I’m one of those unhappy gamers (like many, many, many others) but until this video, I didn’t know why. It’s a bit hidden in the message but ultimately, it boils down to: ME 3 isn’t an RPG. It’s an ego shooter.
The main reason is that your decisions in the game don’t count. Just like Bioware ignoring the outrage of gamers, whatever you do in the game has no consequences whatsoever: After the game, everyone is dead (or will soon be dead for lack of food), the galaxy is devastated, the citadel is gone (no place to meet anymore, so no galactic council), no travel between civilizations, the fleets who came to protect Earth are now stranded – a planet pummeled by the reapers for months. Good luck finding anything there but death.
And that’s why it’s not an RPG. In an RPG (and ME 1 and 2), Shepard was my character. I made decisions and my decisions mattered. In ME3, when the dialog options come up (if they come up at all), I often just get two ways to say the same thing. There is no choice anymore. Oh yes, I can decide to trick the Krogans or the Salarians in the early game. But in the end, all is moot.
A lot of effort went into making the fights harder. That worked; I was getting killed so often that I finally gave up on the game. But in ME2, my decisions mattered. I was Shepard. In ME3, I was just a remote controlled drone of the EA’s marketing department (“Give us all your money!”).
Tagged: Bioware, Mass Effect 3
