My Mass Effect - Spoilers

Over the weekend I finally finished Mass Effect 3.  It took me around 30 hours, which is a pretty good chunk of my free time for the month.  Overall, I am very satisfied with the series and how it ended.  I think I've put at least 100 hours into the trilogy and it was well worth it.

I've accepted the fact that Shepard would die at the end of the series for a while now.  It just made sense in terms of how I played him, a renegade.  He killed a lot of people over the course of 3 games.  Some might even be considered murders.  Either way, he was all about getting the job done.

My Shepard is also partly responsible for the extinction (or close to it) of the Quarians.  I do think they did it to themselves though, and I never liked them anyway.  So yeah, Shepard contributed to a lot of death.  It's only fair that the same fate awaited him.

Then there is this quote from General Patton:

There's only one proper way for a professional soldier to die: the last bullet of the last battle of the last war. 

I think that's very appropriate in this case.  Shepard was all about the war.  He even died once already, but was brought back to finish the fight.   I just can't see my Shepard growing old somewhere.  Going out in a blaze of glory was the only fair option.

In the end, I chose the Synthesis option over destruction and control.  Destryong all synthetic life (including myself and may others) seemed silly.  Trying to control all Synthetic life seemed foolish, and frankly was not very appealing for my character.  So merging organic and synthetic life it was.

It was also the only true way to end the cycle of violence.  Now I've seem some say that this option is really just killing a huge amount of people due to the destruction of the Mass Relay's (starvation etc).   I don't really agree here, since I just created a new type of life.  Who is to say they have the same dietary needs or intelligence, or life span of organic life?

I'm pretty glad it ended this way.  If BioWare had chosen to allow us to fail, or ended it without closure, I would have been pretty miffed.  I didn't play this epic series over the span of several years just to fail or not know what happened.

So where does the Mass Effect universe go from here?  I'm thinking we might see a multi-player / PvP game at some point.  I'd much prefer a new RPG series though.

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Organic RPG

Don't worry, there will not be any spoilers in this post.  Most of my game time lately has been sunk into Mass Effect 3.  I think I am around the 12 hour mark and have been very impressed with the game.  One of the things I like to most is how organic (or natural) everything seems to flow.

One example of this organic feel would be when you overhear two parties talking and you can choose to support one or the other. They just become select-able when you get near them, and you choose the one you want to support.  You say some lines, then they do.  The entire event takes place without any screen change or other jarring methods.

Previous Mass Effect games have assigned you quests by just overhearing conversations and the third installment is no different.  There is no quest dialog boxes or things to click, just listen and you'll be notified that your journal was updated.  It's simple and immersive.

Another aspect I have been impressed with is the seamless transition between cut scenes and the action. It looks amazing, especially if you compare it to other BioWare efforts like Star Wars:  the Old Republic.  I understand why they can't do that in SWTOR (far less control), but it is still pretty neat in ME3.

They have really outdone themselves with removing some of the more obtrusive aspects of a RPG.  It does feel like a movie, but without losing the feeling of control.

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