A Story Analysis of Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 3 is a roller coaster of emotions for me it's got an incredible start but a terrible ending it also has some wonderful decisions that can reshape the whole story but it also has choices that are pointless either because the difference is barely noticeable or just completely Rewritten to fit the story it is a very stressful game to play because one moment the story is on a roll and really starts to pick up speed but then falls back down almost immediately it is a game that has disappointed me greatly and today I want to talk about why so without further Ado let's get started so Mass Effect 3 starts six months after Mass Effect 2. Shepard and enormity have been grounded here on Earth because of one of two things either because Shepard blew up the Mastery Lake killing 300 000 batarians if you played the arrival DLC or because they worked with Cerberus if you didn't do the DLC similar to Mass Effect 2 our crewmates are nowhere to be seen we'll meet them all eventually later but it seems like Shepard told the crew to go their separate ways and turn themselves in so that no one else had to deal with the interrogations that would come after already though we're already introduced to one of our choices the human Ambassador odino replaces Anderson as counselor in Mass Effect 3 regardless of your decision even if you chose Anderson in Mass Effect 1 your decision is reverted to the one BioWare wanted you to choose so as a whole the counselor decision from Mass Effect 1 is pointless not only can your decision possibly get changed without your input but Anderson and udina barely made an appearance in Mass Effect 2 save 4-1 side mission and even then the change at most is a liner 2 of dialogue after meeting with Anderson we then meet with the vermeyer Survivor and James Vega Jay James as well as Ashley arcadin depending on who lived will be a part of our new crew I want to hold off on the companion analysis until we get everyone on board so we'll Circle back to them later also anytime I say Ashley I also mean Caden it would just get tedious if I kept repeating both of their names all the time as you may have noticed though it's only been a couple of minutes into the video and we already have two comparisons across the playthroughs unlike the previous videos we'll be talking about the Renegade playthrough a lot in this video as this game has the most changes between our Paragon and Renegade characters one Shepard talks with Ashley for a bit he will then meet with the alliance Council and discuss his crimes he also briefly mentions the Reapers and how they plan to attack soon soon must apparently mean now as right after this the Reapers attack Earth one thing I like about the Reapers in Mass Effect 3 is how they always go for the throat throughout the game we'll learn about Reaper attacks on palaven tachanka and decia which are the homeworlds of the turians Krogan and asari respectively the reapers are all about going for big targets and taking them out as soon as possible this shows off their overwhelming power because if the home planet can't defeat them how is a colony at the edge of the Milky Way going to defeat them as well Shepard though is going to be one of the Unlucky few that's going to be seen that Destruction for themselves within minutes the Reapers have shown the tide of battle and have destroyed everything in sight Earth isn't completely gone yet but seeing how much Destruction has already been caused in just a few minutes it's only a matter of time while Anderson Shepard and Ashley Escape Shepherd will come across this little kid hiding in the vents this kid will eventually be seen hopping into a shuttle before it blows up this death really affects Shepard a lot throughout the game Shepard will have these dreams where he chases this kid through the forest this kid is meant to be a representation of Shepard's struggle and Trauma that's because the kid is just that a kid someone who doesn't deserve this Sim was never a part of the war to begin with a common sentiment amongst the Army is that their fighting set those back home can be free but in this case that idea has failed Shepard and the crew fight to make sure the Galaxy and its innocent inhabitants can live Carefree lives but the reapers are just too powerful now every man woman and child has been swept up into this war whether they like it or not it's quite a scary thought which is why I really like this game's intro so much there's no cool or hyped up introduction where everyone's gearing up and getting ready it's a surprise attack against an ill-equipped species that has no idea what they're even fighting furthermore the intro still shows how powerful the reapers are and honestly I think this holds up throughout the whole game the only Reaper that has died so far was Sovereign back in Mass Effect 1 and it took a lot of Firepower to bring it down Mass Effect 3 recognized this and made sure that any time a Reaper dies in this game it's either because of overwhelming damage or unconventional means this was inevitably something the team was going to have to tackle and instead of making the Reapers weak for the purposes of gameplay they continue to uphold their strength which I really appreciated because of that though we aren't going to be shooting many Reapers in this game which is why we fight a lot of troops like the husks this is also another problem the team would have to tackle because having all the enemies be all husks or all Geth is boring so they need to add variety but BioWare not only succeeded in creating a variety of enemies but also made it more accurate using a plot device I was hoping would return we know from Mass Effect 1 and 2 that the Reapers can repurpose species to their liking husks are just repurposed humans and the collectors were originally protheans BioWare continued this idea but extended it to the other species wound up meeting new enemies like the Marauders brutes cannibals and banshees all of them are repurposed versions of another alien species cannibals used to be batarians Marauders used to be turians brutes have the discipline and determination of eturian but the strength of a Krogan and the Banshees used to be ardadiakshi this not only makes the combat more diverse and interesting but also the story as well now the lore nerded me would have loved to see more variations from the other races like the solarians and quarians but I'm content with what we got but as I said the story takes a more Sinister turn thanks to this idea because allies can now become enemies so it's not just about defeating the reaper forces but also making sure no one dies in the process it's unclear whether or not the person needs to be dead or alive for them to be turned into these things but it still paints a very Bleak picture every loss is the Reaper's gain now and they already have the odds stacked in their favor this is just salt in the wound at this point getting back on track one Shepherd and Anderson get to a more secure location the Normandy comes by to pick them up but Anderson decides to stay behind enter's implants do stay here on Earth and fight the good fight while Shepard goes and gets help from the council given their insistence on not even recognizing the reaper threat we can assume that it's going to be an uphill battle before we do that though Admiral Hackett gets on the comms and instructs Shepherd to go to an alliance base on Mars before the system is destroyed one thing I must give credit to Mass Effect 3-4 is how much attention was given to Hackett in the first two games he was just sort of a higher up that occasionally gave orders he still does that to an extent but his role is much larger in this game the same also goes for Anderson as well which is something I was very happy to see as they are very likable characters Hackett wants upper to go to the space on Mars because the people here have been searching prothean archives for ways to fight the Reapers and who of all people do you think is leading This research team the one and only Dr Liara to Sony Liara not only has lots of knowledge on the prothean people but she also has the resources of the Shadow broker so she's able to help out in many different ways according to Liar Within These archives was a blueprint for a device called The Crucible this was apparently a prothean weapon that was supposed to defeat the Reapers clearly it failed but that's because they were missing a crucial piece called The Catalyst what the Catalyst actually is is unknown for now which is fine because we still have to build The Crucible but before that happens we run into a familiar face who is less than pleased with our rival Shepherd The elusive Man shows up by a hologram and basically taunts Shepard telling them that he will fail and that he has a plan of his own that'll be more successful basically The elusive man wants to control the Reapers he believes that dominating the Reapers is how they win because not only will they stop the threat but they'll have the most advanced civilization under their control it's a risky goal but risky is his middle name he spent billions of credits surviving one man and then sent his team on a suicide mission with the hopes of stopping the collectors if this was anyone else in the Mass Effect Universe I would immediately lose interest in this idea but the elusive man has shown that he has the assets and the power to get done so while the idea of controlling the Reapers does seem ludicrous with him at the helm it might not be cerber is showing up at the Mars base also creates some tension between Shepard and the vermeier Survivor the last time we met both Ashley and Kaden were very upset at Shepard's willingness to work with Cerberus even if it was just a means to an end six months later and it's still the same similar to our meeting with them on Horizon not only do the two not trust Shepard they also have the same dialogue Mass Effect has always committed to this idea that people will not believe Shepard even with all the evidence laid out in front of them this was the same problem Shepard had with the council back in the first game and even then it was drawn out and tedious but Mass Effect is doing it again by continuing to bring up how Shepard worked with Cerberus and is therefore a bad guy it's starting to become overplayed even in the same Mission Ashley and Shepard have a talk about his past with Cerberus to which Shepard juts her down saying that they were only working together because of their common goal then later they find out that some of the Cerberus soldiers have been modified and they seem to look like Reaper husks without skipping a beat the first thing they will say is what if you're being controlled you don't know what they put in you or if they're even controlling you this is already third on its face and we haven't even gotten to the Citadel attack yet as an isolated incident I feel like this wouldn't be that bad but since everyone seems to ignore Shepard throughout the whole trilogy this interaction with them really sticks out once the group has their chat with the elusive man they end up finding a Dr Ava core who was seen sabotaging the facility at one point on the security cams Dr Ava realizes that she's been made and makes a break for it she almost gets away until James Rams his shuttle into theirs crashing them both this should have killed the crew but it seems like Dr Ava was synthetic and not actually human she then takes this opportunity to critically injure Ashley before being put down by Shepard both Ashley and Dr Ava are then taken to the Normandy and the crew determines that taking Ashley to the hospital on the Citadel is the only way to save her e also decides to figure out if she can inhabit Dr Ava's body and it surprisingly Works similar to Legion Edie now has a mobile platform she can walk around in and now that she is mobile she can now join us on some of our missions once we make it to the Citadel we're then told to meet with the council but we can take a look around a bit as we can talk to some old friends The Citadel in Mass Effect 3 seems a bit lackluster in some aspects a lot of the areas are small and linear whereas Mass Effect 1 had a lot more space to it that's not to say all of them are bad though as the presidium commons has a lot more twists and turns in its design one thing that has stayed consistent across each game is the level's detail the docking area is filled with refugees of all Races and there are so many different things happening at once people are checking in some are getting medical attention and others are just sulking around some of the crew will also appear on the various levels which makes things more realistic and it allows for more conversations between you and the crew while exploring the floors of the Citadel you'll likely run across Dr shockwas and Ashley Dr chakwas is here talking with a Dr Michelle who I had no idea was from Mass Effect 1. way back in the beginning when we first met Garrison Rex we were tasked with hunting down a guy named fist while some of his goons attacked Dr Michelle but we were able to save her when speaking with Dr chakwas though we can offer her a spot on the Norma Deegan and she happily accepts as for Ashley she's still unconscious for now but you can can say a few words to her if you want once our Affairs are in order we can meet with the council and discuss the reaper threat this is also the first time we've met the council in person since Mass Effect 1 and if you remember from the end of that game we also had the choice of saving them or letting them die and judging by their demeanor it seems like the old council is doing all right but Keen viewers may have recognized that I am lying to you this is not the old Council but rather the new one the two biggest changes are that the solarian counselor is female and the turian has a different colored face paint furthermore both councils reinstate our Specter status in Mass Effect 2 it was possible to knock at your Specter status back which to be fair didn't really mean much in that game since we were operating out of console space for the most part but regardless of our choice it just gets reinstated anyway if anything this should have been the game to commit to this change as just down the hall is the Specter only room in here are Specter exclusive weapons and armor but also a terminal that only specters can use this allows you to give authority to specific requests for example people