Looking Back at the Mass Effect trilogy - Part Three

Mass Effect 3

  After being happy to find out ME2 had aged well and is still a masterpiece, I was eager to see how the third act had fared being the black sheep out of the three. Back in 2012 the fan and critical reaction to Mass Effect 3’s ending was extraordinarily controversial. Criticisms were so loud that it actually forced EA and Bioware to add extra cut scenes to the ending (which I had never actually seen until replaying it recently) as free DLC, but nevertheless the controversy has stained ME3’s reputation ever since (more on the ending later though.)

  Mass Effect 3 starts of on a drastically urgent note with an army of Reaper dreadnoughts invading Earth, blowing up evacuation shuttles, buildings and people right in front of Shepard. It gets increasingly effective with a solemn piano theme swelling up as an escaping Shepard looks down at a dying child he failed to save. It sets the tone for the entire game, and just like the last two games, it’s up to Shepard to stop the Reaper threat. The rest of the game revolves around Shepard trying to unite the galaxy against the Reapers, a seemingly impossible task since half the galaxy is at war with themselves, and if the world building of the past two games has taught us anything is that just like in real life, these races can’t forget generations of conflict.

  This adds a new level of progression to the game as now you have a ‘War Assets’ meter that you need to fill to a certain level to be able to take on the Reapers.  This means that almost every choice you make doesn’t just have story/character consequences but either add or detract from your War Assets bar.

  At its best this adds new depth to decision making: a choice might me ethically corrupt but will add to your War Assets immensely. The highlight example being one of the game’s set pieces on Tachanka, the krogan home world. They agree to join the war as long as Mordin administers the genophage cure, but the salarian government wants you to stop Mordin and explains the krogan won’t know the difference. Meaning by betraying the krogan and murdering Mordin you’ll have two fleets behind you but the genophage, which has been explored thoroughly throughout the trilogy, will be intact. Usually however, the War Assets bar is just an excuse to shoehorn in fetch quests and side activities.

  ME3 takes the new third person shooter focus of the last game and fully embraces it. ME3 is a full on action game and I loved it for that. Combining special abilities in a three-man squad has never felt cooler in the series; powers visually pop and finding exactly the right combo of three abilities is delicious. Trapping a group of enemies in a gravity well, freezing them into ice only to slam them into the ground and watch them shatter is immensely satisfying. And no matter what three combinations of party members you bring with you on a mission, the results are similarly extravagant.

  Guns also feel even better then before with an interesting mechanic that shortens the cooldown timer of your abilities the less weapons you carry. The only real downside to ME3’s combat and gunplay is that unlike ME2 you can’t carry around a heavy weapon in your arsenal, which is a shame because ME2 was at its most creative when experimenting with these over the top weapons.

  Speaking of squad members this time around your crew has shrunk somewhat from ME2’s cast of 10, to 6, not including the pre-order bonus character EA obviously included. This isn’t a deal-breaker but just a disappointment. There’s only one entirely new character in your crew James, who isn’t particularly deep and has nowhere near the amount of emotional baggage that some of Mass Effect’s best characters have. His frequent use of “loco” in reference to Shepard is cute and he’s overall an enjoyable character but in a game with almost half the amount of party members as the previous game, James can’t help but seem non-essential.

  EDE the ship’s AI from the previous game manages to get herself a sexy robotic body and becomes an actual character as she struggles with concepts like free will, jokes and even love as you can encourage or stop a relationship between her and the human pilot, Joker, another character I haven’t mentioned but is frequently a comedic standout through all three games. Liara and either Ashleigh or Kaiden (depending on who you chose to save in the first game) also make a comeback to your crew and both are even more interesting a second time around especially if rekindling a relationship from the first game. Liara in particular has a couple of incredible moments including one where she comes to your room to show off a device to that’ll explain the Reaper threat to civilisations in the next 50,000 years, just in case we lose. Part of what she needs help with is what to put in about Shepard, which makes it a really effective moment as you think about what kind of character you’ve created Shepard to be and an introverted look at his legacy.

