Mass Effect 3 (2012)

So I completed Bioware’s latest epic after playing it more or less non-stop for 48 hours. And it’s left me feeling, well, depressed quite frankly. Put simply it’s one of the most amazing gaming experiences ever; that unfortunately seems to fall spectacularly and completely inexplicably at the last hurdle. This may well be deliberate but I’ll get to that. The game allows you to port your character from Mass Effect 2 and continue their journey, choices and all. And the game seems really well written, the dialogue is excellent, the conclusions to problems that have been brewing since the first all seem well resolved or rather give you the chance to resolve them should you wish. Characters from both of the first two instalments are all seamlessly written into the plot somehow or other. For better or worse I might add since not all of them have happy endings but given the dark tone of this third game, and it is desperately bleak, the writing seemed perfect.

The overall atmosphere of the game is one of disquieting desperation. The first two games had been building to it, but then all of a sudden here it is – a massive galactic war against a superior species hell bent on the annihilation of all ‘organics’. The opening scenes show the beginning of the battle for Earth, a battle already hopelessly lost in a matter of minutes; this is where you come in. In order to defeat the Reapers you must unite the squabbling, scattered and scared races of the galaxy against their common foe. To this end ME3 plays in many ways like ME2 except instead of recruiting individuals, you’re recruiting entire civilisations to join the fight. However they’re all reluctant to commit forces unless they can resolve varying issues. In this way, the options are open for you to solve the Qurian / Geth situation which has also ignited into a side-war, the Krogan wont join you unless you cure the genophage, the Salarians wont join you if you do, the Turians wont join you unless you can relieve the military pressure against their own homeworld. And so the number of missions you must complete in order to amass an effective military fleet is substantial. There are also a number of side quests and survey missions that all allow you to increase your effective military strength.

The action is excellent, improving slightly on its predecessors and offering a diverse array of new Reaper and Cerberus enemies, some of which are an absolute nightmare to kill. The combat experience is significantly harder than the previous game, I died aplenty in this instalment. Some of the foes you must face down are seemingly impervious to anything but vast amounts of small arms fire. There are also just finely crafted details in the game that add to the overall sense of despair, conversations you overhear, the humour – the pissing contest between Garrus and Vega is just hilarious. But they’re really minor details that could be easily overlooked – such is the craftsmanship of this game. The cutscenes are epic – saving the Krogan homeworld from a Reaper, the Galactic fleet you’ve spent the entire game amassing finally assaulting Earth for the final battle. In the final Battle of London, the game really hits home how badly the galactic alliance is losing the war and so far so good. But then you get to the end…

And I honestly can’t grasp how you manage to fuck up an ending so badly but Bioware somehow managed it. Angry fans are storming the gates across the Internet with around 98% of fans extremely dissatisfied with the ending. This is I think an example of a developer blowing it big time. The non sequitur is so out of place from what came before that I feel deeply unsatisfied, even betrayed by it. It is such a profound departure that some people are now promoting the idea that it was wrong *on purpose* because it was all a hallucination. But then the more I think about it, the more that idea actually has some pull. If that was actually true and Bioware intends to continue the story afterward via DLC then they have probably created one of the most genius allegorical dream sequences in the history of gaming. But it’s also quite likely that they just straight clusterfucked it.

The gripes I had with this game (texture resolution, clunky combat control) were minor compared to the superior story, graphics, music and it is better than the last 2 and I really did enjoy it but the ending just kills the whole trilogy. I honestly couldn’t recommend this series of games to anyone based on the strength of it. So that would be what you call an epic fail.