two Engineers were detained by the alliance but can be released these two also happen to be Donnelly and Daniels from Mass Effect 2. most of these choices aren't too important so it's not like you'd be missing a critical part of the story by not having your Specter status plus this could have led to alternate paths and other side missions such as this one where a Solari inspector needs you to authorize something but because you aren't A specter the side mission could change a bit it doesn't have to be a completely different outcome but just small enough to show that the mission has changed I also want to bring up something before we continue because it's quite critical to understanding Mass Effect 3. just like in the previous games you can import your old characters that your choices retain continuity the only difference though is that in Mass Effect 3 the game tells you what those decisions were this not only shows the player what they chose but also what choices matter we've made a lot of decisions throughout the course of this series but some are more important than others especially in Mass Effect 3. for example saving the colonists on Pharaoh seemed quite important at the time but according to Mass Effect 3 it's not as important as it's not on the list and we can even see this in game as the most that Quest did was give us additional War assets something I'll talk about later it's still important but not as important as something like the council or the rachni queen as another example we can see that Maitland's data is mentioned that data was a part of morden's loyalty Quest but what makes him so special we stopped in ardad yakshi and samara's Mission destroyed a biota camp in Jax and stole back a gray box that could have sparked a war in kasumi's Mission so why is Morton so important that's because maelin's data was about the Gen of age which is a critical part of Mass Effect 3's plot as we'll see in just a few moments I wanted to go over this because the game is basically telling us that out of all the decisions we've made across the game these are the ones that will have the most impact however this only applies to some of them such as the bottom bullet points that talk about romance those were more for the player to remember who their lover is as Romancing has never had a direct impact on the story so out of this list I would say the most important ones that aren't just there to remind the player but actually have potential to alter the game's story are the rachnine queen the council May Lin's data rewriting the Geth and The Collector base the others are just nice to know details Rex being alive or dead changes the mission on tachanka but doesn't alter it too much and choosing one vermeyer Survivor over the other doesn't change much either at least when it comes to the main quest already though we are over one because the council's decision is just as useless as the human Ambassador not only do the councils practically look the same but they also act the same as well they have the same dialogue and the same reactions to the missions when we report back to them the only actual difference is that they become a part of a point system wondering a future Citadel Mission and the other being the war assets War assets are the main motivator for doing content in this game and are integral to getting a good ending as well I don't really like the war asset system but it's not because of one isolated reason it would be too hard to talk about that all at once so we'll have to Circle back to the system periodically throughout the video if you save the console then you get the destiny Ascension as a war asset if not then you'll get a few more aligned ships instead since they would have been sacrificed to save the asari ship technically saving the council is the better choice since the destiny Ascension provides more war assets than the alliance Fleet but that is one of the only changes this decision has this makes the council's decision no more important than the colonists on Pharaoh since they also give us War assets but shouldn't that mean that the colonists should appear on the list since they have the same outcome and therein lies the problem Mass Effect 3 claims that saving the council was important but both of our Shepherds arrived at the same outcome ultimately making this decision a waste of time as you would expect talking with the council doesn't go well they finally recognize the reaper threat though they're just three years too late but refused to help earth and its citizens thankfully the eturian councilor has a plan but we have to strike a deal because nothing involving the council is ever simple a turian called Primark fedorian called the war Summit but it was unsuccessful War Summits are used to determine where races send their fleets and resources we need the Primark to start the summit but as we'll soon see not only is the Primark dead but the new one has his own deal involving the Krogan but the Krogan won't budge until the genif age is cured so we have to cure the genophage to appease the Krogan so they can send reinforcements to palavan and only then will the Primark send ships to Earth said Humanity can fight the Reapers there what a headache thankfully getting to the Primark isn't too difficult plus an old friend is here fighting alongside them Garris is here and is helping the tyrigan military as they deem him to be a Reaper expert this mission is also a great example of how the game manages to patch up holes of the story that the companions used to occupy Garris died in our other playthrough but because Garrus is present in this Mission the team runs into a problem at least for this Mission the team opted to just remove him but in some cases characters are replaced like how Reeve took Rex's position in Mass Effect 2. what makes this Mission so special though is that it's done in such a way that doesn't seem obvious I had completely forgotten where Garrus was introduced in this Mission when I went back and played it and it was only when I made it to the final objective that I realized I'd already passed it the game had managed to work around a character's death in a way that didn't compromise the overall story once we get through the war-torn moon and get the new Primark to safety we can call the war Summit as we talked about earlier though getting The turian Fleets to Earth is going to involve some complicated deals Rex is here representing the Krogan Army and of course he wants the genophage cured both Primark victus and the solarian dalatras are against this but it's the only way as without the Krogan support palaven is gone and if the turians are defeated Earth can't get help so Rex's forced our hand of it the Gen of age is one of the most well-known pieces of History within the Mass Effect universe and I was kind of surprised that we were actually going to cure it but I guess if I'm being honest it was only a matter of time until this was settled drastic times call for drastic measures which is why the mission Shepherd will have to embark on are necessary for Galactic survival this also showcases how broken the relationships of these races are because they're still reopening Old Wounds to be fair a widespread disease that causes an entire race to be infertile is dangerous enough for someone to hold a grudge but the Krogan aren't the only ones with these grudges none of the races in the Galaxy are actually working together and even if they offer to help they want something out of it Ashley even foreshadowed this back in Mass Effect 1 where she talked about how the other races will back each other and not worry about others when the going gets tough while it's getting pretty tough and everyone is more focused on fighting their own individual fights rather than coming together which is the goal of Mass Effect 3. get the races to come together under one banner and defeat the Reapers together but doing that is not going to be easy to start we have to cure the genif age and to do that we need to head to a remote base on the planets or cash the reason we're going here is that according to Rex some of the female Krogan survive malin's experiments when the solarians heard of this the Dallas sent in a team to take them prisoner and they're being kept to this base on circash as for who leaked the info well the answer might actually surprise you all specimens are accounted for sir Shepard excellent timing good to have you here Morden is back and working with the STG again this game is a bit of a surprise because Morton was clearly in favor of the genfage but as he'll explain he's had a change of heart he says that he's getting old but knows that he's the best candidate for the job but if someone else was leading the team they could make a mistake and similar to Thane he wants to do one last good thing before he goes this may sound like he's seeking atonement but I never saw it as such Morton has always seen things logically rather than emotionally he still has his emotional moments like when he condemned malin's testing methods but most of the time he thinks logically at the time he determined that the best course of action for the Krogan was to sterilize them and now he thinks it's best that they're cured it's not that he's sorry for what he did but he realizes that this solution would be the best for the Galaxy at this point in time if Morton is dead though then a solarian named Paddock Wix replaces him this mission is a good example of the opposite side of the spectrum instead of Morden and Rex we have Paddock and Reeve and while the story still works it just feels much better with the original two included that pretty much sums up most of my thoughts on the main missions most are either well done or passable knowing what we know about Morton and Rex it makes sense that Morton would be the head researcher on the genophage and Rex would want the genophage cured we've only just been introduced to Paddock so we don't really know what he wants it never felt like Paddock really cared about the project but rather the devs needed someone to replace Morton so they threw in a random solarion that acted like him as for Reeve I think his ideals make sense as they're consistent amongst all Krogan but that's what made Rex different he went against the status quo to bring about change Reeve isn't striving for change instead of the story being about a Krogan who went against his people to make sure they could live again it's a story about one Krogan leader who's just like the rest who had happened to get lucky and be allied with Shepard this debacle is what makes Mass Effect 3 so hard to talk about because having Reeve and Paddock in the story really brings down the quality but that seems to be intentional since the story seemed to be designed with the other two in mind it's another problem the team would have to tackle and given how Monumental the task is I'm willing to give them a pass on a lot of this because making sure each story is just just as interesting while also removing core characters from that story is hard to do and like I said most of them are either really well done or good enough regardless of whether or not Morden or Paddock is present though something is wrong The Cure hasn't been successful yet many of the female Krogan that were fertile have died except for one more than nicknamed Eve she is the last fertile Krogan left at the facility clearly she is of high importance and Cerberus thinks so as well as they crash the party and try to kill her while we make a run for it we can see some of the solarian experiments and it seems like they were experimenting on varen and even some yogg judging from the logs and data pads left around the facility the solarians were trying to domesticate or uplift the odds that they could be useful to them similar to what they did with the Krogan careful there goes the next Shadow broker could have sworn he was muttering to Sony the whole time not funny assuming you make it out alive you escort Eve back to the Normandy and get a chance to talk with her Eve really highlights something about the Mass Effect series that is lacking and that's a feminine perspective most of the aliens we meet are male with the exception of the asari talking with Eve allows us to see another side of the Krogan as we know the Krogan mostly fight each other and see the women as prized possessions and I've always wondered what the women of the crow can think about this and Eve was able to communicate that to me Eve says that when Clan warlock was trying to cure the genophage the same Clan from Morton's loyalty Mission she and some of the other women volunteered Shepard questions this because warlock is a rival Clan Eve claims that rivalries are a creation of the males and that's what led to tachanka looking like a deserted ruin furthermore Eve wants the women to rule the Krogan again just like they did back in the day this was the kind of thing I've always wanted to hear from the other races but this Trilogy never gave it a thought we can meet two solarian women throughout the trilogy the new counselor and the dalatras both of whom provide no insight into their species history we also end up meeting two targeted women as well and a couple of DLCs and the same goes for them too for the small amounts of info we have we know that turian women served alongside the men in the military and celerian women were usually kept safe on their homeworlds furthermore salerians don't mate unless it's for reproduction and even then they usually sign contracts and pick people with the best Bloodlines that they can get the most out of it there was a whole side quest about this in Mass Effect 2 on ilium I've always wanted to know how the other gender views the racist culture because it allows us to learn more about them Mass effect's World building has always been something I've taken an interest in and seeing Eve's perspective opened up my eyes to a lot of this game's history I just wish the same happened for the other races too with Eve on the Normandy morta can get working on a cure and while we wait we can do some side missions I was going to save these for the side content section later but Mass Effect 3 has a couple missions that are technically side content but really should be done right away we get these missions from the Primark and from Rex apparently Rex Von traces of the rack 9 near remote relay this is odd for both playthroughs as in one we killed her but in the other we told her to hide away from the rest of the Galaxy but that