Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 48: Mass Effect 3

(+) Yeah! (+)

So there is a new owner of the title of worst story, Tales of Zestiria. Omori took the highest spot also. Today however is for Mass Effect 3. How would you rate the story on a scale from 1-10?

Previous Results:
Omori - 9.67 (6 votes)
Outer Wilds - 9.63 (20 votes)
Nier Automata - 9.25 (31 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations - 9.18 (33 votes)
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 9.1 (14 votes)
Return of the Obra Dinn - 8.72 (9 votes)
Xenogears - 8.71 (23 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.67 (31 votes)
Metal Gear Solid - 8.67 (27 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics - 8.65 (23 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.58 (12 votes)
Mass Effect 2 - 8.55 (26 votes)
Undertale - 8.53 (40 votes)
Yakuza: Like a Dragon - 8.4 (5 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.38 (54 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 8.35 (18 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.13 (39 votes)
The Last of Us - 8.1 (34 votes)
Bloodborne - 7.92 (19 votes)
Life is Strange - 7.85 (30 votes)
Doki Doki Literature Club - 7.9 (23 votes)
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - 7.67 (27 votes)
Bioshock - 7.64 (23 votes)
Celeste - 7.52 (24 votes)
Mass Effect - 7.35 (28 votes)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 7.26 (29 votes)
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - 7.25 (12 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.24 (28 votes)
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - 7.17 (23 votes)
Super Paper Mario - 7 (20 votes)
Hollow Knight - 6.98 (20 votes)
Death Stranding - 6.73 (13 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.69 (16 votes)
Dark Souls - 6.62 (20 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All - 6.66 (30 votes)
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - 6.6 (27 votes)
Valkyria Chronicles - 6.5 (16 votes)
DOOM (2016) - 6.25 (12 votes)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 6.1 (13 votes)
Final Fantasy IV - 5.72 (29 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.26 (28 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright - 4.91 (11 votes)
Final Fantasy XIII - 4.91 (27 votes)
Fallout 3 - 4.76 (17 votes)
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty - 4.72 (9 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.39 (14 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - 3.64 (14 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates (overall) - 3.45 (10 votes)
Starcraft II (overall) - 3.4 (5 votes)
Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void - 2.83 (6 votes)
Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm - 2.57 (7 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation - 2.38 (8 votes)
Tales of Zestiria - 2.14 (7 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name><rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

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9.7 Best in the trilogy.
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10

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4/10

Has it's moments. Tuchanka is the high point of the series. Overall though, it just isn't very interesting. 6/10 up until the ending, which knocks 2 points off.

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10/10

Climax after climax, with two fantastic storyline conclusions in Tuchanka and Rannoch and the best DLC ever made

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The beginning is super slow to start out, especially with how the game starts out, but no, once you leave Earth things never really felt urgent, despite you being just there watching it get annihilated. Smooth sailing until the ending, and then the ending happened.

6/10

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Citadel alone would get a 12/10, but ME3 as a whole gets a 4.75 for faceplanting at the finish line.

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So Mass Effect 3 is a difficult one to rate, as the quality of the of the story actually changed a lot over time. The version they released in the base game at launch was outright bad. You can forget the ending, it was missing key parts of the plot that added context to what was happening. With that said the original ending was also just dreadful as well. However through DLC they got all of that back in there and raised the quality of the ending from awful to underwhelming. It is a vastly better story. There are still huge problems with it of course, from the diminishing of the Reapers as a threat to the focus on Earth to the way your choices barely matter to edgy boy Kai Leng. So I will give it a 6.

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Every time I think about ME3, I forget Kai Leng exists. Consciously, at least. I subconciously remember how he affected my engagement of the story but manage to suppress his actual existence for the sake of my sanity.

That's probably my biggest issue with ME2 - it's extremely uneven. The same game having Tuchanka and Kai Leng is crazy to me.

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7

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6/10

Has some of the greatest individual character moments in the entire series. Mordin curing the genophage (or you shooting him), Wrex's death, pretty much the whole Earth assault. Also has some of the most mind-numbing stupidity in the series too. You can see the holes in the very game's own choice system when Z-list characters you've never heard of take over instead of actual main characters (Wreav & Padok being great examples of this). I think the game delivers Reapers rather anti-climatically especially in its lame no-stakes opening; the colorful, varied cast of ME2 is replaced with a much less diverse set of characters; choice making is embarrassingly binary and lacks meaning & depth. And the ending is well... the ending. However, a few bones are definitely thrown in for the DLC.

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10

Haven't played 3, but did I vote on ME2? I feel like I would have remembered if you'd all gotten to hear me rant about its story.

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FFDragon posted...

Citadel alone would get a 12/10, but ME3 as a whole gets a 4.75 for faceplanting at the finish line.

I only played ME3 after the DLC was already out so I will literally never fathom how people could hate the ending this much. With the DLC everything wrapped up so perfectly.

azuarc posted...

