I suppose it goes without saying (but let it be said anyway) that there will be spoilers here. Read on if you dare.
It's difficult to look back and not feel a bit disappointed with where the series ended up. There was so much promise in the first installment, so much untapped potential. The game ended on a huge climactic moment: the Reapers had made their presence known to the galaxy, and they were coming. Then the second game ended the exact same way. The main plot didn't advance much, but we learned a lot about the galaxy and its inhabitants. We met new, interesting aliens, and we killed them without (and sometimes with) prejudice.
The third game arrived at my door two days ago, and while it is a solid game in its own right, it's not living up to my expectations.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to love about it. It gets so many things right. But it also gets a lot of things wrong, things I didn't see any of the big review sites address with any detail.
The galaxy map mini-game is now meaningful, and requires a bit of thought. You scan solar systems for planets or events and each scan fills a meter at the bottom left a bit more. When the bar fills, Reapers move in from the outside of the system and try to surround you. If they catch you, it's game over. The mechanic works well, and it adds hugely to the feeling that nowhere is safe from the Reapers, not even moving about the galaxy. And the scanning mechanic has a risk/reward feel that just works well. And you're not punished too badly for bringing the Reapers to a system. After completing a mission, you'll be able to return and continue scanning. Until they show up again, that is.
One of the other great improvements is that the Reapers are pretty much everywhere, making the impact of the plot much more immediate and apparent: there is a war being fought, and you are almost always on the front line. On most levels, you'll see a few of them wreaking havoc in the background, and they look amazing. They tower over everything, taking down massive ships, buildings, and moving around quite a bit. Even if it's all scripted, it's very impressive to watch. The war with the Reapers is in your face at all times, and even in the distance, where huge battles may occurring in front of and behind you. The graphics, for the most part, are quite good. Some of the characters faces look a bit odd compared to previous games, but on the whole, it seems improved.
The level that opens the game with the Reaper invasion of Earth is good, but it feels somewhat forced. Everything happens very quickly and then you're on your way off. I get that they wanted you to have the emotional connection, seeing Earth get invaded and what not, but it happens so fast, you barely have time to figure out why the heck you're back on Earth in the first place (if you've not played the final ME2 DLC, you would have no clue). A line of exposition is given to explain it, but again, it's just odd.
It starts to feel better when you see other planets under attack by the Reapers, because it makes the conflict feel huge.
And then, in one moment, the best video game plot of all time is shredded into the wind. Immediately after you leave Earth, you are asked to make a detour to Mars to visit the Prothean archive that allowed humanity to advance so quickly in the first place. You are told that they've discovered the plans for a Prothean super weapon that can supposedly stop the Reapers, and that it's "the only way" because there's no way to beat the Reapers using conventional means. Obviously.
Of course, as the admiral goes on to explain, you'll still need to build up a massive fleet to buy time to deploy/build the super weapon, so you're sent to go do that first by helping other races of the galaxy deal with the Reapers or other various problems.
Yeah, the Reapers, a race of what are essentially technological gods, can be defeated by a weapon that we've had access to all along.
Five years of build up, and they decided to go with the easiest possible plot device to get rid of them. I have yet to get too far into the campaign, probably about 6 hours total so far, but I already know how it's going to end.
I predict the following: you will find out at some point that the super weapon (which is probably some kind of giant, galaxy-wide electromagnetic pulse) works, but it will destroy/disable all technology, putting every race in the galaxy back to the stone age. Probably, the other solution will involve Cerberus and their own version of the weapon which will attempt to take control of the Reapers, but will end up having the same end result as the other option. Either way, all technology dies, and everyone is back to square one.
This ending, while interesting, is something of a cop out. I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it. It's lazy, wrapping up such an epic series with a deus ex machina that is forcefully presented in the first 30 min of the game (and this is the first we've heard of it), but I suppose Bioware wrote themselves into a corner.
Still, I wish the game took more chances. They clearly spent a lot of time refining the shooter aspect of the game, and the polish shows there. Where it doesn't show is almost everywhere else. There is slowdown, texture pop-in in nearly every area, fewer dialogue choices, and less actual choice. Everything is binary. Even the power leveling system, which allows you to somewhat differentiate your powers with branching trees, just doesn't feel like it's providing much of a choice. When it's a choice between .30 faster seconds power cooldown, or 20% damage increase, there's no choice at all. A lot of the choices I made previously don't seem to really matter much in the scheme of things, but that's a different article altogether.
There's more bad stuff:
- Like how the "A" button (I'm playing on 360) does too many things. It's your roll, take cover, move out of cover, pick up items, and talk to people button. Very often, I'll be trying to pick something up and just take cover continually. Sometimes, I'll be trying to vault over cover and instead roll out of it. It's very clunky, and it doesn't match what is trying so hard to copy (Gears of War) quite well enough. Gears got that part right, having a different button for picking up items/guns.
- Shepard's run animation is awful. You notice it right away in the tutorial. It's less noticeable when you have armor on, or are in talk-only sections. This may seem nitpicky, but since you spend the whole came looking at your character run, it stands to reason that you'd make sure it looked at least somewhat realistic.
- The DLC. I won't go into more detail, because it's infuriating. Needless to say, I have a hard time justifying a purchase from EA in the future.
- The plot. It was an interesting choice to take more control from the player in terms of how the conversation is driven and make Shepard a more engaging character. It's too bad it falls flat in most places. Many conversations go on forever without much input from the player. This is a step back. I understand the design choice, but I thought that's what story mode was for.
- The plot. I'm listing this twice because using a deus ex machina is the absolute laziest thing a writer can do to 'fix' a problem. There were any number of things they could have done with the Reapers.
You know how I would have ended it? Shepard spends the whole game gathering a fleet/resources for a big showdown, but he has a secondary mission: to prepare for the potential failure of said big showdown and attempt to set up beacons, much like the Protheans that came before, in order to warn races of the future against the Reaper threat. When the final battle occurs, it ultimately ends poorly for the good guys, and the Reapers win. Yeah, that's right. They win, and then they spend years exterminating/harvesting all life in the galaxy. But that's not the end of the game. In the epilogue, you go around activating human-created beacons, utilizing all of the information and tech you've gathered along the way, leaving it for those who will come after you, hoping that what more you learned in addition to what the Protheans left will give whoever comes after the time/knowledge they need to defeat the Reapers.
Then again, I'm a big fan of cyclical endings.