doesn't seem to be happening when we arrive we see that the person leading this company of Krogan is none other than grunt if Grant is dead though it's a Kroger named dag we and grunt split up and find rachni but they seem to have been reaperfied once we make it to the bottom we realize that the original rachni Queen is down here and has been kept here by the Reapers if she died back in Mass Effect 1 then it's a fake cracked Knight queen that was made by the Reapers both of them look identical and were given the same options in bold playthroughs spare or kill her doing this provides us with a few options which can get a bit complex basically if we saved the queen before and then save her again she gets added to our war assets if we instead choose to leave her then we get some of grunt's team as War assets if it's the fake queen though saving her gives us both grunt's team and her as a war asset which he ends up betraying you and you lose them killing her though is the same as before grunt's team is a war asset on paper it sounds quite complex and to an extent it is but it's this exact mechanic that keeps bothering me Mass Effect ever since 2 always felt like the team went overboard with certain parts of the game Mass Effect 2 gave us 12 Companions and to many that was a bit too much even though I loved that game's companions 12 is a lot to juggle at one time which is why Mass Effect 3 dialed it back to seven in Mass Effect 3 The Companions were replaced with war assets just about everything in this game contributes to the war effort no matter how small it may seem this Quest is supposed to be one of the big options according to that list earlier and yet not only are the Queens exactly the same but your decision also ends up being War assets every single time it's the same exact thing as the council similar design and similar outcome I understand how important the war assets are in this game but we don't even get to see our choices the recognize decision isn't tangible it's just numbers on a screen this is the last time we will ever see the arachni queen and her species again she was supposed to have one of the biggest choices in Mass Effect 3 but all she got was about 7 Minutes of screen time across the trilogy it just feels like a waste of time because this Choice doesn't matter either like I said technically it does matter but have having all these decisions just become War assets diminishes their impact greatly because now it's not oh saving the rachni queen changes this one part of the mission which then leads to another side objective it's now just saving her ads 100 to the war asset number and that is just not satisfying to me the quest is also in the outlier category when it comes to patching up the story as I said most of these missions are either well done or good enough this is one of those missions that just doesn't feel right without grunt dag is likable enough since he has the personality of a normal Krogan but this final cutscene with him is just bizarre with him involved if Shepard saves the queen grunt fends off the rack and I and it's a really touching scene as it looks like runts going out in a blaze of glory if he's loyal though then he survives but it's still quite gut-wrenching to watch this same exact scene plays out with dag and it just feels so out of place Grunt and Shepard have history so having the mission play out this way makes sense but dag is just some guy we met on this Mission and the music comes in like he's sacrificing his life for a friend which is just odd after finishing our mission with grunt we can report back to the Normandy and do Primark Victor's Mission apparently his son is stranded on tachanka and needs to be rescued after being asked why he's on the Krogan Homeworld the Primark says it's classified we learn from his son though that there's a bomb on tachanka that's about to go off furthermore we also learn that it's not only a turian bomb but that Cerberus is the one who's trying to blow it up this Mission isn't too important regarding story plots but it does highlight the game's commitment to urgency we'll see more examples of this in the side content section but Mass Effect 3 handles urgency pretty well urgency is a difficult topic to talk about and one I personally hate discussing it's hard to create a sense of urgency in a game like a mass effect where the player can go wherever they want and do whatever side missions they want cyberpunk got criticism for this because in that game the main character has about three weeks to live but you can wait over three weeks in game and nothing happens some thought that cyberpunk had no urgency because of this which confused me because if the game only gave us three in-game weeks to finish the story then it would suck that's why I only look at the main missions themselves to see if it fits there is currently a war going on in Mass Effect 3 so Shepard shouldn't be delaying the mission to go dance on the Citadel but BioWare knew this and took it even further than I thought they would as not only do the main quests keep that sense of urgency but so do the side quests all the main missions make sense and I'll take into account the reaper threat it feels like there's never any downtime during the missions because you're constantly going from one task to the next because people's lives are on the line even the two missions we just talked about uphold this idea because the rack and I'm making a move on the Galaxy is strange and is definitely something we should check out and rescuing the Primark Sun at first might not seem important but it could possibly give us an upper hand as he would owe us a favor plus it worked out anyway since we discovered there's an active bomb on the planet all of the main missions and just about every side mission has a sense of urgency and I'm really glad BioWare recognized this when creating them now that both missions are finished though we can finally cure the genif age but doing that is easier said than done according to Morton there's a building called the Shroud that protects the chanca from solar radiation Morton believes that that in theory they could disperse the Cure from the Shroud allowing it to kill the planet's inhabitants of the disease to do that though they're going to need to go through a giant Reaper which is currently destroying the planet the plan is to attack from the air and the ground at the same times that we can draw its attention away from the Shroud it sounds like a decent enough plan but once we land on tachanka Reef starts an argument with Rex this is another reason why Rex being alive is a lot better than having him dead as we know from Mass Effect 2 Reeve operates like a normal Krogan but Rex is different it creates this tense bout between two brutes as they have different ideals and different ways of upholding those ideals but if Rex is dead it's not Rex vs Reeve it's re vs jorgal jurgel is a new character but he acts like re which is why the story takes a hit since it's just two Meatheads having a dick measuring contest instead of a Krogan who goes against the status quo versus the one who's stuck in his ways after this the team will continue on and do you remember when I said that taking down a Reaper was going to be tough and that the methods were either going to be overwhelming power or something unconventional well this is exactly that because if we can ring the Hammers here on tachanka we can summon kalros the mother of all thresherma's and it actually works ringing the hammer summons Kal Ross who kills the reaper without much effort oddly enough around this time Rex daps Shepherd up and tells him that no matter what happens Shepard will always be known as a hero to the people of tachanka and a paragon interrupt occurs which I think is the first time this occurs in the main story Mass Effect 3 has changed the morality system a bit morality is now named reputation this has an effect on the game that I didn't notice until much later the best example is right at the end of the game where Shepard meets The elusive man similar to saren we can force The elusive man to take his own life of our speech checks are high enough but in that game we only had access to one side of the dialogue because our Shepherd was a full Paragon in Mass Effect 3 though this changes it's not based on how much Paragon or Renegade you have but how much of both you have our Paragon Shepherd as you would expect has a lot of Paragon and not a lot of renegade yet they can still choose the Renegade option because their overall reputation is extremely high on our Renegade Shepherd though we have lots of renegade but can choose the dialog option because our overall reputation is too low I honestly really like this system a lot and it's probably the best version of the morality system so far in the series because you weren't locked out of a specific dialogue just because you're stuck with one alignment it allows the player to play how they want and not how they should slight detour aside once Rex and Shepard shake hands they go their separate ways and attempt to ring the Hammers once cow Ross's summon Shepard can then meet with Morton who says that the device must be fired manually which means for Morton this is a one-way trip he is at the end of his life as he said and dying here is probably the best way for him to go you can however sabotage this whole ordeal if you want to before the tuchanka mission the dalatras meets and asks if you can sabotage the cures that the Krogan believed that they're cured this would allow us to win over the Krogan just long enough for them to help out palavan so the turians can send their troops to Earth I clearly didn't kill Morden nor do I want to as he said the genifade needs to be cured now and if he deems it to be the time then it's time Morden then ascends the Shroud and sings the same song he sang back in Mass Effect 2 which is a nice call back to that scene Morden is still one of my favorite characters in Mass Effect and seeing him go is sad but his death is not wasted he lived a fulfilling life and having his legacy be known as the doctor who cured the Krogan is quite the title to have as for Paddock though I shot him right away oh also because I didn't have malin's research in the Renegade playthrough Eve actually died so not only did the Krogan not get cured but the last fertile female is dead as well so the Krogan are truly doomed in that playthrough finishing this Mission though concludes the First Act of Mass Effect 3 and so far the story has been on a roll the prologue starts off really strong with the return of the Reapers and the destruction of Earth and act 1 continues the intensity by having us cure the genophage something that has been a core of mass effects history since the game's Inception and act 2 is about to get even more intense as we're tasked with solving the war between the Geth and the quarians something that's been going on for over 300 years but before we do that though we have two things to handle first we received information that there is a prothean artifact on Eden Prime and that udina is moving vast amounts of money on the Citadel which is something he hasn't done before both of these seem pretty low priority given the war going on and all but both of these missions are actually very important if we go back to Eden Prime the same place we visited all the way back in Mass Effect 1 will uncover a pod with an alien in it this alien's name is javik and he is a prothean the only one of his kind the protheans if you remember are one of the most important races in the series as they were wiped out 50 000 years ago and it's because of their Advanced Tech and impressive tactics that we were able to find the plans for The Crucible and discover vigil back on ilos so it's thanks to the protheans that we were able to stop Sovereign from summoning the Reapers all those years ago even if you were never told that javik was a prothean you could easily infer that this was the case since the collectors have a similar design javik is clearly confused concerned dazed and probably a dozen other adjectives seeing as he was frozen for over 50 000 years but he manages to calm himself down while trying to unlock javik's pod we can peer into his history thanks to Shepard getting that Cipher back in Mass Effect 1. we can see that the protheans have advanced technology and even biotic abilities it also seems like they too were overrun by the Reaper's overwhelming power the plan just like the researchers on iOS was to put themselves into cryo sleep until the next civilization comes by and opens the pods sadly this took longer than intended and power had to be conserved in moves that the pods could still Opera rate this meant taking power from other pods which is why javik is the only one alive being revived after 50 000 years and being told that not only are you the only prothean left but that the reapers are back and are still winning is a lot to take in it also doesn't help that to javik all the races in the Galaxy are still considered primitive to him because well let's be honest with ourselves no one has created anything like the beacon on Eden Prime so this cycle is way behind in technology this exact sentiment has been a growing concern for many in the galaxy and rightfully so if the protheans couldn't defeat the Reapers what makes you think that we will that's what makes the story of Mass Effect 3 so great because Shepard is changing the world and doing things no one has done before javik says that the protheans fought alone because the Galaxy couldn't work together in his cycle but in our cycle we can see that this has changed so far we've gotten the Krogan turian and solarians to join humanity and now it's time to get the Geth and the quarians but as I said we'll have to deal with udina first I'll talk about javik a bit more when we get to our final companion which is coming up in a few moments but to get there we'll have to stop a coup from happening and depending on our actions we might end up actually losing a companion in the process as we talked about earlier udina is apparently moving large sums of money around which is concerning the salarian council and he wants us to check it out good thing we did because we discovered it was more than just money laundering Houdini is working with Cerberus to Stage a coup on the Citadel Cerberus has managed to overwhelm c-seek so it's up to us to stop him and it's here where we get introduced to Kai Lang I do not like Kai link and that probably won't