[Spoilers!] Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut: We Asked For This

[Fixer]

I think that most people were running on the good feelings they got from Tuchunka, Rannoch, the improved combat and all the fun character moments.

Liara meeting her Dad, Liara drunk off her ass on the floor, the bromance with Garrus, punching James Vega in the face.
Oh, and tech expert.


That's the stuff that made the game fun and enjoyable. Enough to balance out the bad. The last 15 minutes was just so epic bad that it drowned out everything else.

Edit: Yes Gorb, always angry. All the time.

[Gorb]

The plaque part was weird, like they couldn't just put in the Player entered first name? It's not like anyone says it anyways. That would've been pretty cool.

Because I'mma derp and SPOILARZ, I'm guessing this is the plaque in the Normandy?

If so, it's a model/texture thingy that they probably can't procedurally generate characters for (as in, they'll have tonnes of name slots that they slot the pre-rendered NPC/squad member names into). Probably.

If that's not the plaque, then who knows! Perhaps it's another model/texture that can't be easily customised.

[Akranadas]

Fixer, you might enjoy this one.



Kind of makes you wish Bioware did better with the ending.

[Riess]

Yeah I suppose a thing that generates a texture from the name string and then puts it in the scene would be too much to ask for, especially for a relatively quickly-done add-on. Not undoable, but quite a bit more work than just creating a new generic texture. Could have covered the left half up with camera angles though, like I expected they'd do after the first few shots in that scene. Instead of giving us a long zoomed head-on view of the thing.

[Hirmetrium]

Liara meeting her Dad, Liara drunk off her ass on the floor, the bromance with Garrus, punching James Vega in the face.

I don't remember drunk Liara (I remember drunk Tali) and I don't remember punching vega (unless you count the first meeting, where you just push him back).

[Fixer]

Sorry,meant Drunk Ashley.

Love interests blurred together for a moment there.

You get a fist fight with Vega.


Akranadas: Cheers for that

[Ishaar Niirfa]

Let's try another topic. What modified ending does everyone now think is the "best" one? I'm tied between Destroy and Control. On the one hand, Destroy probably (but not necessarily, based on the "severely damaged" line) means Shepard has committed genocide, but on the other, when has controlling unfathomable power ever worked out for anyone in the end in sci-fi? Being God Emperor of Dune Reapers is great and all, but what if you were a renegade asshole? The galaxy doesn't seem like it'd fare too well in that case. At least the husks and cannibal arms and various body parts grafted onto different husk types aren't sentient in Control.

I'm similarly torn between those two. My first instinct is actually "reject," but I know in my heart it would only end in tears, since BioWare didn't see fit to make the war resources have a real impact on the ending and of the two viable options control and destroy seem the most appealing, though it's difficult to choose which is actually the best. On the one hand I'm disinclined to kill the geth because I worked hard to reconcile them and the quarians over the second and third games and don't like the idea of throwing that achievement away, but on the other hand I'm not really willing to trust the Catalyst on its assertion that I really can control the Reapers. The explanation offered by the DLC doesn't really improve that last bit and even confuses it a bit, since if you ask for more details on the Control option the Catalyst seems like it actually wouldn't like to yield you control.

I can sort of see why some people like Synthesis, but to me the whole idea is deeply troubling, since it means rewriting the biology of not just yourself (which I'd actually be okay with), your friends, your family, or even your entire species, but every organism in the entire galaxy (or universe even - the scale isn't very clear). That strikes me as... well, for lack of a better term, playing god, and it completely disregards the wishes of anyone but the person making the choice. Not to mention that there is an inherent assumption in the Synthesis ending that organics and synthetics could never learn to co-exist peaceably of their own free will.

At least with Control and Destroy the amount of free will you're negating is fairly limited. In Destroy you're killing off the geth, yet, and denying their right to self-determination, but you're preserving the free will of virtually everyone else. In Control you're subjugating the Reapers, but again, it seems like a necessary evil in context. In the end, barring a plausible rejection scenario, I'd probably go with Destroy and look at the genocide of the geth as a bitter sacrifice of the war.

