The Top Five Things in Mass Effect 3

First, let me begin with a sincere apology to all the fine honeys who read this blog and don't play Mass Effect. You ladies have really missed out. I'll tell you what, I'll make it up to you by talking about the Hunger Games next and how that girl you hated in high school is exactly like Clove. But for now, we're going to talk more about interstellar politics, spaceships, aliens, guns, and explosions. Hurray!

Like I alluded to yesterday, the best way for me to handle Mass Effect 3 is to break it up into composite parts. I know it can be hard to tell, but I really like this game. If you're the type of person who puts stock into numbers, I'd give it 4.75 English Muffins out of 5. Someone burned a bit of the last muffin, but you can scrape off the black stuff and still enjoy its nooks and crannies. I feel the real measure of a game is talking about the things you liked and the things you didn't like. It gives a clearer picture of what people would like about the game than just a raw score and rambling.

5. Squadmate Closure OR They Should Call It Terminus Graffiti

Going into Mass Effect 3, I thought it would be easy to release a revised "Top Whatever Squadmates". The wheat would be separated from the chaff and it would confirm my every complaint about the poorly written characters. But I wasn't permitted to be that lazy. With the exception of Jacob Taylor (more on that later), every other squadmate had significant and meaningful closure to their story. More than that, it also improved my opinion of every non-Jacob character. Best of all, their involvement in the story never felt cliche or forced, but rather an organic growth from the story.

Jack became an effective & caring teacher for biotic teenagers, rather than a selfish nihilist. As a non-Jacob, she saw growth as a character. Is this what you'd call a "character arc"? It feels good!

No one did anything that felt out of character or that looked like three separate kinds of impossible. Not everyone survived, but not everyone died either. It honestly kept you guessing. The ones who did die died in an awesome way, which is how characters we care about should die. No one wants to see Darth Vader die from a complication in his breathing machine. They want to see him die from a complication in his breathing machine, caused by Force Lightning after he threw the Emperor off the Death Star!

The real genius of this set-up is the squadmates' stories are interwoven into side quests and other areas of otherwise non-essential importance. Each person is in a believable scenario, and it's just as believable that Shepard would run into them there. The side quest would still make sense if the former teammate wasn't there, but the end result wouldn't be as good. It rewards your hard work for keeping people alive (except Jacob). Honestly, I could do a whole separate update on just how great each and every one of these moments was (and I just might). For now, it's enough to say that these quests which were pretty boring in prior Mass Effect games provided an absolute roller coaster of emotions. I'm going to close this entry out with the best moment from the Former Squadmate Quests: The Conclusion to Grunt's Investigation of the Rachni.


4.The Search & Rescue system

In a vacuum, the Search & Rescue system is merely adequate.  But this review is not in a vacuum, it's in the context of all other Mass Effect games (even the terrible iOS game). The absolute worst non-Kaidan, non-Jacob part of every Mass Effect game has been gathering resources. In Mass Effect, it revolved around methodically clicking on every planet and/or asteroid and hoping the game asked you to press A a second time. If you were real fortunate, you'd have to go down to the surface on the Mako and navigate the seemingly randomly generated terrain to get to spare resources. God help you if it's not immediately clear if you should go up the side of the hill in your ATV.

I'm 73% sure I can go the rest of the way up!

 In Mass Effect 2, they decided the solution would be to force you to meticulously scan every square inch of every planet from space, hunting for four different kinds of resource in the hundreds of thousands of... um... whatever the standard unit for video games is. I don't have to say anything about this, the sheer slowness of the scanning and silliness of the concept has been a running joke on the internet for two years now.


In Mass Effect 3, instead of hunting for resources, Shepard now uses the Normandy's stealth engines to perform interstellar search and rescue for vital war assets (think way ward capital ships, stranded spec ops teams, etc.) in Reaper-space. This is balanced against the fact that scanning for resources draws the attention of the Reapers, who will destroy you if they catch you. This gives the entire affair a feeling of tension prior resource gathering mini-games lack. This does have the unintended consequence of making you outrun the Reapers often, which undermines them as a threat. But even though it's not perfect, the fact that resource gathering is no longer the worst part of Mass Effect is a minor miracle.