come as a surprise a lot of my complaints stem from his first impression first impressions are important in any context this first interaction will dictate how we judge a character going forward sometimes it's used as a way to subvert expectations or allow for a character to grow like with Miranda who was nicknamed ice queen but ends up becoming a lot more personable when you speak to her Kai Lang seems to be an assassin and seeing as he's using a sword in a Sci-Fi game we can assume he has some amount of skill with such a weapon not even Thane used bladed weapons and he also was an assassin as he talks about killing some someone with a sniper rifle speaking of thane he comes in to save the solarian counselor this isn't as jarring as it looks as you can meet him at the hospital a few times it's mostly just to catch up and see what he's been up to though the part that is jarring though is that Thane almost beats him hermar talks with Thane we can see that he is just waiting for his time to pass the capital syndrome that has been affecting him since the last game is still progressing and we know from the layer of Shadow broker dossiers that Thane was instructed to rest and not do any strenuous activity or he could essentially die faster so Thane is a terminally ill Doral with some type of asthma since Capital syndrome affects his lungs yet not only did he keep up with Kai Lang he almost beat him kailang barely manages to escape thanks to him stabbing Thane with his sword than will pull through so he's not dead yet but this fight has sealed his fate the problem with this fight is that from this first impression you don't get the sense that Kai Lang is a great assassin but rather an incompetent one he comes off as inexperienced and in way over his head and I can't tell if this was supposed to be intentional some of the dialogue seems to point towards Kai Lang being designed by the writers as an assassin who thinks he's the best but then other dialogue says he's the best should be embarrassed a terminally El Doral managed to stop him from reaching his Target I'll pass the word along what your assassin I'll have I can send you my reports on him I take it you two have met Kaylee Sanders and I had a share of Runnings with him I shot him in both legs once thought that might be the end of him but he showed up again on Omega even stronger elusive man patch him up that'd be my guess given what they were able to do with you and Grayson it's a safe bet Lang's even more dangerous now even if Kai Lang was meant to be a terrible assassin that still wouldn't remedy the problem since he seems to stop us at every turn Kai Lang is here during the Citadel Mission which goes nowhere as all he does is stab Thane and then destroy our car he then arrives on thessia a bit later for a lukewarm boss fight since he's designed not to die and then magically overpowers the team even if you were destroying him the entire fight this then all culminates at the Cerberus headquarters where you can actually kill him but the fight is okay at best it's quite easy to defeat Kai Lang and that's a real issue because BioWare is capable of making a villain that matches their strength both of the fights with sarin were quite tough you fought him in small rooms with limited cover and you had to put hundreds of rounds into him while difficulty is always going to be subjective at least on normal difficulty his large health and deadly abilities complemented his role as the main villain obviously Kai Lang isn't the main villain of the game but he is a looming threat one that doesn't live up to the role at any point in the story he also suffers from having the most annoying per personality I have ever seen Kai Lang is basically a weeb ninja he uses a physical sword in the Mass Effect universe and went outnumbered three to one his first line of dialogue is ha now it's fun I was half expecting him to say something like good try Shepard but that was only 10 of my power you haven't even seen my final form yet he also taunts you via email after you encounter him on vesia and just read this what kind of Light Yagami ass speech is this however there is still one way we can redeem him for probably the first time all game the Renegade option actually has the better story if Thane is dead captain kirihi from vermeier replaces him but since both are dead in that playthrough that means Kai Lang has no one standing in his way furthermore when we reach udina later he shows fabricated footage of Shepard shooting the counselor this would easily make the player furious at Kai Lang for setting them up like that and it would continue to break the relationship between the council and Shepard one that was admittedly quite broken already as a whole I think kailang as a concept is great this assassin that is constantly stalking Shepard and foiling his plans but he suffers from having very little interaction with the player and anytime he does interact with them he always seems to come out on top no matter the context once we make it through a few gameplay Arenas we'll come to the top floor where udina and the other counselors are and protecting them is Ashley depending on our actions here and some choices before this Ashley may not make it out of here alive Ashley still believes that Shepard is working with Cerberus and is willing to shoot us if we don't comply this either ends with actually getting shot and dying or turning on udina and siding with us it's quite infuriating that Ashley still won't believe us but I like how past choices can affect this as Romancing her in Mass Effect 1 adds points but cheating on her in Mass Effect 2 takes away points no matter what happens though udina is shot and killed for his actions and the council finally takes a liking to us still surprised it took this long for that to happen though after this though we are gonna have to say goodbye to Thane this was quite expected seeing as he took a sword to the stomach and the capital syndrome was already progressing at a fast rate this just accelerated the process the whole scene though is really sweet and well done as kolyat is here and you can join him in saying some prayers this surprises Thane as these are prayers from religions that many Israel don't believe in anymore than is happy to see that his son is not going down the path he took and is being a better person the prayer that the three recite though was not for Thane but actually for Shepard Thane always prayed after a kills that he was absolved of his sins and Shepard questioned this because Thane wasn't killing someone because a contract said so he tried to attack Kai Lang because he wanted to he was a hero in that moment not an assassin which is where koliat reveals that this prayer was for Shepard and his journey even in his final moments Thane wanted to make sure Shepard was okay and that his journey was free of Despair and harm that killed me Thane was easily one of the most likable and unique Companions of Mass Effect 2 and seeing his Devotion to Shepard and his cause through this was gut wrenching BioWare really wanted to get the tears flowing in this entry as so far Morton and Thane have died for us so that we can complete our mission this connects to a few conversations that we'll have with some of the crew because throughout this whole trilogy Shepard has gone from one thing to the next and hasn't really had a chance to sit down even though he had a six-month break in between games the threat of the Reapers is still out there and he can't rest until this war is done so it's no wonder that this war is still affecting him all this death and loss that he's experience is something no one should go through once we finish up with Thane and coyot we can meet with Ashley or Kaden and talk to them about what just happened you can also ask them to join your team again or tell them that they are best suited under Admiral hackett's leadership it's minor but I like the small degree of choice we're given here because if you really don't like them given their opinions of you on Horizon and Mars you can just essentially tell them to kick rocks and never return losing a companion hurts but I'm happy that BioWare is finally committing to the idea that companions don't have plot armor and can leave the team if certain conditions arise after this brief intermission though we're able to start act 2. Admiral Hackett says that the Italian support ships they send are being stretched thin so we need more fleets but lucky for us the Koreans are willing to talk as they too have their own problems we then meet with the Corian Admirals who are the same ones from the last game Admirals Ron Han Garrell chorus Zen and their new Ambassador talizora Tali will join us for most of these missions as well but if she is dead then her and Admiral Ron will take her place tally is an admiral because she's an expert on the Geth and because her dad used to occupy the other Admiral spot but since he died in tali's loyalty mission that spot was left open however despite there being five Admirals the quarians are more divided than ever we saw a bit of this back in Mass Effect 2 but just as a refresher the Admirals have different feelings on the Geth and whether or not the Corian should go to war with them Avril hangarol is the leader of the heavy Fleet and he is in favor of reclaiming ranok and going to war with the Geth Admiral Zen leader of these Special Projects division has always been in favor of defeating the Geth because she still sees them as machines that need to be controlled Emerald chorus leader of the civilian fleet was labeled a gethopologist in the last game because he believes that the Geth deserve rannock as their sentient creatures and should not have been fought Admiral Ron is the leader of the patrol Fleet and while she doesn't outright take a side she does seem to be in favor of War as she does help some of the Admirals by providing provisional support for them and Tali is possibly indecisive depending on whether or not she talked with Legion back in Mass Effect 2. speaking of Legion we'll end up meeting him very soon as when we meet with the Admirals they ask us to take out a Geth Dreadnought that is currently pounding their forces the one who is controlling it is Legion but not of his own volition after Legion left the Normandy and went back to the Geth they created a mega server that houses all their memories and data set the gath no longer had to be isolated from each other right after its construction though the quarines attacked so they had to defend themselves and their server this caused them to panic because the Geth operate better in groups as we know from Mass Effect 1 the Geth gets smarter when there are more of them around so when they started dying their intelligence got worse what made the guest desperate enough to work for the Reapers yes imagine that for every one of your people lost on Earth your own intelligence death the Creator's attack narrowed the death's perspective self-preservation took precedence you were afraid you'd be wiped out we do not experience fear as you would but we have no desire to be exterminated even if the Reapers cost the guest free will that is evidently an acceptable trade so the Guth were basically doomed to die until the Reapers offered to help them they didn't want to Ally with the Reapers but they determined that it was the only choice they only joined them because they wanted to live like I said just a second ago as we know from the previous games due to how the death were made the more there are the smarter they get well with the reaper upgrades this is no longer needed they are essentially as strong as they can be without the need for each other from here though we're tasked with doing two different side missions similar to act one the first is that the Geth of a planetary defense cannon on ranok the former quarian Homeworld an admiral course decided to sacrifice his own ship in order to blow it up thankfully he survived the crash but now we have to rescue him this sounds like a waste of time but Admiral chorus dying would be a huge blow to morale and defenses for a plethora of reasons the corians decided to convert all their ships into dreadnoughts even the civilian ones which admittedly is kind of impressive the issue though is that the civilian fleachers the same ideals as chorus so not only is their ship being turned into a target for the guests but they're also forced to fight an enemy they didn't want to fight in the first place Admiral chorus dying in a war that he didn't want to be a part of would easily piss off the rest of the civilian Fleet and make their final push onto ranac much harder the mission goes just about how you would expect but I do love this one encounter with a Dorn Hots according that was a part of the civilian Fleet he tells us how we need to find the Admiral because the civilian Fleet never wanted this war and if anyone is going to be able to get them out alive it's him Dorne also says though that he's never shot a gun before and now he's bleeding on the ground this could not only show how Reckless chorus is by just crashing onto a planet with civilians aboard but also just how warped accordions have become due to this war with The Gap they're now sending civilians Into The Fray even if they've never shot a gun before as for Legion he says that there are Geth fighter squads that plan to attack the quarians and will likely succeed if not stopped the problem though is that we can't just blow up their server or stop their ships we have to go inside the Geth consensus and take them out that way so Shepard gets sent inside and has to shoot these yellow strands to stop the Geth this isn't normally how it looks though because Legion is creating an environment that is familiar to Shepard which is why we're shooting at these strands of code since technically all of this is being handled digitally inside the server we can see some of the memories of the Geth and see how poorly they were treated by the corians once they started to gain sentience I honestly find it quite hard to talk about the Geth and quarian War because to me I see both sides of the argument accidentally creating a sentient AI is scary and should probably be shut down immediately but the guests were well within their rights to fight back regardless though you'll likely have noticed that the missions have changed whereas act 1's missions were just about helping the Krogan and turians with their problems act 2's Mission showed the player a different side of each