Overall, I still feel the thematic and narrative underpinnings of the ending are deeply flawed and discordant with the rest of the series, but at least some of the plot holes have been patched up (albeit in a few cases by creating new plot holes). Like others, I can live with the results, though they don't truly restore my faith in BioWare to tell a good story from start to finish.

EDIT:

My biggest gripe with 3 right now would still be that the final mission felt hollow and nowhere near as satisfying as most of Suicide Mission where you really see the work of the game before it come together. There, I secured the loyalty of a dozen nutjobs, criminals, extremists, washouts, experiments, and Tali. I was rewarded with their presence, their ability, and cool outfits. I felt like I'd earned their fellowship, and earned my victory.

This kind of bothered me as well. I was really hoping the war assets would come into play similar to how your ship upgrades and party members' loyalty played into the finale of ME2. Instead, it really was just a progress bar that nonsensically unlocked a separate and unrelated ending choice. At best, you got a slightly different cutscene during the assault on Earth when it showed off the massed fleet.

[Aesaar]

Considering they don't mention the Geth at all in the Destroy epilogue, I find it really easy to think they survived with damage, like the Relays. No evidence at all to back this up, but meh.

I can't suffer Synthesis because I can't suspend my disbelief that much.

[Fish Of Doom]

anyone else saw that the quarian talking to the geth in the synthesis slideshow is unmasked?

[Fixer]

The poor Geth.

There's no way to keep them as they are and still have peace with the Quarians. They're either destroyed, mind controlled or end up having squishy organic components implanted.

[A7K]

I thought control only allows Shepard to assume control of the reapers. Not all inorganic life.

[Starblade]

They're either destroyed, mind controlled or end up having squishy organic components implanted.

At maximum EMS they could just be "severely damaged" with the rest of the technology, but other than that, yeah, EDI and the Geth get screwed over for no particular reason.

[Jonny]

In Control you're subjugating the Reapers, but again, it seems like a necessary evil in context.

I like to go with the idea that, since the Reapers are made up of trillions of innocents who were forcibly murdered and processed into their new form but are still their individual cultures, then most of them might be quite happy to stop being forced to inflict the same horrors on new species.

[Lautaro]

The Reapers are not a race, they are tools, the Catalyst said it... the organics used in their creation are just materials of construction so you are not subjugating them

EDIT: sober now!

[General Nuke Em]

THE CATALYST IS FIRING ALL SHIPS DISENGAGE WE HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHATS GOING ON BUT CLEARLY THE REAPERS CAN'T JUST SHOOT A BIG RED LASER BEAM AT THE CITADEL TO PREVENT IT FROM WORKING SO WE DON'T NEED TO HANG AROUND TO PROTECT IT LALALALALALA.

Fuck bioware. Uninstall game, never buying a product from them again.

[Kirjava]

So I only just finished this for the first time last night. I haven't seen any of the non-extended cut endings, so any concerns about vanishing squadmates were moot, but that was an incredibly shitty ending. For starters, and this could just be me sucking (a strong possibility), I have no idea how I even made a choice. I got the Deus Ex Machina to explain all three to me, then I was left to my own devices. I assumed I had to walk forwards, so I did, and I magically got the Synthesis ending. Seemed like a magic happy ending, but I wanted Control, because my dude was a Renegade with bad-ass scars all over his face. I have no idea why everyone ended up with green shit all over their faces when I wanted to BEND THE REAPERS TO MY WILL.

Still, I'm not infuriated like a lot of folks seem to have been- I just think it was bilge. Oh well, off to start a Mass Effect 1 playthrough- my first as (gasp) a woman! I'll go all Paragon and this'll be my first playthrough with every bit of DLC. Hopefully when I get to ME3 I won't have like three friends left this time. I think Grunt, Jack, Liara and Garrus were my only homies left when I finished ME3 Where the sod did Ash go? She was with Hackett, I would've thought she'd've warranted a mention...

[A7K]

there are three platforms you can walk to Kirjava, the one straight ahead from the Catalyst is synthesis. Control is on the left platform, destroy is on the right one.

[AceRimmer]

THE CATALYST IS FIRING ALL SHIPS DISENGAGE WE HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHATS GOING ON BUT CLEARLY THE REAPERS CAN'T JUST SHOOT A BIG RED LASER BEAM AT THE CITADEL TO PREVENT IT FROM WORKING SO WE DON'T NEED TO HANG AROUND TO PROTECT IT LALALALALALA.

