Finished ME3 finally last night. I didn't play it without Extended Cut installed, so I don't know what the end was like originally. I thought the game did a great job making you feel the weight of the story the last couple of hours, but (the ending of course!):
[spoiler]The end first reminded me of a mashup of
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (injured Shephard stumbling about after the blast from the reaper : injured Sgt. Jackson stumbling about after the nuclear explosion) and the original
Deus Ex with the very obvious path A, B, and C. And the paths were so obviously a game construct rather than how I think it might exist if the ME universe were real. "This is the docking port to control the reapers." "This is the conduit you blow up to blow up the reapers." "This is the energy stream you go to to magically make synthectic/organic spliced life."
I would have liked to learn more about what happened to my crew afterwards, but that isn't my biggest complaint. Nor are the various results after you make your choice. The part that bothered me the most was the stupid story The Catalyst told. It tripped over itself badly trying to explain everything. So he sends the reapers to do what they do to protect organic life from the synthetics that organic life creates... by harvesting and destroying organic life? Also, he says that they pick a race to harvest each time. Other than EDI, what synthetic AI did the humans create? And EDI got along just fine with humans that weren't hostile to it. And it was the Quarians that created the Geth, not the humans. Why weren't the Quarians targetted? It would have been better if there was no attempt at an explanation of the reaper's motives.
And what happened to Harbinger? It was like Bioware just ran out of time or something when making the game. They even say one of the reapers coming to Earth to stop Hammer from reaching the beam is Harbinger, but then that's the last you hear about Harbinger at all.[/spoiler]
I don't know... I did like the game, but the ending was just not very satisfying. I also missed some of the RPG elements. They had a couple of more fleshed out side quests but they were nothing special. And the majority of side quests were just item fetches. And not even cool item fetches. Just randomly scan a planet and hey you magically got the Rings of Alune! Now go find the inconsequential NPC on the Citadel that invariably wants that item. It would have at least helped if the Journal updated to reflect the items you had collected.
On the positive side, the action elements were pretty great and the overall story arc was well done. Bioware did a great job building the sense of urgency and importance as the game went on. I also liked the return of credit music done by Faunts, which was very reminiscent of the first game.
Finished the game. For the most part, AWESOME game.
Cerberus Base
[spoiler]
The battle w/ Jack [Subject Zero] was just...so thrown together.
But, it felt like a battle w/ her, a major character from ME2, should've been a lot more epic, interesting, and different than *THAT*.
It felt like...just another battle w/ a Phantom.
[/spoiler]
There was [spoiler]a battle with Jack[/spoiler]? I didn't get that or realize you could trigger such a thing.