faction Mass Effect 3 really wants you to see the horrors of this war and all the people who are involved in it and then force you to make a choice should the Geth or accordions win the war or should they broker piece before we make that decision though we have to deal with another Reaper this one dies in a more conventional way through overwhelming power but we do have to get up close to it so we can use the targeting laser right before it dies we can talk to it and all it really says is that they represent order and the world represents chaos when Shepherd tells it that they deserve an answer all it says is that it's something they can't come comprehend afterwards is where we get to make our choice Legion says that the Geth are no longer under the control of the Reapers but Legion asks Shepard if they deserve death since the Admiral plans do fire on the gath now that their ships lay dormant in space Legion suggests that he upload the reaper code to the guests that they can gain the sentience and power that they had while under Reaper control but without the Reapers actually controlling them this is where we have to decide the fate of an entire race if we side with Legion the Geth upload their code and attack the quarians wiping them out for good Tali will also kill herself since all her people are now dead if we side with the quarians then Legion will attack but not before being shot by Tali or Admiral Ron however it is possible to get the best of both worlds and for the first time in 300 years create peace between these two groups similar to the encounter with Ashley some of our decisions are part of a point system some of these are present in Mass Effect 3 such as saving Admiral chorus but most of these are in Mass Effect 2. destroying instead of rewriting the guests making sure Tali isn't exiled in her loyalty Mission and making sure the two come to an agreement during their confrontation are critical to making sure this ending goes well these are the kinds of choices I was hoping for in Mass Effect something that may seem insignificant now but becomes very important later is something I wanted to see from this series because it not only makes achieving a good ending harder but also makes the playthroughs more unique not everyone is going to come out of this Mission with the same ending and that's the kind of dramatic storytelling I was hoping for the fight between the Geth and the quarians has been relevant in every game and all of our choices all culminate in the final decision if you took a liking to the Koreans through Tali you might be more inclined to side with the quarians furthermore seeing how the Geth operated in Mass Effect 1 may have caused you to dislike them from the get-go but interacting with the corians may have also prompted a different reaction one that's not as pleasant seeing the civilians be thrown into a war they never wanted while also being ordered around by four Admirals that can't even agree with each other might make siding with the quarians a difficult Choice the war is a Trilogy long issue and getting that good ending is difficult so it forces a lot of players to make an actual Choice one that is quite hard to make regardless of our decision though Legion will either die by force or through sacrifice as his death gave the rest of the Geth intelligence before dying though Tali brings up the question that started the war in the first place do you remember the question that caused the creators to attack us talisora does this unit have a soul Shepherd Commander I must go to them I am I'm sorry it's the only way Legion the answer to your question was yes thank you just like the Gen of age it was only a matter of time until the situation was put to rest and it sits alongside the rack and I queen as one of my favorite questions Mass Effect poses to the player should something that wasn't sentient but now is be granted the same rights as all other sentient life or should it remain a robotic servant it's a philosophical question so ultimately it's not going to have a proper answer but that's the point you take in everything you've experienced across all three games then figure out where you stand this is your story after all with the centuries long war finally put to an end we can move on to the second half of Act 2 but since Tali has joined our party that means we've gotten all of our companions so let's quickly talk about our new members and also see what our old cast has been up to the first person we end up meeting is the vermeyer Survivor I mentioned how I wasn't a big fan of Ashley and Kaden in Mass Effect 2 because they weren't two separate people but just some entity called the vermeier Survivor a person who has been on the base of Horizon and despises Shepard for working with Cerberus Mass Effect 3 continues this sadly as the two are always in the same place the only major difference is their personal dialogue and side mission Mass Effect 3 doesn't really place a whole lot of priority on the companions this time around whereas Mass Effect 2 had two-thirds of the game dedicated to their Recruitment and loyalty missions this fits with the overall plot of the game as we aren't creating a small team but rather an army as such the crew doesn't have any loyalty missions and we can't really talk with them at least not in the traditional sense most of the dialogue starts with us going up to them and pressing the interact button which prompts them to say a line or two of dialogue about the mission for example after rescuing Eve if you talk to Garris he'll comment on her strength and courage given all she's gone through this is the same for all the crews who'll end up getting into a routine of doing a main mission then circling the Normandy to hear everyone's opinions this however can get a bit tedious at times especially when they decide to leave their post as the crew can move floors and go somewhere else but this was a great addition to the game as it makes things feel more alive like the crew has a functional social life and isn't just sitting in the rooms waiting for Shepard to talk to them furthermore each companion will also ask to meet on the Citadel when you have free time which allows you to talk to them more or possibly continue a romance if applicable The Citadel mission is really where Ashley and Cadence start to differ everything up until the Citadel attack is pretty much the same both of them were attacked and hospitalized and then after some time got a recommendation from udina to join the specters they then joined and helped guard the council from you until they either died or were convinced to stand down assuming you allow them to join you though you can visit them on the Normandy and for their side mission Cadence is more about relaxation as he's initially worried about his mom who's alone at home thanks to his dad serving in the war and being M.I.A if you offer some encouraging words you can also join him on the Citadel for some lunch Kaden claims that he needed to have a sanity check which is why he came to the cafe this is where you can continue your romance with him if he wants but if not the two of you just continue eating as for Ashley she's initially worried for her sister because her husband was called back into the service due to the reaper War it is discovered later though that her husband was eventually killed in action as part of her side mission you can join her and her sister and offer your sympathies while visiting the memorial wall on the Citadel overall they aren't amazing missions but ice assume that if you like Ashley and Kaden then you might like these missions as well besides those missions though not much else really happens with Kaden Ashley however goes through a bit of an arc in Mass Effect 1 she was very much against working with aliens and U.S Shepard couldn't condemn her for thinking this way if he wanted to in Mass Effect 3 though it seems like she's been more accepting of the crew as she offers to talk to Liara after the mission on desio which will make more sense when we get to that mission and if Tali dies in The rannock Mission she'll ask Shepard to leave her alone for a bit since Tali was like a sister to her I think my only complaint with this is that I wish more of it was forced onto the player and not just hidden behind some small bit of dialogue because it's very easy to miss these talks and if you don't remember to meet with her you'll just go on thinking she hasn't changed when she actually has overall though I do like her character Arc and it's also the main reason why I came to another conclusion it really feels like Ashley was the Canon choice for this series I know talking about canonicity is pointless since it's your story but Ashley not only has a different personality but an arc and a complete makeover even if Ashley the Canon Choice isn't true it's very obvious that she got more attention than Kaden I said that I liked Kaden in Mass Effect one more and that's still true as I really like his backstory but if we're talking about the whole trilogy Ashley clearly wins because Kaden doesn't change now you don't need to make a character change all the time in order for them to be considered likable but being stagnant is a problem a great example is our next companion Garris Garris has always been fighting Justice that part of him has never changed but the ways he went about doing it though are what makes his story interesting because he went to Great Lengths in order to achieve his goal he went from fighting with Commander Shepard to being a vigilante that had three of omega's top gangs fighting against him his core ideals had never changed but the ways he went about doing them did after fighting the collectors Garris worked with some of the Terrian military and got his own Reaper task force which to him is not something he really wanted since he's not exactly an expert on the Reapers he knows about as much as anyone else does with the only difference being that he's actually survived a fight with one which I guess given the circumstances is a lot better than anyone else this job really weighs down on him though since he like many of the top officials are in charge of millions of people's lives that's a lot of pressure for someone who's been a vigilante for a few years and only really followed the rules in csec in those days crimes weren't galaxy-wide attacks and the only people he had to worry about was his Squad back in Omega but that's where the brotherly love comes in as him and Shepard are both struggling over the loss of their people but they always seem to pick each other up when they need it which is why his side mission felt special as it was the first time the two could just relax which really cements their friendship once Garris joins the crew he gets to work on calibrating like he usually does but will ask you to join him on the Citadel originally I thought this would involve drinking and I guess I was half right as Garris takes us to a restricted area and we start shooting drinks with sniper rifles the phrase brother from another mother fits these two perfectly they've gone through hell and back twice now and now it's about to be their third however one sad detail I noticed during the palavan mission is when James asked about garris's family on palaven and he said he had a dad and sister but in the layer of the Shadow broker there's a conversation between him and his sister about their mother it seems like their mom had some sort of terminal illness and the money the two had was not going to be enough to pay for the procedures given that he doesn't mention her we can assume that she passed away in between games despite how consistent Garris has been throughout the series he's not the only one that's shown up multiple times the other two veteran companions are Liara and Tali Liara as we know is the new Shadow broker this seems to be Canon as if he didn't do the DLC it's one that she hired a ton of mercs to help instead Liara has a lot more power now which means she can now feel like a valuable asset to the team which was one thing that was bringing her down during that DLC and she ends up using some of that power to create a backup plan at some point later in the game she'll come to Shepard's cabin with a gift this box is a time capsule that she plans to make with the hope that if they fail other civilizations will find it it seems to have plans for The Crucible as well as any knowledge they have gained in the Reapers up until this point but Lira also wanted to add one more thing which is a description of Shepard we are the one who's made the most progress so far so it makes sense that we're a part of the Time Capsule whatever you choose to say though ultimately doesn't matter but this interaction is nice as it shows that she's trying to consider all possible options clearly the end of the world is troubling her but it doesn't seem to be the only thing troubling her as she seems to have a not so great relationship with her father that of course being matriarch athita who we first met back on ilium we had a brief tease of this back in the lair of the Shadow broker where we could find a video of The Matriarch holding a picture of Liara but that's about it you can talk to her at the bar on the Citadel and through some convincing can make liar reconnect with her apparently she's been keeping tabs on the r and has even prevented a few hits on her besides that though we can find out that one of the matriarch's parents or liara's grandparents was a Krogan which means that makes Liara a quarter Krogan the rest of the dialogue isn't too important but it is nice to hear what the two have to say as they catch up in chat foreign I have never wanted to headbutt anything really not even a little bit come on I do not headbutt people as for tally well most of her time in between games was covered in the Act 2 Section which that she left to go join the fleet and then took up an admiral position since she's an expert on the get not much has happened since then so there isn't much to say but there are two things I found rather interesting firstly if you romance College will give you a picture of herself with her mask off this was changing the legendary edition and I'm definitely a fan of the changes it looks more authentic the other though is after a future mission where we rate a place called sanctuary in that mission we'll meet with Miranda and her father after that mission though we'll find Tali drinking by the bar tally has decided to make a toast of Miranda because she