Fuck bioware. Uninstall game, never buying a product from them again.

So what's your thoughts on the rest of the game?

[Fixer]

Tasteful Understated Nerdrage has posted his commentary, giving me the chance to link yet another youtube video!

[Misiok]

Actually, having Crucible makes a bit sense. We know now that the species that created the Kid Ghost AI did know about it, how the citadel works and such. So I believe that once they got the wind that the kid wants to reaperify them they've designed the crucible, knowing well what it could do to the AI and how. Maybe it being a power source allowed the brat to have more computing power and actually have some intelligence in him to allow for something more robust than 'kill them all'. That's my explanation. The other civilizations found the plans, and having met the Reapers firsthand tried their own, changed it and so on and so on.

[General Nuke Em]

The rest of the game was pretty much brilliant. I didn't even mind the battle on earth until the extended cut for some reason made the Normandy and Harbinger go full retard (but that was already mentioned). However the actual ending with the star child on the citadel is still horrible enough to completely destroy what all three games had to offer until that point. Also bioware's decision to meta-troll people who decided to shoot the thing is one of the pettiest silly things I've seen a game developer do.

[Akranadas]

Probably the most beautiful Mass Effect video out there

[Fixer]

In the end it was stuff like that, the great character interactions that made Mass Effect great.

The complete loss of character focus at the end was part of the tapestry of why it was so damned terrible. Thankfully that part is fixed.

The Crucible/Catalyst parts? Still stupid and broken.

The crucible, a superweapon capable of defeating the Reapers turns up at the moment they invade - contrived.
The Alliance decides to build it having no idea what it does, or how it does it .
It's existence makes no sense. The ruins on Mars didn't have a huge warning marked 'watch out for giant robot squid' on it anywhere? It has components from previous races that attempted to make it? How? The Protheans were supposedly the only race to leave a warning for the next Cycle. How did a complicated piece of tech manage to geth through perhaps dozens of cycles intact?
The Catalyst as a whole... already covered.

but it would have been so easy to fix all of this.

• Cerberus had been hiding the existence of the tech for their own purposes. When they stole the plans they specifically deleted the part which described it's purpose but didn't dare damage the plans. There's enough records to show that the Protheans had every confidence this would win the war and they put every resource available into building it, but failed. - Fixed.
• Admiral Hackett gives Shepard insight into how the war is going "The war with the Reapers isn't going well but from a strategic point of view things are even worse. We're fighting an enemy that has already predicted our every possible move, that can out think us, that's more mobile and more powerful. When they invaded the galaxy they destroyed our manufacturing facilities, our shipyards. We could use the resources we have left to build a handful of ships but in real terms this wont make any difference. We could throw every ship in the Galaxy at destroying the Reaper forces at Earth, even if we win the fleet would be so crippled that we couldn't mount an operation like that again. Either the Crucible works, or this war is already over. It's as simple as that." - Fixed
• The Protheans alone made the Crucible and left its plans near Earth specifically so the next Cycle could attempt to use it before the Reapers came.
• Replace the Catalyst with a Prothean V.I. like Vigil, or maybe even a Keeper VI freed by the Protheans after the last cycle, instead of the god damned kid. This way you have a reason to trust what it says. -Fixed
• Remove the stupid 'kill life to preserve it' motivation of the Reapers and 'synthetics will always kill organics' junk. This contradicts everything we know about Sovereign and Harbinger's motivation and makes no sense given the evolution of EDI/The Geth.
• We don't really need to know more about the Reaper's motivation, if it's supposed to be unfathomable by mortal minds leave it that way. Just give us a little info about why they need Organics. Perhaps they need the chaos of organic evolution to help them advance more as a species. Their greater goal a mystery.
• Remove the synthesis ending. -Fixed

[Gorb]

You need to be told that the Crucible was humanity's only hope to believe it? You're meant to be a military commander with spec ops experience. You don't need to be told the Reapers will wipe everyone out - you fought Sovereign in ME1 and barely came out of that in one piece. As you said, it makes sense to assume that the Crucible is your best and only hope.

