Mass Effect 3

Released: 2012
Rated: M for mature

I don't even know where to start with this game.
I've had it for almost year knowing that once I finished it, there wouldn't be anymore to the story and that was a very sad thought.  I enjoyed Mass Effect 2 so much, that I didn't want it to end.  I knew I missed out on the first Mass Effect because it wasn't previously available on the Play Station 3 (now it is, but I still don't have it.)  But not having played that first one, really didn't affect my enjoyment of the game and I didn't feel lost (ok, maybe the tiniest bit here or there, but not enough to really notice.)
I have already reviewed the 2nd one in a previous post.  I loved it and said it was the best game I had ever played, and I sincerely doubt that another game will ever come along in my lifetime to beat that one.
And I wasn't the only one raving about ME2.  It seemed everyone I knew loved it and it got glowing reviews.

So when the 3rd and final one came out, there was a lot of expectations, a lot of anticipation, and also a lot of fear that it would not live up to all the hype.

I, personally, expected a lot, but also thought if the second one was as good as it was, that this one would be just as good.  Being that this is the last installment in a series of 3, it had to be final.  It had to be epic, it had to be, and I knew people would die.  The second one is still my favorite, only because, if one of my crew died, I knew I could go back and change a decision somewhere to save them.  I didn't have that chance in this one, and it was painful to see some of my crew go.

The second one was epic, thrilling, entertaining, and funny sometimes.  It was a great mix and even included the chance at romance with almost anyone in the game that was a major character.  It was a fun ride and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  When it was over, I just played it again and again, trying out different things to see what was different.  I walked away knowing it was the best game I ever played, and would never forget it.
While it was mostly fun and thrilling, it also had a few touching moments.

The third one was thought-provoking and powerful.  It has a lot of moments that might make you well up with tears.  I certainly shed quite a few throughout the story.  You have to make some heart-wrenching decisions that determine whether entire species are saved or lost forever.  You have to sit and watch while people or alien races around you die and there's nothing you can do to save them, I'm talking millions of people, and worst of all, I had to watch my love interest slowly die after he tried to protect me.

It is simply an amazing story to watch unfold and to know that you're story is different than other players, due to your individual choices makes it that much better of an experience, personal to you, and like no one else's.
At first I felt a bit embarrassed being so emotionally connected to a video game, but I thought, a story is a story.  And a good or great story like this one, is great to find.  Whether it be a book, movie, television show, and yes, even video game - a great story makes you feel things, it makes you care about the characters, it makes you invested, no matter how hard you resist.

The characters are incredibly well detailed, well thought out, well crafted, and each one, important to the story.  Every single one is different and interesting.  Some get under your skin, some make you laugh, some make you cry, and some even make you fall in love with them.  The villains are easy to hate and good at being bad asses.  The good guys, of course, are heroic and flawed as well, just as real people are, but you always root for them to accomplish their mission.

The cinematic quality of this story rivals real films.  The framing of shots, cinematography, the animation, and score are all excellent   Story line is better than most movies, I'd say 95% of today's movies cannot touch how good this story is.

I could go on and on about how fantastic this all is, but I've realized I haven't told you the plot.
Let's get to it!

From the last Mass Effect, you, Commander Shepard, put together a varied and talented team from all over the galaxy to fight a mutual enemy that no one believes is real....The Reapers.  Believed to be a myth, no one ever thought all life throughout the universe would be threatened by these huge entities.  While collecting your team in the last game, you are also trying to raise the alarm to anyone who will listen that the Reapers are real and they are coming to destroy us all.  Of course, no one listens, and by the end of the game you are proven right with the final shot of ME2.  (I am not spoiling the game for you, by the way, so no hate mail please.)
Along the way, you make a ton of little and big decisions in ME2 that come to fruition in this game, so I made my choices carefully, and also found myself attracted to one particular character and started a love relationship with him, and only him.  Truth be told, I liked a couple male characters, but I'm always loyal to one person in real life, so that's how I decided to be in the game as well.  Like I said earlier, I felt a bit embarrassed to be emotionally invested in characters in a video game, but I've been doing some research.  Turns out the creators of my love interest in the game were specifically aiming to make him attractive to women.  I'm glad I found this out, makes me feel like they were trying to get me to notice him, which, I really did.  The character they made was quite intriguing.  I read an article where they showed his inception and how they drew him, his look, the way his look evolved.  It was fascinating.