Haven't played 3, but did I vote on ME2? I feel like I would have remembered if you'd all gotten to hear me rant about its story.

Nope!

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Haven't played ME3 even though I beat 1 & 2 back in 2015. Gotta get on that.

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8

9/10

The story's final priority missions aren't anything to write home about, but the way the Genophage and Quarian/Geth arcs are handled is unforgettable - two of my favourite moments in gaming and they're the meat of the whole game imo. It also shows great affection for some of its characters and often uses its best ones intelligently. They clearly knew how loved Mordin was (possibly through the use of ME2 data) to give him such a meaty role and for us to feel the pain of his loss - it being essentially impossible to have both Wrex and Mordin survive the game, and the way Legion and Thane were handled, was a clear attempt to hit the player where it hurts. Contrast that to the comparative shafting they gave Jacob and Morinth - because honestly, how much does anybody care about either one? But you could never do that with Thane, Mordin, Wrex and Legion. Or Garrus and Tali.

It definitely suffers from a few too many contrivances (this is a problem in all 4 ME games) and you can see the gears of its choice system straining and I wish there'd been a little more impact to the ending even after the EC, but it was basically fine (post-EC). Have to say I felt a disconnected between how much time you spent fucking around doing Citadel fetch-quests and the urgency of the war and the Reapers' astonishingly high kill rate. But there was a fun hopelessness in killing Reaper ground troops knowing you weren't really hurting the Reapers, only surviving

Also thought a lot of the cutscenes were better to watch. Their presentation smokes ME1's for example, and that definitely matters. And the Citadel DLC...and jesus christ those two highs are just so, so good, such a fantastic, satisfying payoff to both arcs. They are doing a lot of the heavy lifting for my rating.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

Nope!

Well, then buckle in for a hot take, because I think ME2's story is garbage. There are literally four missions in the game that are part of the main quest because the entire rest of the game is Recruitment Simulator 2185. "Let's go to this place to find some random person that might help us!" "Now let's go to some place across the galaxy to do that person a favor!" "What's that? The universe is in danger? Oh, just hang on, we need to harden one more companion first."

Seems completely silly. Let's not overlook the fact that they literally kill your character off in the first minute of the game just so you can be resurrected into some clandestine organization rather than working as a Specter. Definitely made a statement when you played it, but in hindsight, wasn't it kinda silly?

Oh yeah, and then when you fight to the very end of the suicide mission, you encounter an oversized human simulacrum as a final boss. Apparently the reavers have decided that you've pissed them off enough and are going to capture humans to make a giant human reaver out of...which could be a cool reveal if done well, but the boss was just ridiculous looking.

If not for the line-level writing, the renegade prompts, and the variance and worldbuilding from the sidequests, this one would be completely in the tank.

Mass Effect 2 rating: 3.5

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Having just replayed it, 5/10.

The ending is not the issue, it sucks but it's not franchise ruining. What is impossible to get over just how terrible the actual setup of the intro is and I cannot take the rest of the game seriously as a result.

It colors the entire experience.

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4

Tuchanka and Rannoch literally carrying this score from the brutal murder the ending does to it. EC can't help the fact that they wrote themselves into a corner and needed a literal DEM to save the day in the end and I suppose you could argue that's more the fault of ME1 and ME2 for making the threat that insurmountable but still, it also can't solve that it just rejects some of the longest running themes of the series until that point and you're forced to comply with that rejection (or with EC, choose Refuse which is basically the Bad End and the game doesn't hide that it thinks that.)

But Tuchanka and Rannoch are so good they float this up a few points by themselves lol.

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7

Yeah, "uneven" is a good way to put it. Definitely has some strong arcs and character moments, but really suffers from things like Kai Leng, Shepard's poorly-written PTSD, and the ending.

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Hoo boy, have I soured on this game!

IMO the central conceit just doesn't work. The stakes have to be super high and everything needs to be serious for the story they're trying to tell here, but that's not why I came to Mass Effect. I wanted to just zoom around in space with my alien friends, there's little room for that here without it coming across as out of place.

The game centres Shepard way too much, to go along with its heightened military propaganda and focus on humans/Earth. I don't really care about Earth, game! The squad is the worst in the series. The Bioware 'romance' feels as clunky and sexless as ever. The ME2 cast is largely tossed aside and wasted, sure some of them get big death moments but that's it. The characters in general are more one dimensional this time, you can pretty much boil everyone down to a basic Good or Bad. Bioware is playing favourites here more than ever before. I get that many fans loves Garrus and Tali but they have absolutely no plot reason for being on the crew lol, especially over some of the ones they chose not to include. Garrus has zero connection to the plot and Tali joins far too late to be of any real impact. Ashley/Kaidan are mediocre, given they have to fill the exact same slot in the plot regardless of their differing personalities. A lot of the minor fanservice in general feels pretty empty like they're ticking boxes, like punching that reporter for being annoying (it will never not be weird to me how this is a beloved running gag!).

