I am disappointed. :(
1. Small side quests are picked up while walking around and hearing somebody talk about some item they need. Guess what, you go find that item and bring it to them. That little bit of sidequesting you actually get is pathetic. I've done only one so far, but it came down to shooting a bunch of guys in a few rooms, stretching out maybe 100-200 m
2. :/
2. The game is almost completely linear. You barely even have an illusion of any kind of open-endedness.
3. Almost no exploration of planets. At least in ME2 you could go check most planets for resources. Now you spend maybe a minute in a solar system using some scanner that attracts reapers if you use it too much and then they chase you off. Still better than nothing. At least they made the annoying probing minigame bearable that way as it goes down quickly and you don't have to spend 5 minutes each time probing a planet.
4. Dialogues are disjointed. When people talk, often it seems that they are not in a dialogue but each one of them is in a monologue, especially when trying to get to know your crew members.
I apologized to Wrex for destroying the possibly genophage cure from that salarian doctor, but there was no emotion from Shepard. It was just a robotic apology. It didn't seem to mean anything.

5. Dialogue choices are rare. In a conversation, maybe you have one of two times pop something up to gain some paragon/renegade points. It seems more like a movie than a game. Massive Fail. Mass Fail.
6. The whole time you're supposed to do something constructive against the reaper threat, but all the quests seem forced since they have almost nothing to do with the main quest. It's like "We have to do XYZ to save the galaxy. But NO! That guy won't help us until we do him some stupid favor first! Yes, the galaxy is at war and the more time we waste, the reapers kill more millions of people. But NO! It's ok! Because this guy forgot his fucking pants on that moon and he won't help us until we get them." :/
But not all is bad. They at least made the skills simpler to upgrade and added some choices. Weapons can be upgraded simpler as well and now you have "weight" which determines how many weapons you can carry around. If you go over that weight (which you actually can do), it increases the time required for your skills to recharge. And you don't have to pay attention to every single bullet you're firing so you don't run out of ammo like in ME2. But apart from that no actual improvements. Battle is still the same. It was good, but one would expect some additions, some changes, something interesting and new. :/
What I mentioned under #6 shows how stupid politicians are. The reapers are tearing apart the galaxy and all their care about is yet again getting something they want to gain some sort of advantage (e.g. Wrex which I was very disappointed in).
All in all: weak. I did expect that they would screw up some things with ME3 like they did with ME2, but in all honesty, I didn't expect this. If ME1 was 100, ME2 was 85, then ME3 is like 40. They stripped away all the good stuff and left us with some casual crap hybrid that's barely enjoyable. :( I'd even go as far to compare it to Duke Nukem Forever. It was ok, but meh. ME3 is like that. It's ok (especially if you want to see how the story plays out), but it's meh. Even the characters lost their edge. I loved in ME2 how Garrus became much more badass than he was in ME1, but in ME3 he's meh, just no edge. :/
I recommend it to everybody who's played ME1 and ME2 and has a save from ME2 (possibly imported from ME1 as well). But for the rest, don't play it. You won't enjoy it.
EDIT: While talking with a colleague from work at lunch, he mentioned that the main writer left after ME2 and they hired some Hollywood jerk instead. It shows. :/
All I keep hearing from fans is the ending.
Yeah, my colleague mentioned something about the ending. But I told him to not spoil it for me. xD
I've kept playing today a bit more. It does get a bit better later on. The dialogues with the crewmembers are alright. And there are a few cool moments in battle (e.g. when you mount an Atlas mech and rain hell on Cerberus). But I still stand by what I said. It's not closely as good as ME1 (or ME2 for that matter). Also, I find it annoying that the quests don't have a journal/status update. :/ It's kinda hard to keep track of the quests that way.
The ending!
MODIFICATION: As I hear it, there have been better endings in the past.
Alright, I got to the end. Yes, the ending is not that special, but I like it because it's not expected (I unlocked the third, special choice) and it's not so cliche. Yes, it is anti-climatic and it doesn't give you that feeling of accomplishment for playing through 3 games, hoarding together probably over 100 hours of gameplay. Though, I wouldn't change it. Considering the given circumstances, I don't think much more could be done with it, because this ending kinda does make the most sense.
