b) I think the game had 2 really big squandered opportunities. The first was drastically curtailing your party and relegating all of your ME2 teammates to secondary status. Gameplay wise it was extremely restrictive in your choices (I never used Ash or James because their skills were just not helpful for my character). From a storytelling perspective it was frustrating to not be able to bring any of them along or continually engage with them after ME2 had done such a great job of fleshing them out and building relationships. Their stories mostly wrapped up pretty well, but why not let them join in on the space adventures too?

The other, I think, is the under use of the Reapers in 3. You only speak to one, and only briefly. In 1 and 2 the Reapers were effective because they were smart, unspeakably powerful, and actively antagonized you. In 3 they are on screen, but act as silent, mostly background forces. They weren’t characters, they were plot devices.

c) I could list a bunch of other problems I had, but really it isn’t any one problem. I think individually I can ignore them for the overall quality of the game (even fucking Kai Leng). The issue I’ve most people have is that all of these smaller faults don’t lead to a satisfying or cathartic narrative end point. As an analogy: A New Hope has a lot of cheesy or clumsy writing, but everyone loves it because it’s fun and engaging all the way through. Sunshine has some incredible visuals and writing, but a lot of people hate the movie because of the plot turn it takes towards the end.

First, I think that the ending has overshadowed a lot about what was good with this game. As I say above, fundamentally, I was satisfied with experience I got out of Mass Effect 3. Virtually everything I want wrapped up was – for me this meant the character arcs. I got quality resolution with Garrus, Ashley, Liara, etc. I can see why some folks (especially Jack and Miranda fans) would be unhappy with some things, but overall the game tied up most of its loose character arcs.

So, yes, the ending was frustrating but overall the experience was sound.

As to your number 3, above: it would be interesting to see the original design document for Mass Effect (has it been leaked?). There was a clear “break” in the design team when lead writer Drew Karpyshyn jumped ship during the development of Mass Effect 2 to be the lead of the Old Republic. In hindsight there seems to be a clearer narrative line from ME2 to ME3 than from the first game to the last. It is obvious that, for the worse AND for the better, that there was a lot of rethinking in the relatively large gap between ME and ME2 (this included redesigning the Protheans). EA is, of course, to blame for some of these issues. Bioware is now required, it seems, to have a major release every 18 months and each title will have to have multi-player. This is obviously going to impact the quality of their games for the worse, at least on the margins. (I’ve basically decided to be “glass half full” as to this issue. for as I’ve said on this blog, DAII was a fine game and ME3 is great, Bioware has not produced an AWFUL game. Ever.)

As for the Reapers, I am glad that they, more or less, left their motivations murky – even after the literal deus ex at the end. The Reapers were simply villains, it was kind of refreshing especially in the context of the amount of nuanced motivation among the rest of the factions in the ME universe. I did however think Shepard “soloing” that Reaper towards the end of the game was stupid – in the extreme. The first showdown with a Reaper was well done but that sequence of Shepard going mano-a-mano with a giant space killer insect was terrible.

I will say that I found the game fairly disappointing, and I’m sad that such a great series ends on such a angry note, rather than a triumph for the team. Rather than nitpick at the large and small problems the game does have, I’ll just note what I think are the three main issues that ME3 runs into.

1) Time – Probably the biggest factor. There were a lot of elements to include, especially when factoring in saves transferred from the previous games. Even with only minor tweaks to the engine, the team was definitely hard pressed to get the game written and programmed in time. Work on SW:TOR and the Mass Effect multiplayer further impeded on the production schedule. As much as I would love to see what they could have done with another year or two though, Bioware isn’t Valve or Blizzard. The production schedule is what it is, and EA was getting that game out one way or another. So in the end you get sparser dialog, glitches, and plot that clearly needed a few more drafts before going into the game.

2) Mechanics – Mass Effect is a 3rd person cover based shooter using two squad mates. In ME1 and 2 this was fine, as smaller special ops style actions fit with the scale of the plot. In ME3 however, the threat is hundreds or thousands of machines the size of space stations that can decimate fleets and cities individually. The game mechanics leave you playing on a scale that simply does not match the sprawling galactic war taking place. Even if they had taken a third crack at tank combat, it would have seemed largely inconsequential when whole fleets are clashing in space. They do their best to make your work seem important, but I don’t know that it ever quite fits (and Shepard can only take down so many reapers alone on foot before the threat is drastically diminished).