The antagonists are also bad this time round. Cerberus are way worse than before, they're just generic human enemies to give us people to shoot, but they also simultaneously try to do the Saren thing again with TIM. They go the easy route with Udina, and it is absolutely ridiculous that the reapers don't have a single line of dialogue in this game after the first two. And then there's Kai Leng, of course. Locking major story beats behind DLC is also terrible (From Ashes, Leviathan).

The galaxy just feels more dry and lifeless this time. Part of this is intentional given the war, sure, but the worlds are no more than a series of shooting galleries with chest-high walls. The Citadel is like the only exception to this. Tuchanka is the best section by far (probably not if you have Wrex and Mordin dead already lol) but I don't know why people love Rannoch, it's incredibly messy. The choices from the past games usually just result in a meaningless set of numbers increasing for 'galactic readiness' or whatever. One potentially fun thing that I always remember: there's a lategame sidequest to help defend the Elcor homeworld, I was looking forward to finally seeing the Elcor and doing something off the beaten path, but the entirety of the sidequest is just a button click as you orbit the planet and then some numbers go up. That's the kind of lifelessness I mean with this entry.

I still think the ending is awful, no reason to get into all that but basically it's just a complete betrayal of the themes of the previous games. Making it all an organics v synthetics thing is... boring at best.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, there is good stuff here but the more distanced I am from this series, the worse it looks to me. They rushed this one out way too fast. 3.5/10

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6.5/10

Ending(s) are botched, but most everything leading up to it is good. I'm also throwing ME2's "Arrival" DLC in here too, since it is ostensibly the reason Shepard is where he is at the beginning of this game, and it sucks big time.

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People love Rannoch because it's awesome

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andylt posted...

The squad is the worst in the series

I mean it's just so clearly not worse than ME1

All the characters that are in your squad in both ME1 and ME3 are superior in 3, James is better than either of the ME1 humans, Javik is terrific, and EDI is great too.

If you laid out all the squadmates in both games the only swap I'd make is to replace James with ME1 Wrex. I take your point about Tali arriving late but she's still way more defined and interesting as a character (rather than as a Quarian/Geth information dispenser) in virtually every ME3 scene.

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9.5 for me, dawg.


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I also do not get the hardcore Rannoch love. Tuchanka for sure, but Rannoch?

Maybe it's just dissapointing because it's just fucking Arizona. That and just going to the generic boring ass moon for the Turians were both heavy blows to me.

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6

Nowhere is the wild variation in writing quality in this series more obvious than ME3. I don't really want to put it under ME1 even though it kind of deserves it. ME1's problem is that it's a lot of potential but not enough execution and here the problem is a waste of that potential. Appropriately, my ratings of this series are all over the place, but I feel all types of ways towards this series.

A 6 feels overly generous, but it also feels correct. The plot to this game is BAD. It's honestly more deserving of a 2 or a 3. It's a standard "rally the troops" plot, except with no real thought put into it. Thematically, the game is a mess. All of the eldritch horror and alien intelligence of the Reapers is basically gone, and they're just big mindless things to shoot now. The whole synthetic vs organics thing comes out of nowhere in a bad way and clashes with themes present in the previous two games and in Mass Effect 3 itself. Mechanically it's also a mess, with it being centered around fighting a hopeless battle against overwhelming forces that should be even MORE hopeless than it is, except they still wanted a win and stoop to deus ex machina stuff to pull it off. Just...a mess.

And the character writing has these insane highs but also these ridiculous lows because they just didn't give a shit. A lot of the returning characters get totally shafted, and honestly I am probably being more generous than I should be here just because none of my favs got trashed. With the "main" cast I thought they did a great job. Love the resolution to Mordin, Wrex, Tali, and Legion's arcs, love to chill with Garrus and Liara too. EDI and Javik are humorous if nothing else. And also there's some humans no one cares about. But man. These characters really deserved a better story. Not even a happier ending, necessarily, but a more coherent one.

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9

Oh Rannoch is absolutely better than Tuchanka but a lot of that comes down to gameplay variety. Tuchanka felt lacking compared to Mass Effect 2 while Rannoch felt on a level with it. Both head and shoulders above the entire rest of this thing either way.



Also after looking at this again Kai Leng may be the worst written character that Bioware have ever done.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

Also after looking at this again Kai Leng may be the worst written character that Bioware have ever done.

...who would even be the competition?

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Never forget that Kai Leng broke into Anderson's apartment and used his toothbrush and ate his cereal just for the heck of it

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Kai leng is bad

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Leonhart4 posted...

Never forget that Kai Leng broke into Anderson's apartment and used his toothbrush and ate his cereal just for the heck of it

Stuff like this and the edgelord email makes it seem like he's supposed to be so-bad-he's-good but he's played pretty straight

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yeah part of me thinks Kai Leng is supposed to be super lame

but then they let him kill Thane and it still angers me to this day

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