The point about not knowing the Crucible's purpose or operation is obviously more vague, but insofar as concocting a plan about Cerberus sabotaging the plans (yes, because they speak Prothean and know what parts to damage and what parts to not damage) goes . . . it's much easier to assume that if one of the galaxy's leading experts on the Protheans can't determine a lot from the data, not many other people will be able to either.

I don't have enough progression to debate the rest, but I agree on at least one point (kill life to preserve it), though it could be a contrived/intentionally-flawed argument (hence the need to stop them). Not that that's good, but I like listing possible reasons.

Also, nobody's forcing you to choose Synthesis

[Kirjava]

That was a lovely video- if only the conclusion had been as emotional! Unfortunately I couldn't take it quite as seriously as I ought to have- when Liara's talking about screwing around trying to solve a problem, I immediately think of this video:

[Fixer]

You need to be told that the Crucible was humanity's only hope to believe it? You're meant to be a military commander with spec ops experience. You don't need to be told the Reapers will wipe everyone out - you fought Sovereign in ME1 and barely came out of that in one piece. As you said, it makes sense to assume that the Crucible is your best and only hope.

The point about not knowing the Crucible's purpose or operation is obviously more vague, but insofar as concocting a plan about Cerberus sabotaging the plans (yes, because they speak Prothean and know what parts to damage and what parts to not damage) goes . . . it's much easier to assume that if one of the galaxy's leading experts on the Protheans can't determine a lot from the data, not many other people will be able to either.

I don't have enough progression to debate the rest, but I agree on at least one point (kill life to preserve it), though it could be a contrived/intentionally-flawed argument (hence the need to stop them). Not that that's good, but I like listing possible reasons.

Also, nobody's forcing you to choose Synthesis

You're damn right I do.
If Admiral Hackett told me that the plan was going to going to be to throw a concert to defeat the Reapers using Rock and Roll I'd question it.
If Admiral Hackett told me the plan was to use an ancient alien device of indeterminate purpose and function they just so happened to discover the exact moment the Reapers invaded I'd question it.

I did question it, the entire game. Why are we building this thing the size of a hundred Dreadnoughts instead of building a hundred Dreadnoughts? Hackett and Shepard acting on that the crucible will instantly win the war on faith alone was massively stupid and out of character.

You needed some information that showed they were both desperate enough and that there was enough evidence that this would work for it to make sense. You also need a reason why the Crucible plans suddenly turn up at the start of ME3 so it's not contrived. I was thinking the timing of it and learning that the plans were recovered from an indoctrinated force that attempted to steal it meant it could have been a huge ploy by the Reapers to get the Alliance to waste resources through most of the game.

Synthesis ending insults me with it's very existence. Magical nonsense endings should not exist in hard sci fi.
Just like technobabble explanations for fantasy style elements like Midichlorians should not exist in Star Wars.

[Kirjava]

"Admiral Hackett, I hear we've abandoned work on the Crucible?"
"That's right, Shepherd- we've evac'd Status Quo, the Stone Roses and Ozzy Osbourne and we're going to rock the Reapers to death instead."
"This is somehow a better plan."

[Starblade]

Thank you Kirjava for reminding me just how terrible Diane Allers looks.

[Gorb]

Her face. So weird

You're damn right I do.
If Admiral Hackett told me that the plan was going to going to be to throw a concert to defeat the Reapers using Rock and Roll I'd question it.
If Admiral Hackett told me the plan was to use an ancient alien device of indeterminate purpose and function they just so happened to discover the exact moment the Reapers invaded I'd question it.

I did question it, the entire game. Why are we building this thing the size of a hundred Dreadnoughts instead of building a hundred Dreadnoughts? Hackett and Shepard acting on that the crucible will instantly win the war on faith alone was massively stupid and out of character.

You needed some information that showed they were both desperate enough and that there was enough evidence that this would work for it to make sense. You also need a reason why the Crucible plans suddenly turn up at the start of ME3 so it's not contrived. I was thinking the timing of it and learning that the plans were recovered from an indoctrinated force that attempted to steal it meant it could have been a huge ploy by the Reapers to get the Alliance to waste resources through most of the game.