Also:
Just before you take on the last mission to Earth, you can check on Normandy's crew and if you go to the room with the cannons where Garrus often hangs around, you will encounter Garrus and Tali almost making out (though they aren't as Tali can't take her helmet off obviously) and they are all like "yeah, so, yeah, like, yeah". xD I totally should have seen that one coming. The way they always tease each other, I totally should have seen it coming.
the only good thing about ME3 is the multiplayer i think. I find it fun if you are playing with a team that knows what they are doing.
just so of anyone has the 360 version and would like to play, look me up the gamer tag is Spoofuss
I'll have to do that sometime. My dad bought ME3 for the Xbox a few days ago, I really hadn't planned on playing but playing it with some people might be fun.
I thought the game was amazing. Though, I thought the ending was bad(like,
very bad) at first, but then I found discussions of the indoctrination theory on the internet. Honestly? If you take that into account, the ending makes perfect sense, as it leaves room for more to be done in say, a future DLC.
Best video explaining the theory yet: ShowHide http://www.youtube.com/v/ythY_GkEBck
I agree, this was very interesting. But they don't explain why there are 2 endings (blue/red) and the 3rd ending (green) is only added if you have enough war assets.
Well, what you have done throughout the game could affect your indoctrination(like acquired war assets), and then bring forth another ending choice. At least, that's what I believe.
Still, though, it seems the only paragon ending is the "renegade" ending. I am going to have to replay the game, though, and get a lot more war assets so my Shepard can live at the end of the red ending. Because I feel for certain, since Bioware is now going to officially address the ending, they are well-aware of this theory, and will take it into account if they haven't been going with it since the game's planning/or whatever.
I choose the third ending and it actually seemed to me that my squadmates were happy at the end of everything. Joker crashed with the Normandy on some idyllic planet and went out with EDI. They looked happy. I don't think his bone disease persisted as he was obviously a synthetic being now. And there were other squadmates as well.
Apparently you need 4000+ war assets for Shepard to survive. I think I had 3700+ and I couldn't get more. You can only get more if you play online or if you did in ME1 and ME2 certain things that allowed you to actually get up to 4000. It's something like a perfect playthrough. Also, I totally agree with the weird facts at the every end. How did Anderson get there before Shepard, how was he able to get there from another position if there was only one path, why did Shepard bleed on his arm when Anderson died, etc.
You may be right about the assets thing. If you had more assets, you may be more useful to the reapers if they just use that influence to massively corrupt everything instead of just being killed and that they had to do it all themselves. This would also explain why Shepard wasn't actually killed against all odds while he was actually getting to the beam and so on.
I already had a suspicion that Shepard may had been exposed to indoctrination when he had first contact with Sovereign. But the game didn't hint at that much further, at least not in obvious ways. Also, I was always being renegade about stopping the reapers. I played as paragon, but when it came to the reapers and Saren, it was always renegade style. Those fuckers had to be stopped at all costs.
While your squadmates look like they're happy, you have to take into account that none of that may even be happening at all. When you're making your last run to the beam that will take you to the Citadel, you and everyone else gets blasted by Harbinger. Now, if I remember correctly(and a lot of people point it out, so I find it safe to believe), whoever was in your squad prior to getting blasted by Harbinger are the ones who step out of the Normandy on the planet in the cutscene. How could your squad have gotten into the Normandy so quickly, when they no doubt would have been just as torn up as you(or worse. and take into account they were completely undamaged in the ending scene)? Yet, lo and behold, there they are. And since Shepard wakes in the rubble only if you have enough war assets, and you pick the "renegade" ending, it must mean Shepard won in the struggle of being indoctrinated since he didn't pick the blue or green endings, which would be in the Reaper's favor since they live in either. It seems as though, ever since being blasted, he was in a dream state of sorts. I know the video covered a lot of this, but I just decided "why not" and typed a lot out, anyways. xD
But yes, your suspicion was just. There is definitely something going on here, and I just have a striking feeling it's indoctrination; I mean, it all just fits together too good to not be.
