March Disappointments: Specifically, Mass Effect Disappointments

First and foremost, I'd like to issue an apology to the blogging community. The Mass Effect 3 ending was so devastatingly bad that I sorta shut down and tried to forget it ever happened. As a result, I only have a measly three entries for the month of March. I intend to double that over the course of the next two days. I blame seeing actual friends and grad school for this decline in posting. In fairness, I did just grapple with an Excel spreadsheet which had approximately 5.2 million cells of data and had to answer approximately 300 questions about that.

Also, I finished the Hunger Games trilogy and introduced my parents to the amazingness of Game of Thrones, both of which I really want to go into in more detail. Basically, what I'm trying to say is I've generated enough ideas for the English Muffin Power Hour to last until June, excluding any new developments.

However, March 2011 has been my most popular month ever and I feel like I've betrayed my new readers. My older readers know to expect long droughts of content, but I don't believe this should be acceptable. Going forward, I will continue to blog regularly. After all, a 17 day hiatus is downright tame compared to what I normally subject you to.

I've been discussing with myself the best way to discuss just every way the last 15 minutes of Mass Effect 3 has been a terrible disappointment. I was tempted to discuss my beliefs about the ending (I completely subscribe to the Indoctrination Theory, by the way), but honestly, this video said everything I wanted to point out and then some. Obviously, if you're name is Pimpmaster Doug or if you're one of the dozen or so other Mass Effect fans who haven't finished ME3 because of their infant sons or attendance in Medical School, don't watch this video.



I would like to add that the Catalyst also frames your choices in the way that would make destroying the Reapers seem least appealing, which would make sense if the Catalyst was just a Reaper illusion. If you do the right thing and destroy the galactic menace which is older than time itself, you'll also destroy your friendsL the recently sentient Geth (who are now totally cool with the Quarians) and EDI (who is on your squad now). It's a classic manipulation technique known as "framing the question". Your choices aren't presented as "Try the crazy man's idea, fuse with the enemy, or destroy them outright". It's "Show how strong willed you are by controlling the Reapers, forge a new path in history by synthesizing organic and synthetic life, or be a total jerkwad and destroy all synthetic life." The person posing the question really doesn't want you to pick the last option. Because that's the only way the Reapers all die.

But I'm going off on a rant. I feel the best way to proceed about Mass Effect 3 is to discuss the things it did really well and the things it really screwed up (obviously, the ending, but there are other things). So tonight, I will return with the Top Five Things about Mass Effect 3.