies I hadn't even spotted yet.

In the first game, the characters tended to duck straight into cover, and just pop-up shoot at enemies. I suspect this was because of the ammo method in the first game -the weapons had infinite ammo, but tended to 'overheat', which robbed you of being able to fire for a few seconds. The tactics tended to be "pop up, short burst, short bust, overheat, duck back to cover" until you'd killed the enemies. You could use grenades to liven up the proceedings, but it was much slower paced.

In the second game, you can put a LOT more ammo down - but the ammo is limited. Rather than overheating, the guns have "Thermal Clip", that can only take so many shots before it has to be ejected. This makes the gunplay a lot more intense, and forces you to at least occasionally switch weapons. The further firepower supplied by the heavy weapons also gives you a lot more bang for your buck.

The first game used a traditional XP and Levelling RPG system, whereas the second game doles out the level points at regular intervals, forcing you think carefully about the powers and persk you choose. It works, but I did find myself missing the levelling up you get from occasional skirmishes.

On the other hand you didn't really get much incidental fighting outside of missions. Mass Effect was a lot more sprawling than it's sequel with the ability to take a wheeled vehicle - the Mako - down to a lot of the planets and roll around blowing the living shit out of stuff. Of course, one of my freinds pointed out that while Mass effect feels bigger and more open, most of the worlds are pretty much carbon copies of each other with texture changes. The illusion of freedom tended to fall apart whenever you actually went into a building, since they all had exactly the same layout with a few crates moved around. On top of that, the side missions did tend to go be essentially "Go here, shoot this."

Mass Effect 2 is a much tighter game. all of the missions have firm places within the universe and all have a plot that revolves around more than gunning down everything in a ten mile radius.

It's hard to compare the stories, since ME2's story is an extension of ME1's. But I have to say in Saren, the renegade Spectre, Mass Effect has a more compelling antagonist. Mass Effect 2 focus's far more on the wider story of Commander Shephard against the Collectors. You have the Harbringer, the voice of the Reapers - the series' overall megavillains - but other than that theres no-one to directly focus on as a villain.

So, which one is better?

Simple. The one where the refining of the formula finally pays off.

Mass effect 3.