So, ME3 starts off well, with you on Earth working for the Alliance (a human military operation based on planet Earth) doing day to day stuff.  You're still trying to get people, especially people of power, to listen to your concerns about the Reapers coming, and while you are trying to still succeed at that, Earth is suddenly under attack by the Reapers.  They are huge individual spaceships, incredibly dangerous, and almost impossible to kill.  They land on Earth and start destroying everything in their path, collecting people along the way and killing massive amounts of others.  The people they collect become mere shells of their former selves, and are slaves to the Reapers who either kill or collect more people.  You are forced to leave Earth behind as the attack has just barely begun.  You truly are the only hope of saving Earth, and the galaxy, and you must leave your home to stay alive and defeat them once and for all.

Throughout ME3 you meet up and sometimes re-recruit your old team from ME2.  Whoever was still alive at the end of ME2 you will see in one way or another during the course of the game.  You may not get to work with them again, but you'll get an update as to what happened after the end of the last game and where they are headed.  I finally got to see what my previous decisions affected and now it makes me wonder who I could've saved, had I made different decisions.  People died in this game due to what I decided previously  but I went with the only information I had at the time, just like you do in real life, and you only learn they were mistakes after they are made.

Anyway, after you've got all the help you can get with teammates, and other alien species, the final fight comes around and it is a doozy!  I died several times in the last hour of the game from all the biggies I had to fight.
And then, the part I was dreading came around, the end.
The end of the game was a little of what I expected, but a lot more spiritual and gut-wrenching then even I thought it could be.  I was very satisfied with the ending and it was spectacular to watch.
I will talk about the ending down at the bottom of the article so as to not spoil it for anyone who hasn't played it yet.  And if you haven't played it, you're missing out on a phenomenal, epic, moving story that you will never forget, I promise.  This story would be on my short list of recommendations of things to do before you die, that's how fantastic this story is.  I am not kidding you.  It. Is. That. Good.

Mass Effect 2 got a 5 out of 5.
Mass Effect 3 is no different, 5 out of 5.
For both I'd give it a 100 out of 5 to give you an idea of how much I loved both.
PLAY THIS GAME PLEASE!!!!
It's so breathtaking, beautiful, and amazing.  It's gripping, emotionally charged, and fascinating.

Anyway, here's a look at one of the trailers for Mass Effect 3.  Watching it will not ruin anything for you, story wise.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


HERE COMES ME TALKING ABOUT THE END OF THE GAME SO, IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED IT, I REALLY SUGGEST: DO NOT RUIN THIS FOR YOURSELF.  PLAY IT AND THEN COME BACK AND READ UP ON THIS.


For me this is how the end of the game went.
I chose the middle option, or the "green" option as some people call it.
The choice of organic life and artificial life combining DNA.
To me, this did not mean that everyone instantly became cyborgs.  I interpreted it as over time, people could mate with robots and have hybrid children.  And artificial life became independent and able to have children of their own, if they chose to.  It made it a real possibility for Joker and EDI to have a sexual relationship, and have offspring, when before it was impossible.  But, upon seeing Joker's eyes shining bright electric light, and his skin has the quality of a green shining microchip, I realized, it really is an instantaneous reaction of organic and artificial life living in one body of all entities.  Cool idea, but that's the only look you get, so I wonder how that works.
I knew the "child" was something the A.I. downloaded off of Shepard's memories to have something familiar appear to her and be less scary.  I'm imagining the Catalyst was something beyond human comprehension and needed to appear as something the viewer would not be afraid of and something recognizable.
I actually thought the catalyst was the highest advanced alien ever in the galaxy, something that was organic, strictly living on a higher plane than ours, some race that had evolved over eons that didn't become robotic, but in the game, Shepard referred to it as an A.I.  In truth, the child is an AI that created the Reapers to control the advancement of organic civilizations getting too far advanced; thus killing any civilization that was capable of making artificial life smarter than who created it.  The Reapers, every 50,000 years, go through the galaxy to clean up advanced civilizations.  The AI is engaging in God like behaviors and preserving itself as well as organic life, but it's a moral dilemma.  I'm a bit torn.  I mean, of course it's not a good idea that organic life wipes itself out by creating robots that gain independence over time and start a war, but at the same time, killing all those innocent people because of what one entity thinks will happen in the future is not fair either.

