Summary

Review

I think Mass Effect 3 has by far the weakest story of the 3. I don't think that's a particularly revelatory observation. In fact, I don't even really wanna go into the ending, because at a point what else is there to even say? So instead, I want to focus on why I think the overall story of 3 is not as good as 2 or 1.

This gets back to what I said in the review of ME2. Far and away the strongest element of Mass Effect is the hanging out and futzing around with interesting facades of people. Any time you're shying away from that, you're choosing to not stand on your best foot. The actual structure of ME3 is, of course, the war. And that's all nice and everything. But what the war doesn't allow you is chances to sit and talk with your little space friends. You do that yes, but every encounter is presaged with the required "Man, this war is really shit Shepard. I hate it, but I guess we gotta hit the old dusty trail and get back out there, huh?" They're always leading you back to the plot and away from them. It's frustrating. It completely misses the point. I get it, I understand. That's what's happening. We gotta defeat the reapers. But it's a self-made trap. We've written ourselves into a situation where players aren't given the opportunity to do the thing that the series is best at. It's why Citadel is so beloved. It's the finale that people wanted. All their little space friends to come together and have fun.

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