Synthesis ending insults me with it's very existence. Magical nonsense endings should not exist in hard sci fi.
Just like technobabble explanations for fantasy style elements like Midichlorians should not exist in Star Wars.

Why aren't we building a hundred Dreadnoughts?

Hmm, let's see how many plausible reasons I can come up with based on my playing of ME3:

• Earth is down. That means the Sol System is wrecked. That's a lot of resources for ship building, gone.
• A lot of allied systems in general are down. That's a lot of docks out of commision, and I presume you don't have the time to build a hundred Dreadnoughts one at a darned time
• Scanning systems alerts presence to Reapers. How hard is it going to be hiding multiple fleets of Dreadnoughts? The Crucible is one singular thing; like the Normandy, it can be shielded easier than multiple objects spread out across an empire that has effectively been broken apart.
• Keeping one project secret is easier than keeping however many docks are working on the fleet replacements secret.

With regards to technobabble, what exactly is "hard" sci-fi? What part of mass effect fields are somehow believable but fusing with techno-organic lifeforms isn't? And don't tell me that mass effect fields somehow don't count as magic because that's pretty much how my brain refers to them as and I've seen others do the same. I'm not going to quote that often-misused, yet famous, line, but I think it applies here.

I dislike the concept of midichlorians but only because that arbitrarily introduced "power levels" to the Jedi and to be frank I disliked the notion of a Chosen One. Ironically, I liked how they expanded on the Living Force in the EU.

Not sure about the turning up of the data, one could just presume it was for plot purposes. "oh noes iz contrived". Welp, if you criticised every single plot, ever, for having a contrived instance of coincidental data acquisition then you might as well burn most fictional books in existence. Or perhaps you're just subjecting ME3 to an unfair level of scrutiny considering that without COINCIDENCE X, plenty of stories generally don't happen.

"Star Wars is badly written and contrived because the Stormtroopers didn't have to kill Lars and his wife to force Luke off of Tatooine; it was an obvious plot point to get him to move out of his comfort zone/embed a dislike of the Empire's modus operandi into Luke" - see the parallel? Of course, you could step in here and disregard Star Wars' plot as something developed for the big screen and thus needing pivotal moments of /drama/ to engage attention and draw empathy from the viewers.

But still, I think you're being massively critical of ME3 in a way that isn't really necessary. Especially since your own suggestions aren't making perfect sense to the point where no person with literary experience can pick at them either (because I am doing so ).

As I said, I agreed with at least one of your points. I don't have to agree with all of them and you are not automatically right. You do not "need" anything. You think that you need something to make sense of some points in the plot, some of which could have done with more obvious extrapolation. Some of which, as I am proving, don't; they just require common sense.

[Starblade]

With regards to technobabble, what exactly is "hard" sci-fi?

In general it refers to "realistic" technology and depictions of things. Think 2001's Discovery. Except for a few tiny slip-ups, everything in the book and film are as realistic as possibly could be depicted at the time (which is really awesome btw). It can have fantastic elements (such as the Monolith), but in general you're not going to see things like the Death Star or the Force. It's no exact genre or anything, just a certain style. Mass Effect is literally the exact opposite of hard sci-fi.

Keeping one project secret is easier than keeping however many docks are working on the fleet replacements secret.

Considering how every other character knows about it, no apparently not.

[Kirjava]

I will say, Gorb, that the "lol turns out we have Prothean plans for an ex-Reaper machina", if you will, is classic deus ex machina stuff. A super weapon pulled out of our arse at the precise point it's needed in the plot, with no foreshadowing in the previous two chapters of the story? Regardless of his other points, Fixer's right about that one.

"I'm Garrus Vakarian, and this is my rectum."

[Gorb]

I'm pretty sure the Crucible, or a weapon of that magnitude, was foreshadowed in ME1 when you scanned that planet with the giant mass effect weapon scoring across it's width. You know, the same game that foreshadows the "being of light"

But that just, like, my opinion, man ().

@Starblade: that's what I thought. Hence why I was confused at Fixer apparently interpreting Mass Effect as "hard" sci-fi.

[Thorno]

Just two bits of dialogue, that I can remember, that were so ridiculous they made me chuckle.

The first is of course the whole "STEEEVE!!!" thing.

