And Now, Something Personal

Now that I've established the need for unhappy ME fans to remain civil in this situation... I would like to give my own personal opinion on the game.

By and large, Mass Effect 3 is an awesome game. The graphics are gorgeous, the music is phenomenal, and the characters are all reasonably believable. I love the reintroduction of banter between your teammates (banter, how I missed thee!) and the fact that your crew members now interact with one another and aren't simply confined to one location on the ship? Oh, that made me squeal like a gleeful little schoolgirl. Some of those moments are just pure gold.

And their interactions with your Shepard? It was so genuine. There were parts that honestly brought tears to my eyes.

But... the game isn't without its flaws.

Don't get me wrong, no game is perfect. But some of this stuff is absolutely, mind-bogglingly bad. Like, for example:

1. The journal system. What was once a fairly organized, useful feature for keeping track of side missions has become an utterly convoluted, disorganized mess. Yeah, you have a list of missions for you to do, and even some marked "priority," but it's such a mess that it's stupidly easy to miss out on important time-sensitive missions, causing them to expire when you hit important plot points and thus costing you important resources. It's also utterly useless when you need to go to find most "fetch quest" items, or where and who you need to take said recovered items to, because it doesn't tell you.

Seriously. The journal structure from ME2 worked just fine - why change it?

2. The map system. Another thing that's lost at least some of its functionality. Sure, it looks prettier, but... Function over form, guys. Function over form.

3. MOTION BLUR. Oh my god, motion blur - and the accompanying motion sickness. Yeah, I get it from a stylistic point of view, but it really should be an "opt in" feature, not an "opt out," if for no other reason than the crippling lag it tends to cause.

4. The scrapping of the classical Paragon/Renegade system for that patently ridiculous "Reputation" meter, and the directly-related paring-down and muddling-up of your dialogue choices (which give you either one extreme or another, neither of which tends to be very useful.)

5. Angst for the sake of angst. Attention, BioWare: gratuitous character death does not good storytelling make. When character deaths are done solely for the purpose of character death, they quickly lose their impact and become mundane. Also, when you spend entire missions to save characters only to have them die a pointless death at the last minute (see: Lieutenant Victus) it just becomes gratingly frustrating. It makes you not want to keep playing when everything - everything - is made out to be completely hopeless.

There's a glaring difference between "You can't save them all," and "You can't save anyone," BioWare. You seem to have missed that distinction.

Which brings me to...

6. That thing. You know, that thing that's being talked about?

And by "that thing," I mean "the end."

Now, I could go on a long, long rant about the quality of the last half hour. I really could - ask anyone who knows me. I could rant for pages about the ending of Mass Effect 3.

But I'll save you the novel and just go with three small words.

The ending sucked.

I know you're probably going to counter with "But there were multiple endings!" The truth is, no, there weren't. There was one stock ending with a few very minor changes.

Essentially, when you go to use the gratuitous Deus Ex Machina (which shows up out of nowhere, with precious little in the way of a silly little thing called "explanation") you're confronted by the equally-gratuitous Reaper God or whatever it is, and it proceeds to give you:

a.) a shoddy explanation for the Reapers (they are synthetics created to... kill off organic life in order to "protect" organic life from synthetic life that would inevitably turn on it and wipe it out,) and,

b.) Three different flavors of "destroy galactic civilization." They are as follows.

- Control: You take control of the Reapers and make them leave. The relays then explode with blue energy, leaving everyone more or less stranded where they are.
- Merge: You (forcibly) merge organic and synthetic life, effectively halting evolution. The Reapers leave, and the relays explode with green energy, leaving everyone more or less stranded where they are. . The Citadel explodes, too.
- Destroy: You destroy the Reapers - and all other synthetic life in the galaxy, including EDI and the geth - and potentially destroy all advanced tech in the galaxy. The relays explode with red energy, leaving everyone more or less stranded where they are. The Citadel explodes, too.