was able to stand up to her father the reason why no one is joining her is because this is something tally struggles with she spends a lot of her life trying to live up to him and doing what he wanted her to do this connects to her loyalty Mission which is something I had mistakenly misinterpreted I had originally thought that her thank you at the end of the scene was genuine but according to some comments it was actually supposed to be sarcastic thank you by the way for those that corrected me on this because it makes way more sense when combined with this interaction triple filled third then introduced into the suit through an emergency induction important that's a straw tally emergency induction Port our final old crew member is Edie she's still the ship's AI but she's now taken on a mobile platform and Joker is more than happy with the decision Joker in Edie's relationship is quite an important one as it's a synthetic AI dating an organic human this is unheard of since most AI have a ton of blockages preventing them from Gaining intelligence and sentience which is what Edie used to be back in Mass Effect 2 but since Joker overrode those systems and the collectors attacked the Normandy she is now completely sentient what Edie is unfamiliar with though is how this way of thinking works so she does the typical synthetic thing and looks at things from a more logical perspective over time though we can see her try to be more organic like instead of saying Joker is smiling and laughing at a higher rate than usual she'll correct her statement and say that joker is happier the first sentence sounds like she's reading a stat sheet however Edie can sometimes be really annoying to talk to like when she tries to say a joke at the most inopportune of times but I don't think this is a writing mistake EDS trying to be more human now that she has free will but she misses the mark sometimes and doesn't understand the context that's why she asks us a lot of questions but one question I've always had for Edie though is where she came from thankfully I got that answer this isn't found until later when we raid cerberus's headquarters but has discovered that the AI we found on the moon back in Mass Effect 1 was partially Edie Cerberus took that Ai and enhanced it with some Reaper technology which gave birth to Edie we can have a brief talk with her about that experiment and Mass Effect 2 I believe in which he says that it was cerberus's attempt to create controllable AI but as we saw that didn't really work overall Edie was really Pleasant to talk to now that she has free will as a lot of her questions were very philosophical and even if they were hard to answer they were at least interesting to think about with the old companions out of the way though we can now talk about our two remaining cast members javik and James javik as we discussed earlier is a prothian and according to him the prothean people had assigned avatars to each other these are traits that the protheans embodied like bravery and strength javix was vengeance he is the anger of his people who demand that blood be paid for blood and his only purpose in life is to now defeat the Reapers traffic is very dedicated to his mission which makes sense given that he's seen his entire population disappear thanks to the Reapers which is why he helps Commander Shepard is that you share a common goal when we talk with javik we get a bit more insight into his people and his own abilities according to javik the reason The Crucible failed during his cycle was that a splinter group thought that they could control the reaper so they went against everyone javik learned though that these people were indoctrinated and actually working for the Reapers hmm definitely not foreshadowing anything javik also repeatedly states that all the Galaxy's races are primitive which once again makes sense when you consider the prothean technology but it's more than just Tech prothians have the ability to for a lack of a better word feel a person or feel a room when we first talk with javik down here in the cargo bay he says that he feels the anger of an individual in here this room used to belong to grunt so he feels the traces that grunt Left Behind he'd also communicate memories to Shepard just like how the beacon communicated those memories to him back in Mass Effect 1. also tends to offer a different perspective on things as most of his dialogue is blunt and pragmatic for example during Act 2 with the Geth when Legion comes on board the first thing javik says is to take that thing and space it out the airlock Shepard of course is more than willing to work with new races whereas javik is not he knows the pain that the Reapers inflict and is not willing to compromise on anything that gets in his way for javik's side mission we can take him to the Citadel which was only a place of dreams for him since the Reapers had already taken it over by the time he was born jevik ends up giving a rousing speech to some of the people here and we can learn that the protheans were like Gods to everyone as they saw the races grow over time javik remembers back when the humans were just cavemen and is surprised that not only can the asari right now but that the solarians were even able to evolve at all since they mostly just licked their eyes constantly his people were kind of like protectors in a sense but I used that term loosely since they mainly protected Races they thought had the most potential but not potential to evolve or Thrive or anything like that but potential to join them as every race was given a choice of joining the protheans are dying I think out of all the crew javik is my favorite in Mass Effect 3. he has a different opinion on certain topics that I'm always interested to listen to and the fact that he's a protheon also helps out as well that this war will end with your honor intact I do stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters this silence is your answer our final companion though is James Vega and honestly I feel so bad for James he might have gotten the shortest stick out of all the companions 5 out of these seven companions in this list are old members some as old as the first game so we're already familiar with them and have created a bond together the only two people that aren't old are javik and James and javix aprofian James also has a typical human military background so it's not too interesting but there is one part that sticks out James served under an officer Tony for a bit but he and the rest of his crew died during a collector attack James decided that the mission was more important than the lives of his Squad because the data they found could have been critical to stopping the collectors I say could have though because Shepard already took care of the collectors without that data so James's Squad died for nothing Shepard grills him a bit on this by asking if this is why he was so reckless on Mars and whether or not he even cares to live or die anymore it does seem like James is upset at his decision but recognizes that he wouldn't have known about Shepard in the crew so he made the right choice at the time with the limited knowledge he had after some time though Shepard will get a call from James who asked for a private conversation apparently James has been nominated for the N7 training which is the same thing Shepard went through before the events of the series he's confused by this though since his past mission was a total failure so he doesn't really see himself as worthy you can convince him to do it anyway which he's been getting an N7 tattoo to commemorate the occasion besides that though most of James's discussions are quite mundane but I really find that he shines through gameplay thanks to me having three companions for my whole Renegade playthrough I was forced to use James for most of the missions and it's here where he starts to grow a personality he's kind of like this dumb Meathead guy and some of his dialogue is just such a treat to listen to him hacking and security nice to meet you Sparks Sparks yeah you've got lights in your uh and you're kind of small and jumpy it just came out if you say so James get on it uh text not my specialty but I'll pull a few wires see what comes out as you can tell from the length of this section though Mass Effect 3 really didn't put a lot of effort into the companions as opposed to Mass Effect 2 but this fits given the current objective of the game plus more than half the cast are older members all five of whom were literally in the previous game so it's not like there was much to talk about since it's only been six months that's why Mass Effect 2's attempt to change their stories was commendable two years had passed the Reapers haven't attacked and jeopard was presumed dead so they all had to move on in Mass Effect 3 that's not the case the reapers are approaching so there's no time to take down rival gangs on Omega or overthrow the shadow broker but still even with the lack of attention put on the companions most of them are likable and interesting characters and being able to spend some down time with them on the Citadel was a nice change of pace continuing where we left off we just finished handling the war between the quarians and the Geth since that's over though we need a new objective thankfully the asari counselor has something she wants to tell us that could help the war effort apparently on thessia the asari Homeworld there is an artifact that is integral to winning the war we just need to find our way to get there since the SEO is being overrun by Reaper forces just like in the previous games picking specific companions during missions can reward different dialogue and javik is essential for this Mission Mass Effect 3 though sadly doesn't have a lot of these unique interactions since most emissions will give you a required companion like Tali being present during most of Act 2 but there is at least this interaction the reason javik is so important is because we learned that the protheans were the gods of the asari asari culture used to worship a God name a theme who helped grow the asari people she taught them things like how to grow crops how to use biotics and even protected them from danger with her shield and sword javicle chime in during this dialogue and say that the protheans did not want her pupil to starve and also how a meteor shower was going to rain down on thessia so they deflected it this would also explain how javik knows biotics since his people either created it or learned it from another race and then passed it down to the asari furthermore inside the Statue of a theme was a prothean beacon this is the artifact that the asari counselor was talking about as inside it is a prothean VI javik obviously expresses his distaste for the asari using his people's technology for their own gain without telling anyone about it but Liara is just as surprised as we are since she didn't even know this Beacon existed this admittedly has Liara all shaken up since her entire religion was a lie now to be fair most is sorry including Liara don't worship a theme but it was a core part of their species at one point in time so it is still a shocking Revelation according to the vi it says that these cycles of Destruction are intentional and are almost machine like there seems to be the same peaks of evolution and the same values of disillusion in every cycle there are even similar conflicts in each cycle like how Cerberus is fighting against everyone in order to control the Reapers the vi believes that the Reapers aren't responsible for the pattern but are responsible for carrying it out meaning something is ordering the Reapers around and telling them to harvest the vi sadly doesn't know who the leader is but all it knows is that it wants Galactic annihilation we asked the vi to join us and did agrees but it ends up hiding as an indoctrinated presence is nearby that presence is none other than kai Lang and The elusive man subtlety has never been in Mass Effect 3's Playbook The elusive man that does his usual stick of telling Shepherd that his plan is better and that controlling the Reapers is the only way after knowing his plan The elusive man orders Kai Lang to kill the group and retrieve the vi as we talked about earlier this is the encounter where Kai Lang is guaranteed to win and you can see the massive disconnect from gameplay to cut scene since he goes down super quickly in game and then magically gathers enough strength to overpower the group with ease I do like the fact that he brought a high into the fight since you really need to throw everything you got it Shepherd in order to kill him I just wish it could have been a part of the fight rather than an obstacle that forces us to take cover while Kai Lane recharges Kai Lang then destroys the church and steals the vi leaving the crew to die to make matters worse thusia is being overrun by the Reapers so not only is the asari Homeworld being destroyed but the team didn't even complete their objective this is the first major failure the team has experienced all game and it hits everyone pretty hard including Liara she not only lost her Homeworld but also learned the truth about her people's upbringing it really brings them all the crew down to rock a bottom and while I'm all for this reaction as it's normal to be disappointed after a defeat such as this it's kind of ruined when you remember that it's Kai Lang who cost us the victory this Mission didn't make me hate Kai Lang I've already hated him the moment he came on screen it makes me hate the fact that we lost an unwinnable fight against a ninja with plot armor with the mission done though we're pretty much finished vessio was our final lead and we can't get Kai Lang since we don't know where the elusive men and his headquarters are stationed however according to specialist trainer Kai Lang's signal went off when they reached the Lara system according to Edie there is a place called sanctuary in that system and she believes that this is where they're located specialist trainer by the way replaces Kelly Chambers position in Mass Effect 2 so she'll tell us when some of the crew want to speak with us and when we have new messages but she is way more competent than Kelly since she actually goes out of her way to find distressed beacons that others have sent out like the one at Grissom Academy which we'll cover in a bit so her noticing this detail doesn't really seem too outlandish it also may seem a bit far-fetched that this is the one place