And the second is "Your organic energy, the essence of who and what you are will be broken down and then dispersed."

[Starblade]

I'm pretty sure the Crucible, or a weapon of that magnitude, was foreshadowed in ME1 when you scanned that planet with the giant mass effect weapon scoring across it's width.

If you mean Klendagon, that was implied to be a rail gun, not a galactic nuke. It didn't even kill the Reaper, either, which shows how they kept powering them down throughout the trilogy. If you'll notice, Sovereign shoots several tentacle lasers. All Reapers in ME3 have a mouth laser only.

Also fun fact, that's actually Mars. That ravine is really there.

[Gorb]

The Crucible is a galactic nuke?

I was under the impression it was a weapon capable of taking Reapers apart with ease. As for Klendagon, nothing about the weapon in question hitting a Reaper was ever mentioned - is more revealed about that later on in ME3?

[Starblade]

The Reaper you crawl around in in ME2 is the Reaper that was shot by it.

It is revealed by the Illusive Man that an Alliance Survey Team discovered that the Great Rift Valley was caused by a strike from a mass accelerator round. The original target of that round was the Derelict Reaper, which was hit and disabled 37 million years ago. No trace remains of the race that fired the round. However, he also indicates that both the weapon and the target have been located, mentioning in passing that the weapon was defunct.

The Crucible is a galactic nuke?

More or less. Especially if your ems is low.

[Fixer]

Mass Effect is literally the exact opposite of hard sci-fi.

We have the scale of Sci Fi hardness here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...ictionHardness

Mass Effect was on the harder end of the scale as all the technology was explained.
Space Flight, Entanglement communication, quantum computing. Everything was painstakingly described in detail for how it worked. You had a drill sergeant brief cadets on physics and the dangers of firing relativistic weapons on the vacuum of space. All based on current knowledge of physics.
The one cheat it had was element zero, through by passing an electrical field you could create a 'Mass effect field' which gave the series it's name.
This is how all of the exotic gear, from guns to biotic powers, worked. It was all explained.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Element_Zero
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_Field
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Art...l_Intelligence


Then you have a magical device which can transform the DNA of every living creature into robot hybrids without giving them space cancer.
Little bit out of genre there.

[Gorb]

Eezo is forgivable, but Reapers having technology beyond current racial advancements . . . isn't? What do you want them to do. Give them bigger eezo manipulation abilities that allows them to do stuff that we lowly races can't? More magic space candy! More I say!

Also I'm pretty sure Artifical Intelligence handwaves a lot of issues about developing AI technology away so I'm not sure that one counts either?

EDIT: oh it involves quantum computing. Welp, there's your handwaving.

Also I'm erring on Starblade's side of things with regards to "hard" science fiction. Is there an actual definition for it anywhere beyond TVTropes?

[Starblade]

Mass Effect was on the harder end of the scale as all the technology was explained.

That isn't really how it works, and it's more than just describing things. 2001 makes no attempts to explain the Monolith's workings. It is not "soft" sci-fi. Star Wars Episode 1 describes what the Force is. It's not hard sci-fi by any stretch of the imagination. Also fuck TV Tropes.

Is there an actual definition for it anywhere beyond TVTropes?

That wikipedia link I posted is the best we're going to get. It's more of a "guideline".

[Saberdark]

I have to agree with Fixer, Mass Effect always struck me as being on the harder side of the scale. They explain nearly everything in detail, all the technology is a reasonable extrapolation of what we might actually see in the future save for the Mass Effect fields.

Synthesis on the other hand has no possible explanation. It really does feel out of place which is why I can never pick it.

[Codex]

So, avoiding all the spoilers from above, can I have some opinions? Is it worth dusting ME3 off and playing the EC? Or is it just a waste of time?

Sorry for not reading all the posts above, but since this is a spoilers thread...

[Fixer]

Hard Sci Fi tends towards the more in depth explanations or 'grounded in reality' type stories. In soft sci fi a lot of unexplained shit can happen for no reason.

You get a lot of crossover and arguments about which is hard or soft Sci-Fi. Star Trek runs amok on the scale with it's multitude of series. On the one hand, it's got in depth technical manuals explaining what every component of the ship does. Even if how the function of how that device actually works is handwaved. "How do the heisenberg compensators work?" "Really well actually."