I'm not even going to get into the truly epic amounts of Fridge Horror brought on by the destruction of the relays - anyone with even slightly-below-average intelligence can pick it out by putting just a little bit of thought into it.

I will, however, ask: Just what the hell was up with that ending?

Actually...you know what? I'll just sum up all of my problems with the ending thusly:

- Plot holes big enough to fly a Reaper through
- Random Deus Ex Machina
- Glowy Reaper God
- Shepard is OOC
- The Normandy crew is OOC
- None of our choices matter
- Virtually nothing from the entirely of the past two games matters
- All the time you spent gathering War Assets is more or less meaningless
- Fridge Horror

and

- Mountain Dew destroys galactic civilization.

And there you have it. My (admittedly "not nearly as thorough as I'd like it to be") take on the drawbacks of Mass Effect 3.

20. On Unhappiness and Civility - the ME3 Controversy

All right, I'm going to skip the small talk and get straight to business here.

It's been a week since the release of Mass Effect 3, the long-awaited conclusion to the single most epic sci-fi video game trilogy in gaming history - and also, quite possibly, the biggest let-down dealt to fans of any sci-fi franchise since Transformers: Dark Of the Moon.

Many fans have been left with a bad taste in our mouths after finishing the game, or even simply visiting YouTube and having it spoiled for us, and it's completely understandable. After the last two games' hyping of the importance of choice, and painting a hopeful picture of overcoming seemingly-insurmountable odds as long as everyone works together... To be ruthlessly railroaded into three ever-so-slightly different flavors of "destroy the galaxy" with no option to argue the point is a vicious slap to the face of any loyal fan. Top it off with being lied to - repeatedly - by the Powers That Be, and you have a real recipe for disaster.

But some disgruntled fans are taking it too far.

Yes, we're unhappy. A lot of us are very unhappy. But some of us are making it personal - verbally attacking and abusing BioWare staff, fans who hold a differing opinion on the game, and even each other.

This is absolutely unacceptable. It is childish, counterproductive, and does absolutely nothing to challenge the perception of us as "entitled, whiny brats." So, to every so-called fan who is engaging in such behavior, I have this to say:

Grow the hell up.

Every time you send an abusive message to a BioWare staff member, you are ensuring that they continue to refuse to take us seriously. Every time you leave an inflammatory comment on a media article, you are ensuring that the general public's opinion of us grows more and more negative. Every time you attack, harass, and abuse fellow fans of the franchise, you only make the fandom as a whole more resistant to hearing us out. By continuing to act in the inflammatory, hateful manner you've been demonstrating, you're doing more damage to the community than any nonsensical, tacked-on game ending ever could.

If we, as a sector of the fan community, want to be taken seriously, we need to put a stop to this destructive, cannibalistic behavior. It is quite possible - stupidly easy, even - to express our unhappiness and dissatisfaction without behaving in a manner that allows big-name gaming sites like Kotaku to paint us all out to be raving lunatics.

So come on, guys, let's be the collective better man here. Knock off the personal attacks and invective - leave that to the people putting us down, and be better than them. It's really not that hard, I promise.

Tell Congress To Undo The NDAA, Ban Indefinite Military Detention Of Americans

From DemandProgress.org:

President Obama just signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law despite startling provisions that will allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens. It's a travesty, defying basic principles of justice and due process in perhaps the most extreme respect our nation has ever seen.

Thankfully, several lawmakers are keeping up the fight. Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced legislation to undo these provisions of the NDAA, in the form of the Due Process Guarantee Act. We need to urge other Senators to support it.

The Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011 amends the Non-Detention Act of 1971 by providing that a Congressional authorization for the use of military force does not authorize the indefinite detention—without charge or trial—of U.S. citizens who are apprehended domestically.

If there's enough of a public outcry, we have a real chance of making this happen: More than 40 senators voted against the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA -- and that was before the media and general public caught on to what was happening. Please urge your Senators to remedy this terrible wrong.

Just fill out the form at right HERE to urge your lawmakers to block the indefinite detention of Americans.