It's interesting to consider that this AI is controlling everything, literally everything in the galaxy.  Something that had to be created from an organic civilization somewhere long long ago.
The AI said that the created always rebel against the creators and the creators are always going to lose.  Certainly something to think about...I mean this game is making a statement about humanity, life, and intelligence, it's not just a video game.  It's a warning of making artificial life so real that it wants to take our place and becomes smarter than us.  That eventually, all organic life would fall at the hands of what it created and there would be no more humans, no more organic life forms anywhere.  Very interesting to think about.

So the other endings that I didn't choose:

I couldn't destroy all artificial life thinking of EDI and the Geth.  I had earlier chose to save the Geth over the Quarians so, to me, that wouldn't have made sense at all.  (But in this ending, if your military strength is high enough, Shepard lives at the end, the only ending to play out this way.)

I didn't want to just control the Reapers either and die without going on somehow, so that wasn't the best option for me either.

Although, I do have to say once my love interest died, I wanted to die at the end of the story too, so that hopefully, they would've had us together somehow in the afterlife together and make it a "happy" bittersweet ending.  But I was always sure Shepard would sacrifice her/himself to get the job done and save Earth, and the galaxy.

But, I'm still happy with the powerful ending they gave.  I'm glad at least some of my crew survived, even though they had to start all over again on a new planet with no ship and no mass relays.  I'm glad I saved the galaxy and Earth, but sad that so many races are stuck where they were during the battle since all the relays got destroyed, and some can never go home.  Earth, after all, is not a planet that all the species can live on, due to different pressure, diet, and breathing problems.

Yes, I saved the world and the galaxy from the Reapers.  That's what I was born to do in that game.  My sole mission.  I completed my destiny, but I just wished I could've saved my love interest too.

I do have a few small concerns that could've been easily fixed in the game.
I created a relationship with Thane.  At first, he had decided to die in battle since he had a terminal illness without any cure developed to save him yet.  When you meet him, he's trying to kill a target and thought he would die in the process.  He was fine with that, but upon meeting Shepard and hearing of her upcoming suicide mission, he decides he must help, and will probably die that way.  When you start romancing him though, his thought process changes.  He finds his son and finds a new possible, love of his life.  He's suddenly afraid of death and losing people that are precious to him.  He wants to live as long as possible by the end of ME2, but at the beginning of ME3 he's gone back to his old thinking.  Suddenly, he's resigned to death again, and there's nothing you can do to change that.  I don't like the flip flop of his character, he should still be fighting to stay with you and stay alive.  Plus, I hear other characters that you romance get these little date like moments in the game, with Thane, you don't.  A brief, but meaningful playfulness at the Citadel hospital is all you really get while he's alive.  A sex scene that isn't, and then he gets mortally wounded trying to protect you and others.  Due to his disease he cannot be saved, and why not?  Really because the BioWare people decided you have no say in the matter.  The cure the Hanar are working on does not come into play, a transplant talked about in ME2 does not factor in, new advancements in medi-gel and medicine talked about in ME3 also does not factor.  You watch him die in the hospital next to his son, who donated blood, but it just wasn't enough to save him.  You are powerless (and a bit stoic about it on screen in the game, bothered me...) absolutely powerless in the game to help him.  Why not fight next to him in the scene where he got stabbed?  Why not have him last at least long enough to fight next to me in the final battle?  Why couldn't he die later on in the game, or not die at all after he gets help from the Hanar?
I know it all sounds like I'm going bonkers over little details, but Thane was the love of my life in that game.  I got really excited at seeing him in this game and looked forward to his scenes.  Just a bit disappointing to me, a big Thane/Shepard fan.  Plus after he dies, no one on the Normandy gives you any acknowledgment that he died.  No one says how sorry they are for your loss.  The only one who does say anything about his death was the man that killed him, and he taunts you with it.  Pretty insulting to me.
Anyway, you do get a posthumous email from Thane on the Normandy after you return.  He tells you how deeply he felt for you and it is special.  I did read it a few times through tears to catch all of it, it was well done and meant a lot to me, but I wished for more interaction with him while he was alive.

Despite these missteps, I still loved the game and will probably play through it a few more times, now that I have the add-ons I thought I had already, plus the extended cut of the ending.  I know they're coming out eventually, with another Mass Effect game, but from what I understand, it is not going to be a continuation of Shepard's story.  I will have to look forward to whatever is to come from the BioWare people in the future.
It's such an amazing game!