3. Conrad Verner

They say the best jokes are the ones that build up to their punchline. And Conrad Verner's appearance in Mass Effect 3 is the ultimate punchline. Ever since his appearance in Mass Effect, Verner has been Shepard's #1 fan. He's overenthusiastic and in no way cut out for life as a Spectre.  Every single thing he says in ME3 is some form of payoff or inside joke for long standing fans of the series. But even for the uninitiated, the sheer brilliance of this dialogue can't be missed.


Conrad: I might be able to help you now with... whatever you're doing now that isn't Cerberus.

Shepard: (annoyed)Conrad, I'm building an ancient, Prothean, dark energy device to stop the Reapers. Can you help help with that?

Conrad: Well, I did right my doctoral dissertation on xenotechnology and dark energy integration.

Shepard: ...Really?


Then that's followed up with the most rigorous test of minor side quests from Mass Effect 1. First, he calls an obscure character from Feros (a quest world in the first game), then he needs the translations of some asari tablets you arbitrarily had to collect 20 of in the first game, and finally he needs a purchasing license from the first game. In the span of 30 seconds, Conrad dug up the most obscure parts of Mass Effect and made them all pay off.



Best of all, at the conclusion of his quest, he's saved by Jenna, a girl from C-Sec you helped out before you finished the Prologue to the first game. Conrad Verner has become a museum of obscure Mass Effect trivia!



And in the middle, he provides absolutely scathing fourth wall-breaking comments.



2. Curing the Genophage

The debate over the ethics of the genophage has provided some of the most powerful moments in Mass Effect. So it's fitting that your first major quest chain in the game is about finding a cure for the genophage to secure an alliance with the Krogan (since the galaxy is in dire need of the greatest shock troops ever). It's great that this series takes up nearly 2/5ths of the entire game because it has the best moments, best characters, and best quests by far. It's also one of the tightest written parts of the game. Not one line, not one syllable is wasted. Everything that's said shows Krogan culture containing both brutish thugs and noble warriors, or it establishes the fear and paranoia the Krogan strike into others or it establishes the necessity of getting the alliance  or it shows you what the future might hold for the krogan or it just does something minor like polish the details of characters we know and love.

How can you go wrong with these two?

First and foremost, it really helps that the story revolves around Mordin and Wrex (the #4 & #1 Squadmates respectively). But more than that, it also brings those characters' stories to an amazingly satisfying end. Wrex finally has the one thing he's always wanted in reach and you really see his passion. Mordin finally has a chance for redemption. While he's always vocally supported the necessity of his work on the genophage modification in Mass Effect 2, now you find out the guilt has been destroying him. I could ramble on forever about the last scene in the Genophage quest line, but I'd rather let the video do the talking.



Literally, everything was perfect in this mission. The side quests were the most memorable. The sacrifices were the most heroic. The endings were the most poignant. The music was the most fitting. At the end of that video, I swear the hope in the atmosphere is absolutely palpable. It really makes you feel, and that's what all stories should strive for.

1. The Weapon System

Fact: suppressors make every gun look 37% cooler.

 The absolute best part of Mass Effect 3 has nothing to do with the rich history of the universe, its diverse characters, or its stunning moments. Quite simply, the best part of Mass Effect 3 is that it's a ton of fun to play. This is a significant first for the series.

In the Mass Effect 1, the combat was a horrible, unintuitive mess that you put up with. The powers were numerous and useless, and required frequent updates. Every person carried five guns, all of which needed to be individually outfitted with two mods and a specialty ammunition. And the guns were dropped so frequently that you were constantly fussing over your character. It also meant that you were likely to stick with two squadmates just for convenience's sake. The cover system was a mess, you never had a good idea when your shields were out, and the unlimited ammo for guns along with limited specialization discouraged all creativity. Medi-gel was passed out in such abundance as to become meaningless.

