First, I would like to apologize for not posting last week. School has been hectic this term to say the least, and the maintenance of this is of a slightly lower priority than graduating from college. Again, sorry. I will try to be more diligent.
Second, I would like to know what you all think of this new format. I think it's a little too long-form, but it will work a little differently when I haven't finished a game before I even start thinking about my reviews. Therefore, I will give it another month before I revise the idea, but I would like to hear what you all have to say.
Ok, so final thoughts on Mass Effect 3. I have to say that I stand by my previous assertions. I think that Bioware has created a fantastic series of games because of their focus on engrossing gameplay and a deep, fascinating universe to explore. They create characters that players can relate to, even if they are a bit two-dimensional. As for Mass Effect 3 itself, all of the above is true. However, they wrote a terrible ending for a game. They tried to make it artistic with an open-ending, and failed miserably. It's a weird, aggravating exercise that they may not be able to fix, but that is for critics like me to complain about and not necessarily for Bioware to fix. There were also issues with DLC that are too complex to really get in to here. I will just say that I don't like DLC and I wish it would go away, but they make too much money off of it for that to happen. Besides those two (kind of big) issues, it's another great entry in a great series of games.
One thing that I forgot to talk about in my review of the story of the game was a little boy. While escaping from Earth, Shepard tries to save a little boy who is hiding in an air-vent. No matter what the player chooses, the boy runs away. Later, he blows the hell up in a ship that is fleeing. Throughout the game, there are dream sequences that show the boy running through the woods. The player then controls Shepard as he/she chases the boy through a grey grove filled with Reaper noises and lazers. Bioware was trying to show Shepard's inner turmoil with this ghost-boy, but its really just a transparent ploy to emotionally involve the player that fails miserably for a couple of reasons. For one, you see the boy for about two seconds before he is blown to smithereens. Call me heartless, but I don't care about a character I see for two seconds no matter how old they are. We have no idea who this kid is other than the fact that he's a kid. Another reason is that he's a damn stupid kid. Everyone knows who Commander Shepard is on Earth, and any child with brains should realize that he/she is going to give you the best chance of survival by far. So now we've got a dumb kid we've barely met haunting Shepard's dreams and giving us no emotional response, so Bioware makes it essentially the same dream every time to make it repetitive and boring as well as ineffective. This is a place where the narrative of Bioware as master storytellers kind of falls apart. Of course, all of this is moot if the Indoctrination Theory is true, but at face value the child is pointless.
All right, I'm finally done with Mass Effect 3. Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments. I'm moving on.
No comments:
Post a Comment