On the other hand you have alien clouds that can alter reality but can be stopped by the human emotion called love.

Trek was weird like that. In fact, one of the reason Trek started going down the pan in Voyager was their reliance on magical solutions to problems. The Voyager crew would spout a nonsense technobabble solution to a problem which lay outside anything the audience could possible know. Everything was contrived and nothing was provocative. SFDebris had a good run on this one called the 'Magic meeting room' explanation for the ready room of Voyager. Explains all you need there.

One of the hardest movies I've seen recently is Moon. Pretty much all based on feasible near future tech. I'd call it harder than 2001 despite a scene of sound in space because 2001 has a giant space baby and an acid trip through a monolith.

On the soft scale you have a universe where nothing is explained and things are more fantasy based. Star Wars is much closer to soft Sci Fi as the setting is more of a backdrop to Adventure! in Space! than a well planned out scientific exploration of the universe. Why can Luke pull the lightsaber to his hand in Empire strikes back? Never seen that before! The Force! Makes sense.

The key is consistency, style and the willing suspension of belief. If you're in a universe where people with awesome humming swords made of light use a mystical power called the force, a sudden technical explanation for why some people have the ability to use the force and some don't (Midichlorians) cheapens it.
A piece of technology which has only ever been able to do one thing before suddenly being able to do another is contrived, especially if it's something that device has never done before and has nothing to do with it's primary function.
A piece of technology which has only ever been able to do one thing before suddenly doing something it's been explicitly stated to be impossible to do before is a retcon.
The Synthesis ending introduces a device built by people that didn't understand it's function which attaches to an AI to make a green energy cloud which somehow changes the genetic chemistry of every being in the galaxy without killing them in a universe which has been generally consistent with it's technological levels and rules... this is fucking stupid.

[Fixer]

So, avoiding all the spoilers from above, can I have some opinions? Is it worth dusting ME3 off and playing the EC? Or is it just a waste of time?

Sorry for not reading all the posts above, but since this is a spoilers thread...

If you've already played through the game there's not much new to see and there's no new gameplay. Easier to just load them up on youtube.

If you've never seen the endings? The new endings are bad, but not rage and confusion provokingly bad, just dissapointingly bad. It's worth a playthrough to see so you can come up with a better imaginary version.

The first time I finished ME3 I thought I had screwed up and wondered where the actual ending was. Maybe I had needed to actually play multiplayer or something to see what happened.

With the new endings you get believable reactions of your team members from a character point of view and see the results of your actions after. Even if a lot of contrived stuff has to happen in order for it to fit together and there's a really stupid out of place thing it all rotates around.

So it's an improvement at least and worth finishing if you've never completed the game.

[Starblade]

Is it worth dusting ME3 off and playing the EC? Or is it just a waste of time?

Just watch the endings on Youtube, it's faster and you get the same result. Also find the redone assault on the transporter or whatevere scene (the one where Harbinger shoots you).

[Kirjava]

That was Harbinger? Either I completely missed that or they failed to give any indication it was him.

[Starblade]

It's Harbinger. Anderson tells you he's coming, and it's the one Reaper with a yellow "eye". They also gave him a whole one line of dialogue since everyone hated how the big bad guy from the last game did basically nothing in this one. He honks "Almost." at you right as he lases you in the same voice that the Star Child gets all shitty in if you shoot him (they didn't get the same VA back).

[Thorno]

Just sounded like a random cool-sounding reaper noise to me, or something about Sky Plus. We know Reapers, especially Harbinger, can speak clearly. Why did he have to go retard?

They did get Harbingers VA back according to IMDb, he did some "additional voices". Makes so much sense...

[Codex]

That was Harbinger? Either I completely missed that or they failed to give any indication it was him.

I also missed this first time around. I found out through RN, and noticed on my third playthrough. Blame late night gaming.

[Kirjava]

Or early morning gaming in my case- I think I finished my first (and thus far only) playthrough at about 4am

[Starblade]

They did get Harbingers VA back according to IMDb, he did some "additional voices". Makes so much sense...

Hahaha really? Wow that makes the whole thing that much more halfassed.