they could be when we're talking about a whole solar system here but from reading the description of the planets and the system it seems like Horizon the planet where Sanctuary is on is the only place that can actually sustain any life as the other planets either have no oxygen levels or gas planets a second ago I just mentioned horizon horizon of course being the same place who went in Mass Effect 2 and found the vermeyer Survivor speaking of them you can bring them along for this Mission but they sadly have no dialogue it does partially make sense since Sanctuary seems to be built after the collector attack since the facility is supposed to be a safe haven for those Escaping The Reaper War but I still think some dialogue from them could have gone a long way after going through the facility we discovered that Sanctuary was well anything but Sanctuary is actually a covert base made by Cerberus which used the people here as test subjects that they could experiment with husk creation by creating their own husks servers can further understand the indoctrination process which is critical to their goal of controlling the Reapers it seems like the Reapers found out about this as well as we actually arrive late to the party as Cerberus and the Reapers have already begun fighting so it seems like the elusive man is fighting off the indoctrination and is able to have some cognitive awareness similar to sarin on vermeier in the facility though are a few Terminals and by watching the videos recorded on them we can discover that Miranda her father her sister and Kai Ling are all here what a family reunion Miranda's father Henry runs the facility and he also captured Miranda's sister which is why they're both here Kai Lang is just here to get the data from the facility before it's overrun and maybe deal with Miranda if she gets in his way once we catch up with the family we have some options on how to deal with this you can talk Henry Dunn which gives Miranda enough time to throw him out the window or you can shoot orianna in the leg opening her father up for another shot I'm kind of surprised that she was fine with this since she never screams in pain or anything maybe that just comes to being genetically perfect as for Kai Lang well apparently he ran off again but somehow Miranda put a tracking device on him kind of surprised no one noticed that but okay I guess without Miranda's help though the team gets enough info to find the base anyway thanks to some leftover logs so it really doesn't matter with this mission complete though we're now finished with act 2. overall I think the first half of Act 2 was a lot better as there was an actual story to the ACT but the SEO was pretty good minus the fight with Kai Lang and this mission on Sanctuary was all right it's not insanely impressive but not bad enough to actually call it a waste after this though we'll talk with the team and find the location of the Cerberus headquarters but starting this Mission brings us past the point of no return so before we do that let's talk about some side content then finish up with some DLC so Mass Effect 3 has four kinds of side content which I call Companion missions and seven missions Citadel missions and Citadel things I'll get to that in a moment these are what I call these missions because Mass Effect 3 refused to do so itself in Mass Effect 1 and 2 your quests were organized by missions and assignments missions were main missions like recruiting a companion or going to a specific place during the main quest assignments were side missions such as finding Brandy for Dr shockwas or settling a dispute between Aquarian and a Volus Mass Effect 3 just completely removes this tab in the journal so every Quest is on the same page which starts to create quite a mess this wouldn't be half as bad if the Citadel missions were not the main cause of this issue the Citadel missions are found by walking near people and listening in on conversations just passing by the quest Giver will likely give you a mission even if you didn't want it all your tasks with doing is going to the location that's in the journal and finding the object by scanning the planet that is if you can find the planet to begin with the Citadel missions are labeled with a name before the title if the name says Citadel on it nine times out of ten they're found during the N7 missions which is something I only found out after finishing the game the others are a complete toss-up one of them started with Hades Nexus a class on the Galaxy map which means somewhere in this cluster is the planet we need it's tedious but it Narrows the search down a ton however it can also be the opposite another one started with irune that's the name of the planet so now we know what planet we're looking for but don't know the system or cluster do you know how many of those exist in this game there is no way I'm going through every system just to find a book that may or may not actually help me even if you find the planet you'll have to skin it to actually inspect it which depending on the location could attract a Reapers a new addition to Mass Effect 3 is reapers on the Galaxy map if you press the scan button you can scan the solar system if a red circle appears that means something is there but scanning attracts the Reapers and after enough time they'll attack you you can't fight back though you have to escape or you die if you do die then you're just sent back to right before they enter the solar system meaning they'll still attack you even if you escape they'll still come back even if you return the only way to bring them back to their original state is by completing one main mission something the game also doesn't tell you this can make it extremely difficult to find the item you're looking for such as the one in the Hades Nexus since I actually have to scan the planets the one on a rune isn't too bad since I can just hover over them to see its name but regardless each one is tedious it just depends on what kind of tedium we're talking about Also regarding the scanning this is all you can do on the Galaxy map Mass Effect 3 has no Planetary Exploration like the first game or resource Gathering like the second so 90 of the time it's not even worth inspecting a planet so all in all the Citadel missions are quite annoying to do but we haven't even talked about the worst part which is that each Quest can either be time sensitive or progress sensitive time sensitive means we can only do a set number of missions before it fails the bomb on tuchanko was time sensitive if we did three missions after receiving this Quest then it fails because we didn't do the mission in time progress sensitive means it fails after a specific main quest for example One mission called Citadel bar Lavon has to be completed before tachanka however this goes both ways this exact Mission also has a prerequisite which means it cannot be completed until after Cirque but we get this after palaven so in order of events we do the mission on palaven's moon where we meet Garris go to the Citadel and possibly find this Mission but then have to wait until after sirkesh which is where we rescue Eve because for some odd reason it's unavailable but then we also have to make sure it's done before tachanka which is the next domain Mission so we only have one time frame to actually do this Quest it is the most confusing Quest system I have ever seen in a game before in a vacuum I think the progress sensitive concept is a good idea but with all these prerequisites and lack of information regarding when the mission can even be started or where it even is it just makes these unbearable besides the Citadel missions we have Citadel things and I cannot figure out who these are for sometimes on the Citadel you'll overhear a discussion between two people and can decide who to side with all these do is reward some reputation and maybe some more assets depending on the discussion it's just such a strange activity to me though because it's just Shepard going up to everyone on the Citadel butting into their conversation to offer some advice and then leaving without any elaboration I can see how this could be cool to some people as your decisions are impacting people's lives I just cannot get over how awkward these are however there are a few discussions I actually enjoyed sometimes when visiting the Citadel you'll overheard some people talking but they're neither Quest givers nor are they having an argument these conversations are our main reason why I enjoyed walking through the Citadel probably the best one is this asari Huntress who is currently suffering from PTSD when you first approach them they say a couple lines of dialogue and then stop talking when you leave the hospital and come back though they continue the next set of lines you can keep doing this over and over again until the conversation is finished this is also how I discovered information about Liara since eavesdropping on their conversation is the only way to hear more about them the main reason I like this specific conversation is because it's related to Joker according to the asari hunter she was on a planet called tip tree to make a long story short the huntress ended up meeting a girl named Hillary and had to survive against a Reaper attack Hillary seems to be a teenager judging by what she says so the huntress was doing most of the Dirty Work the story ends on a sad note though as Hillary broke her leg and wouldn't stop crying so the hunters had to decide between killing Hillary or revealing their position she chose to kill her which was the main source of her PTSD as any time she sees a human now she freaks out this was confirmed by one of the writers to be Joker's sister since Joker will talk about his family living on tip tree not all of them are as good as this one but I did enjoy the concept of these conversations and she'll be returning to the Citadel a lot so it creates this sort of natural flow of dialogue or you could just change floors and come back if you're impatient like me as for the N7 missions they're similar to most of the basic side quests in Mass Effect 2 land on a planet do a thing and get out in about 5 minutes I have the same opinion of these quests as I did in Mass Effect 2. they're okay for the most part but the real highlight being the sky boxes and structures outside the playable area one thing Mass Effect 3 does improve though is the mission structure since the majority of these missions involve Cerberus so you could say that doing these is worth it since we're disrupting cerberus's operations whereas in Mass Effect 2 we were just doing different things for different people the last and easily the best of the bunch in regards to Mass Effect 3 side content is the companion missions there are quite a few missions in Mass Effect 3 that will have us running into our old crew from Mass Effect 2. the only problem with them is that similar to the mission with grunt when the companions aren't there the missions aren't that great take this mission where we have to find these ex-serberus scientists who are under attack from Cerberus forces this mission is quite out of place and nothing of importance really happens on this Mission but that's because most of it rides on Jacob being alive so the player can catch up with their old crewmate we already talked about grunt but besides him we can also catch up with Kasumi zaeed Jacob Samara and Jack there's also a short interaction with Miranda on the Citadel but that's not really a part of a mission the two of you just catch up and talk about what Miranda is up to which is why we find her at Sanctuary a bit later probably the best of the bunch are Jack and Samara Jack after leaving the Normandy attended Grissom Academy and became a teacher there since the academy is dedicated to training biotic students she of course is a complete hard ass when it comes to teaching but you can tell she really likes her students and willingly step into danger to make sure they're okay this Mission also gives us some insight into biotics as some of the students ask for a break since they haven't eaten and need to recharge the way they talk about this though implies that their biotic Powers consume the nutrients they eat so the more they eat the more they can burn I don't recall this ever being mentioned before at least not in dialogue so that wasn't interesting detail to learn about during the mission after we rescue her student she goes with them to fight the Reapers as their needed thanks to their biotic potential but you can also visit her on the Citadel for a brief chat if you want to I really do like this change for Jax and she grew up in a biotic camp and was basically tortured but now she's on the other side of the table and given her past refuses to let that happen to her students this of course comes with some side effects as she has to follow regulations and can't swear in front of the students so even though Jack has changed a bit she still has the same personality that we all know and love samara's Mission comes after the coup on the Citadel we get a mission from the asari counselor about an ardad yakshi Monastery being attacked since a group of asari Commandos went to check the place out but never reported in this is where we learn about the Banshee enemies and discovered that they were ardad yakshi that had been altered thanks to the Reapers as you would expect we find Samara here we can actually meet her other two daughters if you remember from one of our conversations with Samara we know that she swore the justikar oath and left her daughters at the monastery she hasn't seen them since that day since she was dedicated to stopping so this is the first time the family has seen each other in over 400 years sadly it's not all sunshine or rainbows though since one of the daughters started turning momentarily before being knocked out that daughter also opts to stay behind and lure the Banshees into the monasteries that she can blow them all up this bomb was originally placed here by the asari Commandos but seeing as they likely died the Detonator is still functional this blows up some of the monastery and kills samara's second daughter after the Samar goes into the speech about her daughter's death reminding her about what's truly important in life and why she became a Jessica and it was a really great speech until she pulls out a gun and almost kills herself according to the justica code in order yakshi cannot live outside the monastery and since the monastery is blown up she