Mass Effect 3

Despite a three month hiatus in the middle of my playthough, I went back and finished Mass Effect 3. Awesome game.

The Trilogy

I've played all three games in the trilogy, although each of them was at least 5 years late. There were some truly great moments and I'm looking forward to Mass Effect Andromeda in a few years when I get around to it.

Overall, Mass Effect is great story telling. It is epic and engaging. The writing is generally excellent. The graphics are surprisingly good, especially in cutscenes.

Memorable Moments

Three moments stick out for me from the trilogy.

Samara and Morinth

In Mass Effect 2 you recruit an Asari justicar named Samara. At some point you accept a mission to help her track down and kill her evil daughter, Morinth. Well, I hadn't really clicked with Samara. She hadn't been on my crew for very long and I didn't fully get along with her. She was a little bit too goody-goody for me. When we went to hunt down her daughter there was a moment when Morinth tempted me with power and excitement. For just a split second I was tempted and helped her kill Samara. I immediately regretted the decision and almost loaded a save game. Instead I decided to live with the consequences. That's part of the game, right? 

Tali and the Geth

In Mass Effect 3 you sort of have to choose between saving the Quarians and the Geth. I was feeling ballsy and tried to save both. Tali tried to order the Quarian fleet to stand down, but generations of hatred wouldn't let them and their whole race was exterminated. Overcome by unbearable sadness, Tali takes her own life. I tried to stop her, but I was too involved in the cutscene and didn't notice the "save Tali" button until it was too late. I don't feel too much guilt for the Quarians -- I was asked to choose between two races and one of them wanted to cooperate. However being too slow to save Tali made me sad (even though I later read that she might have been impossible to save even if I was faster).

Activating the Crucible

The ending of Mass Effect 3 received a lot of criticism for various reasons. I liked it pretty well. My only complaint was not enough exposition. I wanted to explore the ramifications of the choices more deeply. But that's a big trait of Commander Shepard. He makes big decisions with little knowledge and he is usually right. The game sometimes uses that style to trick the player into morally ambiguous decisions.

I decided not to activate the crucible, dooming the galaxy to another cycle of Reapers. Killing the Reapers meant killing all synthetic life, and some people with synthetic parts. I already had some guilt at exterminating the Quarians in favor of the Geth, and I didn't want to willfully genocide that race as well. I had some attachment to EDI, who ran the last mission with me. Also, I feared for Miranda with her implants. Even in the best cast scenario, the Krogan would likely conquer the galaxy since I had cured the genophage. Additionally, the Catalyst said he was there to solve the problem of synthetic life vs organic life. Eventually the galaxy would create more synthetic life and would be back to the problems that the Protheans initially faced. By activating the crucible I might be setting the galaxy back thousands of years, would likely be dooming the galaxy to enslavement by the Krogan, and would certainly be genociding the Geth and dooming EDI and other friends.

I had the option to control the Reapers. I should have chose this, but I was tired. Not only was it 3am in real life, but Shepard had just finished being blown up, knocked out, and shot. There was ten minutes of Shepard being barely alive and it felt like a relief when he and his buddy let go of life at the end. When the radio woke Shepard up, I felt his pain. He did his duty and wanted to rest. So when the Catalyst said that Shepard's body would die but his mind would change and live eternally, it sounded like torture. It seemed very likely that Shepard would eventually take over the Catalyst's task of wiping out the galaxy every so often. I just didn't want to live in that Hell. I'd rather the current Catalyst keep his job than be the one to slaughter everybody every few hundred years.

So I decided to continue the cycle. Everything Shepard achieved was for nothing. Everybody's sacrifices wasted. Kind of sucks. But every cycle grew closer to completing the crucible and stopping the Reapers. Maybe next cycle there would be another Shepard who could find a better choice. For example, I wasn't offered the choice of synthesis. Maybe next cycle a better Shepard will achieve it. Liara's message to the future left me with some hope.

Controls

I'm a PC gamer and generally hate games where you can feel the console in the controls. Mass Effect is no exception. The controls is the worst part of the game. I've played it on console and hate it more. The only way to make it work is to have completely different control systems. Don't even try to reuse elements. Even things like the radial menus on the PC are annoying. 

Combat in The Division has a similar feel but is much cleaner. Fallout 4 also does a decent job with combat despite some annoying controls in the rest of the UI.

Combat

Combats were mediocre. They were a great tool for the story telling, but weren't great by themselves. I played long range sniper and combat rifle. Fighting from cover was reasonably fun but anything that involved running around was too chaotic. Battlefields were cluttered so I couldn't retreat backwards while firing very effectively. When getting swarmed I had to turn and run, which was generally too effective for getting away, and then too awkward at getting set up behind cover. The Division did a much better job at fighting from cover, although it doesn't really do melee.

The squad combat is still pretty mediocre. Not sure what the solution is. I appreciate that the player needs to be the hero in a very visceral first-person way, but the two buddies don't quite do it for me. They don't seem very effective and yet I don't want to micro manage them and I don't want them to out-shine me. It felt better in Mass Effect 2 for some reason. I mean it almost worked, but not quite. I want Garrus and Ash to provide distracting fire while I flank. I want Ash and James to protect my flank while I snipe. I want Liara to pull entrenched targets into the air. I want EDI's decoys to save the day when we get overrun and to draw out the enemy when they are hard to hit. They already do this to some extent, but not enough.