3) Planning – This is the most frustrating one. Judging by the way each game in the series played out, it seems clear that the creative team did not have a firm idea of where each part of the trilogy would go, or what the secret of the Reapers was. ME2 never follows through with the “race to prepare the galaxy” notion that ME1 set up as the next step, and ME3 introduces a number of concepts out of nowhere, many of which seem to clash with what we saw of the Reapers in the first two games. Whether it was personnel changes, changing their mind about what they wanted, or just a lack of development of the backstory and canon, the universe ends up feeling too variable. Sovereign’s claim that the Reapers’ motivations were unfathomable loses much of its narrative strength when you realize it simply meant they hadn’t figured out what the motivations were yet. Stories with well developed lore bibles are almost always going to be more compelling and coherent than those that are made up as they go along.

I’m going to let you in on a secret, this post is a joke. I don’t actually hate BGII or think it is an awful game. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve played the game (to various states of completion) at least a dozen or more times – in fact I played through BGI & BGII as recently as this summer. BGII is my gold standard for Western RPGs. I am more than a little obsessed with Bioware games, in general.

It is good that you bring up my opinion of Dragon Age II in your comment, for this post is actually (and strangely) about that game. It was written in a mental state shaped by my reading of too much blogging and Kotaku commenting about that misbegotten game. I felt that the internets discourse on DAII had reached the point of criminal insanity. (It has actually gotten worse, I feel since September) As I note in my post about Dragon Age, I feel that the DAII has flaws but they aren’t fatal.

What I thought I would do with this post is suggest that some of the “problems” that your average drunk Kotaku commenter harps on and on about with DAII are reoccurring issues in *all* Bioware games. I could have picked, say, KOTOR but decided my point would be made best by going after the sacred cow – BGII.

So, I took some minor flaws present in BGII (and all Bioware games) and exaggerated them out of all proportion to make my point. Perhaps, I did not make the parody in this post clear enough and for that I apologize.

I really like this post and it always makes me smile when I re-read it.

But again, thanks for commenting! I hope you come back when I post more content here (which should be coming shortly!).

Choices you’ve made in BG1: Yes, there are lot of choices you’ve made in BG1 that BG2 ignored. However, they are minor things. Xzar’s return is no more than a simple joke. To show that this is stll the same game in different time span. And perhaps to hint, there are many ways for people to come back from death — like when you use ressurection spells on your party memebers. As for Minsc, Jaheira, Imoen, as soon as you are out of Irenicus’s dungeon, you don’t need to have them in party anymore. No one forced you to take them around. There are plenty of other wonderful NPCs to choose from or you can solo if you’d like. This is not a valid complaints.

Choices you’ve made in BG2: You were pretty forgiving about DA2, so why are you so harsh on BG2? You say it doesn’t make any difference whether you choose between shadow thieves or vampires. Well, same goes in DA2. Whether you’ve chosen to side with Templars or mages, you still end up fighting with them both. Worse, in DA2 that happens regularly (e.g. no matter what you do with Grace and mages, you end up killing them in “Best served cold” quest anyway). It happens once in BG2 and you make it sound like the whole game ignores choices you’ve made.

Reused area/tile set: Have you really played BG2? Have you finished the game? The game covers vast area of lands, and they all have unique drawings/landscape. One of the things BG2 is known for is, beautiful art work of each different area. And, again, you think DA2 is a decent game, and it has more recycled area than any other game I’ve ever played/known. And yet you didn’t complain about that point in your review for DA2. The whole “game is rushed” is not good enough excuse.

Limited exploration option: Duh. This game was never meant to be an open end game. It was suppose to be linear as it is story based, and it delievers it so beautifully. Don’t look for things that game didn’t offer in first place.

The game is idiot proof: What, so you are saying technology is for idiots? It was just simple evolution of game. I didn’t see you complaining about that in DA/DA2. Whenever you pick up a quest in DA/DA2, it directs you where to go with arrow on the map. Seriously, if you are going to complain, try coming up with something more sensible.

Romance over plot: The game doesn’t force you to have romance. You have a lot of chance to tell your NPCs, you are not interested. Your romance only adds few more side-quests, it doesn’t affect main plots in major way. If anything, the choices you make for your romance options, does have consequences. This denies your claim of “BG2 has no real consequences”. If you follow romance with an NPC, Bohdi abduct your lover and you have to fight to get your lover back. Again, I didn’t see you complaining about romance in both DA/DA2. DA2 was far more worse if you wanted to complain about romance. In DA1, out of 8 possible companions, 4 of them were romanceable regardsless of your Warden’s gender. In DA2, out of possible 6 companions, 4 of them were romanceable since all of them are bisexual. In BG2, out of possible 16/17(ToB) companions, only 3 of them were romanceable for males and only 1 romanceable for female protagonist. So I don’t see how this is valid complaints.

I’m not saying BG2 is a perfect game — there are never a game or product that have no flaws. But by far, BG2 is greatest of all RPGs, and to see someone shut their eyes and try not to see good side of them makes me feel sorry for them.

The only bright spot is Witcher 2. That game is perfect. No flaws.