And as for me, I tried to be paragon with Saren as possible, in hopes he actually could join my side. But, I quickly found out that's not possible, and led him to kill himself. D:
Yeah, it makes sense. But that would only mean that Shepard resisted indoctrination, not that the reapers were actually destroyed since he never got on the Citadel. What do you think? Maybe in the end the war assets actually were the whole point of it and with enough war assets the galaxy would be able to defeat the reapers after all. Then all would fit together.
That waking up in the rubble definitely hints at a high possibility of indoctrination and that the last part was just a dream.
Shit, now I want to do that last part of the game again just to pick the renegade ending. But I don't have enough assets so I wouldn't get the proper ending anyway. There's no way I'll play through ME1, ME2 and ME3 again in 100+ hours just to see that ending, though. xD
I was being paragon with him (I also thought I could gain him as an ally), but I was always being renegade with others when it came to the topic Saren. "We have to stop Saren at all costs!" I also got him to shoot himself in the end. Also, I sacrificed the council for being such dicks. Stupid politicians. xD
Yes, I believe just that. The war assets are going to be major in whatever Bioware has planned, for sure. And I would recommend at least editing your ME2 save with a save editor, to edit values to your liking, and importing it back into ME3(don't worry about editing the ME1 save, if you use Gibbed's save editor, you can edit choices you made in ME1 inside of your ME2 save, if I remember correctly), as in my opinion, the red ending is definitely the way to go. And I've also read about some people getting enough war assets for Shepard to live without ever touching multiplayer, so you should be fine in that respect.
Lol, good ol' Saren. And yes, I sacrificed the council, as well; I was fed up with them towards the end of the game.
Also, did you kill Udina in ME3? Or did you let Kaiden/Ashley kill him? I couldn't resist taking the shot myself, as I hated that guy.
Or, lord forbid... did you end up killing Kaiden/Ashley? D:
No, I convinced Ashley that I'm the good guy. I killed Udina before he was able to kill the council member. I never liked him. He was a typical politician and always kind of suspicious.
Ah, good call. Yeah, he always was a bit fishy, and a dick to boot.
What ended up happening for you on Rannoch? Did you get the Geth and kill off the Quarians, or the other way around? Or, mayhap, did you get them to make peace and acquire them both as war assets? That's what happened for me, and I am glad it did; I love the Geth and Quarians.
I first wanted to prevent Legion from using reaper code, but I couldn't bring myself to do it so I picked the renegade choice "ah, to hell with, do it" when I was asked the second time and warned the quarion fleet right after. They made peace in the end. I got more quarion assets because I deleted the heretics in ME2. I looked it up on the Internet and they say that if you deleted them, you get more quarion and it you don't, you get more geth assets. Lol, I almost shed tears when I was talking to Tali how the geth are helping them and how they could get rid of their suits.
The outcome was indeed a good one. I am just sad that, either way, Legion dies. Though, it was necessarily in the end, as he needed to upload his personality for all the Geth, and what better to use than his? While on this subject, I really enjoyed the mission where you're going through the Geth server; it's really reminiscent of the Overlord DLC from Mass Effect 2, and provides a good insight on the history of the Geth.
I was about to cry after that first memory I witnessed, with the Geth on the chair asking "What did this unit do wrong?" with the confused tone of voice. Hell, the two Quarians that were going to kill it even felt a little bad, and then they decided to mute its voice before the act; seemed as though they knew what they were doing was wrong.
Yeah. I liked the geth server mission as well, but it's too long. You're doing the same thing for way too long. It should have taken 10-15 minutes max.
I will admit, it was a bit long. but regardless, it was definitely one of the more unique missions in the game.
When you met the Rachni Queen again, did you kill her or let her live? Or, did you kill her in the first game, and meet the one created by the Reapers and kill/let that one live? As for me, I let her live in the first game, so I sure wasn't going to kill her in the third game.
Same here. I let her live twice.
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@the person who reported Fut's post (yes, we know who you are :shifty:): You have to admit, it was clever since we were combo-ing real spoilers. That's why I decided to leave it.
I will never admit it was clever. >8(
Wise choice letting her live. I feel, when Bioware releases the Director's Cut DLC(which is going to be free, yay!), there will be a good outcome for doing so in the epilogues. At least, I hope.