In Mass Effect 2, we had the exact opposite problem. There were now precisely two of each weapon, with one special upgrade weapon halfway through the game. DLC would eventually let you choose between up to four heavy pistols, each with slightly different firing rates! Mods were completely gone, medi-gel was scarce (luckily you miraculously healed from all wounds on your own), and specialty ammunition was now a class power that maybe Shepard and a handful of others had. The good news is powers actually did damage now. Engineers got a cool fireball to throw at people, Vanguards got charge to put them in imminent shotgun range, Adepts and Sentinels found out that warp wasn't terrible, Infiltrators got the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter, and Soldiers got the ability to slow down time, Matrix-style. Better yet, the fundamentals of combat were drastically improved. Limited (arguably too limited) thermal clips meant that your favorite gun would run out of ammo eventually and you would have to try different guns you carried and different powers. This was great for encouraging new styles of play, but it was still very restrictive. Not only was there no customization in weapons, but there were still harsh restrictions on the weapons you could carry. At most, you could be permitted to carry one new type of weapon, after completing 2/3rds of the story.

Mass Effect 3 took the best of both systems and added in its own brilliant ideas to create the best weapon system I have ever seen in any game I've ever played. First, it brilliantly compromises between Mass Effect's infinite but almost identical arsenal and Mass Effect 2's limited but unique arsenal. The result is around 7-9 of each of the five types of guns. While there are still the terrible starter weapons and the upgraded, non-terrible version of those weapons, the rest of the weapons in the set are unique in their fire rate, damage, reload style. Better yet, for the weapon types that don't lend themselves well to diversity (assault rifle and heavy pistol), Mass Effect 3 incorporated a type of heavy weapons alternative. Don't want to carry a Dirty Harry-style space revolver? That's fine. There's a pistol which shoots charged up lightning bolts at enemies. There's another which shoots grenades at them. There's an assault rifle which is really a rocket launcher and another that's a particle beam.

Next, the mod system is masterfully done. Like the guns themselves, the mods perfectly straddle the line between scarcity and excess. There are five mods for each of the five guns with five upgrades for each mod. These mods are significantly better than the ones in Mass Effect for two reasons. First, there are no unique version of mods. Every character draws from the same pool of mods, so a scope I put on my pistol can also be put on Liara's pistol. This makes micromanaging your squadmates' weapons so much simpler. Second and most importantly, the mods change the way your gun looks, sounds, and operates. If you put a barrel extender (read: silencer) on your gun, you'll not only see the extended barrel and receive your bonus damage, but you'll hear that cool pew pew pew sound that silenced guns make. If you put a bayonet on your shotgun (AKA Operation: I Want Whatever's Directly In Front of Me to Die a Horrible Death), not only will you see the bayonet and get bonus melee damage, but now your melee attacks focus on stabbing the enemy with your gun. It's these little details that make the combat feel visceral and satisfying.

Lastly, Mass Effect 3 finally gives players control over the one thing they've never been able to change in any Mass Effect game they played: the weapons they used. It always rubbed me the wrong way that Shepard could be the most reputable space marine in the Alliance and still not have basic proficiency with an Assault Rifle. Now, Shepard can carry any number of weapons with him and is able to use them effectively. So how do they handle the problem of keeping the class with the best abilities from using the biggest and baddest sniper rifles and machine guns?

With incredible genius! They included a feature called "weight". The strongest weapons are usually the heaviest and the heavier a weapon is, the longer the recharge time between your powers will be. So if you prefer, you can be an Engineer who goes into battle with a sniper rifle and light machine gun. But you won't be able to use your powers more than once every 30 seconds. So it encourages players who rely on their powers to be frugal & efficient with their choice in weapons. You have to balance firepower against ammunition & reload time against the weight of the gun. Now, the threat of less powers would have been meaningless in a game like Mass Effect, where they were pretty mild to begin with. But in Mass Effect 3, the powers have been super-charged to be more useful than ever. This means that even within the same class, different playstyles will find different weapons with different mods most effective.

The point of the past 1,000 words can be summarized as thus: the level of customization options available combined with more fast-paced combat means that the best part of playing Mass Effect can finally be playing Mass Effect.