  The only two ME2 characters to return to your crew are Tali and Garrus (who were also the returning characters from the original Mass Effect.) Garrus doesn’t get too much to do storywise, but like always he has a few great moments. It’s really Tali who gets her most dramatic moment in the trilogy. The quarian/geth conflict comes to a climax as the two are in the middle of a war that Tali was opposed to after meeting Legion in the previous game. As the two fleets are murdering each other in the sky Shepard needs to choose whether to let Legion upgrade the geth and murder the quarians or stop him and let the reverse happen. I remembered the first time I came to this decision I let the quarians die and Tali killed herself. I has that at the back of my mind the entire way leading up to this moment, but the last few missions show you the inside of the geth infrastructure, their minds and almost their city. One of the things you see are Legions memories, how quarians began to massacre the geth and even kill quarians that were against the genocide. Some geth only began fighting back to protect their quarian masters. So as the music swelled and Tali begged for her people I couldn’t in all good consciousness condemn the geth to death for a conflict that they didn’t begin, just a conflict that they won. Thankfully I must have done something differently in lead up to the moment because I was given an extra choice to convince both fleets to stop and as a result the quarians began to live on their home world for the first time in generations and the geth were helping them. Tali even admits that with their expertise and manpower (robotpower?) the quarians were adapting to the environment and moving in years faster then they would have otherwise. It’s another jaw dropping show of what Mass Effect was able to accomplish with three games of careful and meticulous world building and character development, to make me care so much about a galaxy that I wouldn’t be around for much longer.

  Even though only two ME2 party members come aboard the crew for the third game, the rest of them all still make appearances (as long as they survived the suicide mission.) Most of these are glorified cameos and only a few playing slightly bigger roles. Miranda, Mordin, Legion and Thane are the only ones to have anything substantial to do in the main story while the rest are sidelined to optional missions. Thane’s death scene is depressing and fulfilling in all the right ways it’s sad that the rest of the cast are shelved especially if you put in time to create a relationship with one of them in the previous game, not to mention it’s just a terrible waste of incredible characters.

  Now, about that ending. This was a situation that has the entire community in an uproar; Mas Effect was a series about choice and consequence, sometimes grand and sometimes granular, but the ending, at launch, ignores every decision you’ve ever made. It all essentially boils down to choosing one of three scenarios: destroying robotic life including the Reapers, geth and EDI; controlling the Reapers for yourself; or you can synthesise all organic life with the Reapers and other robotic life forms which is explained to be the final stage of evolution. Whatever you choose results in almost exactly the same cut scene with the only noticeable difference being the colour of the shockwave that you send out. That was the ending that launched with the game back in 2012. The culmination to over a 100 hours of gameplay and decisions was a nonsensical choice that came from out of the blue and a cut scene that showed no repercussions. It was a shame because the final mission to retake Earth with the entire galaxy (or however much of it you were able to unite) by your side was extraordinary. The CGI space battle before the mission fully starts is breath-taking and the last character interactions you have with your crew before they potentially die is profound as they reflect on their life and relationship with you.

  After immense backlash EA and Bioware had no choice but to change something and this came in the form of a free update that would add additional cut scenes to show the impact of your decisions. Watching it for the first time actually made for a more satisfying ending then I thought it would. While many people were enraged that ME3’s ending wasn’t impacted by any of your choices throughout the three games, I didn’t care. I wouldn’t have minded if the ending was more or less the same for everyone as long as it was in line with the story. But a random robot ghost of a child giving us a rainbow of choices wasn’t what I loved about Mass Effect’s story.

  Despite the controversy surrounding the ending and the discussion that is still being had today about whether or not fans should be able to demand change to someone’s creative vision, Mass Effect’s achievements are undeniable. When I think about how much I love Mass Effect I never stop as I’m reminded of the ending. I think about the journey. I think about the incredible cast of characters, the attention to the world’s lore, the grooviest map music in gaming. There are too many great character moments to count and the beautiful thing about Mass Effect is you’ll never see all of them in one playthrough, or two, or even three. And that’s not to Mass Effect’s detriment; it makes that world seem alive. If I don’t romance a certain character it’s natural I won’t have every interaction with them that the game has to offer.

  While the first game hasn’t aged well, the other two have barely aged at all. The trilogy is a monumental example of how interactive storytelling can be done right and it’s possible we’ll never see anything like it again.