Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Mass Effect 3 (New Ending DLC)


Mass Effect 3 is a game made by Bioware and published by EA in 2011, and is meant to be the finale in the Mass Effect series.  The series follows an Earth commander named Shepard set in the distant future. Without giving any of the plot points away, the series focuses on Relays that allow travel between galaxies possible. The Relays were built trillions of years ago by an unknown source for a different cycle of life, and currently allow species to interact and cooperate/kill eachother.  In the third game, an enemy you learn about in the first two (indirectly) known as Reapers, comes to kill off the intelligent civilizations of this life cycle. The game is an RPG (Role playing game) and throughout the game you make difficult choices that kill off entire species to save others. These are the biggest choices you are forced to make in the series, but the original ending does not portray these. The original ending gives you a choice of color: Green, Red, or Blue. Before choosing an ending, the game gives very little information, for red they give a single sentence of what will happen. Each choice shows the same ending with a different hue, with the idea you will imagine what happened differently. The Green ending was incredibly vague and only accessible from playing multiplayer or from searching for 100% of the single player. Bioware faced a huge backlash by the players, who claimed their choices did not matter in the end (Included is a video of what players thought of the ending, and to prove how vague the ending is, It's not a spoiler to watch it...[Mostly because it doesn't show whats being activated]). In a pressured decision, Bioware produced a 1.8 gig (or 1,800 megabyte) add on, that added more clarity on the choices, and a video showing the end result of each civilization. The game does not go into detail as many would prefer, but it answers several of the initial questions regarding the ending. In the first play through, Red was the only path that made sense, and would benefit the universe. With the increased clarity, both blue and green were a difficult decision. Red is the safest ending, with blue and green making a morality choice. Personally I spent three minuets trying to decide between which ending to choose, and finally decided on blue. As a joke ending, Bioware created a [Refusal] option; the premise being that Shepard walks away from making the choice and everyone dies. Although this ending is completely out of character it is a hilarious way to end the game, especially with so many people complaining about the previous ending.

1 comment:

  1. My step-dad is currently playing this and it's a mixture of hilarity and pain to watch. He doesn't like rpgs, he just wants to shoot stuff, so some of the more complex strategies are lost to him. He also doesn't read the book to know what's going on or how to uses certain abilities, then goes on a tirade about how terrible the game is and why can't he just do whatever it is he's trying to do. I think this is a really awesome game, but the average shoot 'em up gamer should leave it for those that can fully appreciate it.

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