has to kill her daughter but Samara won't kill her last daughter so she opts to take her own life instead I get why she's doing this she's showing that the love for her daughter outweighs her code unless she needs to end her life but I don't think we needed to go that far I've been pretty tolerant of samara's code for the most part even though a lot of the rules make very little sense like how she would have been forced to kill the officers at the station in Mass Effect 2 if they didn't release her but this one was just way too much for me plus the monastery isn't even gone it's just a bit wrecked and her daughter decides to stay in the war-torn building anyway so her taking a bullet would have been unnecessary after this though we can talk to Samara again but she mentions how she's leaving and just wanted to say a proper goodbye these missions are definitely the best in the group thanks to the actual stories being quite interesting even without the companions inclusion saving biotic students especially human ones and also checking in on a monastery for the asari counselor are decent enough reasons to get the player to check them out so even without Jack and Samara they were passable missions the same cannot be said for the others though zaid's mission is centered around a Volus Ambassador who may be working with Cerberus after investigating his office we can find the room he's in along with Zaid who will be alive if loyal or dead if not that's pretty much it Zaid also doesn't offer much in terms of dialogue other than him talking about how he's trying to hunt down Cerberus agents and that if Shepard needs he can get some buddies he can round up for the war but like I said that's pretty much it kasumis is centered around an indoctrinated Hannah who's trying to sabotage his own homeworld's defense systems he then work with a Solari inspector to track and take him down the only reason Kasumi is even relevant to this mission is because the gray box from kg had this information on it it doesn't matter if she kept the box or not or even if she's alive since the information gets found one way or another I think the biggest crime this Mission commits is downplaying the specters again all I have ever wanted is just one Mission with an established Specter and everyone we've met has either died betrayed us betrayed us or actually did their job but had a mission that was quite boring working with televasir during the lair of the Shadow broker was still a major highlight of that DLC I just wish she didn't betray us technically since Kaden and Ashley become specters they fulfill my goal but it doesn't feel the same since they just became a specter and we knew them prior to getting that title with televasir it was like okay we're both specters we know how to get things done so let's just cut the and get straight to business it felt like two professionals were teaming up together and that was an exciting part of the DLC since spector's working with one another is quite rare I just wish we could get a proper Mission with that same feeling talking with Kasumi doesn't amount to much either as she really doesn't add anything to the conversation we can offer her a spot on the Normandy again but she declines and for Jacob well we already went over his mission ex-serber scientists are trying to leave without getting shot by Cerberus soldiers and we come in to help the only important detail that is worth talking about is that Jacob is dating this Dr Brynn and is expecting a child this is cool but this is also around the time I discovered how shafted femshep gets in this game when it comes to Rome especially if she's straight male Shepard has seven different options for straight romances Jack Miranda Liara Tali Ashley Kelly Chambers and Diana allers femshep only has four Kaden Thane Garris and Jacob Caden is knocked out for half the game Thane dies halfway through the game and Jacob straight up cheats on you which is the first time I've ever seen a companion in any RPG do that the only full game option is Garris this personally doesn't affect me but I did go down a rabbit hole of information about romanceable characters one day and wanted to share my strange findings with you all as you can see though these missions aren't as good as the first two and it's mostly because of how dependent the mission is on the companions being alive or in some cases it's still pretty poor when they are alive the one thing these missions do bring to the table though is the opportunity to catch up with some of the old cast and this I can see being quite an issue for some people those who are a bit more nitpicky than me may claim that Shepard finding all these people all the time is unrealistic which is a totally fair point but on the other side of the coin people might be mad these characters never show up despite having a prominent role in the previous game their inclusion ends up creating a double-edged sword damned if you do damned if you don't I think if I had to pick one though I'd probably go with how the game is structured now since I'd rather have the worst problem being how unrealistic it is that they'd meet Shepard rather than it just being how they don't show up at all and thus are a waste of time as a complete package Mass Effect 3's Quest like its story is one of high highs and low lows Mass Effect 3 has both sides of the spectrum when the quests are good they're really good and when they're disappointing they're really disappointing I think out of the trilogy Mass Effect 1 still has the best Planetary Exploration which is kind of unfair since it's the only game to have it but in terms of quest design I think I still have to give it to Mass Effect 1. it wasn't fun going through the same hallways and corridors just to read some text about an event we never saw happen but I think it was much better than Mass Effect 2's attempt at it which is very similar to three with the exception of some of the companion missions that of course being just a small Arena to walk around in with a good enough Skybox to look at but not enough room to actually explore as for the DLC we have five to talk about but we'll be saving one for later since it focuses on the ending of the game as for the other four the first one we have is called From the Ashes we received information that there is a protein artifact on Eden Prime if we go back to Eden Prime the same place we visited all the way back in Mass Effect 1 we'll uncover a pod with an alien in it this alien's name is javik and he's a prothean the only one of his kind if you're wondering why I just repeated what I said earlier than you're catching on because javic is DLC but you likely wouldn't have known that given how important he is to the story The last time we talked about DLC characters was when we met with Kasumi and Zaid but both were very clearly built around the game rather than in it both had recruitment missions immediately upon starting the game gave us their loyalty Mission soon after recruiting them and are the only two people in the game that can't be talked to normally as we have to interact with our stuff in order to talk to them they felt like DLC because they were javik is nothing like that despite not being a part of the base game this is because javik was made during the certification process even taking a brief look at the development history of the game will show you that this game was rushed both Mass Effect 2 and 3 seemed to start development before the previous games were released the problem though is that Mass Effect 2 had about 3 years of time while massive act 3 had two years of time furthermore Mass Effect 3 had double The Voice lines of multiplayer mode and quite a few new additions on top of that that's not a whole lot of time as such the team needed to make some drastic Cuts javik was sadly one of them the thing is though is that he made it on time he was day one DLC this of course is because of that certification process Mass Effect 3 like any game had to be certified but if they spent time on javik they would have had to extend the date of certification and thus the date of the game so they shipped the game without him in it and during the three months it took to be certified they reconstructed javik's recruitment Mission along with anything else he was supposed to be a part of so that it didn't feel out of place for those who didn't buy the DLC I absolutely despise the idea of day one DLC especially if it's story content like this but reading the development makes me less angry about the whole ordeal I still don't like it but most of my disgust is now directed towards EA who I can only assume are the people that wanted Mass Effect 3 to have such a short development time in the first place thankfully the legendary Edition comes with all the DLC so those just starting the series for the first time will never run into this problem but that doesn't excuse the fact that at one point it was a problem quite a few people probably played Mass Effect 3 without javik since he was additional content and didn't think it was going to be anything important since Kasumi and Zaid weren't as important to match effect 2. this makes the SEO a completely different Mission as javik no longer interjects mid-conversation to talk about the prothean history in our Renegade playthrough we never picked javik up so he wasn't present for this year and while the yara's dialogue is still the same javik is in there to correct her so it's never stated that the protheans were their gods you could possibly come to this conclusion anyway since the beacon is still inside the asari Statue but that wouldn't work either because there was one on Eden Prime so it wouldn't make any sense that the protheans are the gods of the asari it would just further confirm that the asari government tried to hide and harness the prothium power furthermore anything we learned from javik has immediately tossed out the window since he wouldn't be present however the game does try to remedy this by bringing it up anyway like when javik told us that there were indoctrinated protheans that were trying to control the Reapers just like what Cerberus is doing now which is something the vi anthesia tells us anyway regardless if javik is present they also made javik a soldier instead of some other protheon so that he wouldn't have the knowledge on The Crucible or Catalyst something the main quest will eventually explain to us as well so to be fair in terms of quest relevant details we're not missing out on much but we are missing out on a plethora of information from the species history to their technology which even though isn't main quest relevant is arguably just as important when talking about the story of Mass Effect all this goes back to our earlier discussion about the game's story saying to chanka's Mission suck because of Riven Paddock is kind of like saying thessia sucked because javik wasn't present while the story can have multiple paths it's very obvious that one is the better choice and has the more appealing story it's just a real shame that javik wasn't a part of the base game thankfully the next three DLC were not Day One content so let's start with the first part of the Mass Effect 3 post launch content that being the DLC Omega Omega Stars Arya talok the same woman in Mass Effect 2 who claimed that she was Omega which is ironic since she isn't Omega anymore thanks to Cerberus driving her out she wants Shepard to help get her throne back this is an odd request given we have a war going on but we would be putting a stop to cerberus's operations again and seeing as they were testing on the people of sanctuary it makes sense why they're doing the same to the people of Omega plus Arya says she has a large shipment of element zero with her name on it and given how rare it is to find element zero if Mass Effect 2 is anything to go off of it's probably smart if we help her Arya to Loke right away makes it pretty clear that her attitude matches her decision making Reckless her master plan is to force her way past omega's defenses using Brute Force despite the fact that General petrovsky the current head of Omega says that they've upgraded the place's defenses I'm really starting to see how she lost control of this place as with most things involving Shepard sheer luck and determination when in the end and they somehow make it side we didn't have to get through lots of cerber soldiers to get to our actual objective though the biggest change Omega makes to the gameplay is giving us Arya as a temporary companion she isn't drastically different than Liara or Samara but having Arya tag along was pretty cool once we make some footing and dig deep enough into Omega Arya and Company set up a base of operations from here we can continue the main quest or do some side missions but the side missions aren't exactly side missions they are all missions that can be completed in the main quest for example This girl wants us to hack some devices for her these devices are only found during the main quest locations because Omega is a very linear DLC this isn't a problem really just don't expect to explore Omega like we used to back in Mass Effect 2. one thing I am glad was kept in this DLC was the detail of Omega it was always run down and grimy it was kind of like a poor man Citadel and the DLC continues to push that idea while Aryan Shepard push deeper into Omega the two come across some strange markings these are the insignias of a group called Talons their leader though is nyrene a female Tyrion and arya's former lover nyrene and Arya couldn't be more different if they tried nyrene is all about saving people whereas arya's more of an ends justify the means kind of person you might ask how they even managed to get together and while their former lovers so include and last long but opposites do attract after all Narine is used in the story as a paragon alternative to arya's Renegade attitude I wish this would have went somewhere but sadly this isn't the case because nyrene doesn't offer much to the game there are some small and interesting details we learned from her but that's about it from our conversations with her we learned that one Cerberus took over Omega they started experimenting on the citizens and created new creatures called adjectives she has a fear of these creatures thanks to her seeing a lot of her friends and allies be turned into them nyrene would then work and then eventually lead the talons in taking back Omega but now that arya's here this creates a bit of tension as Arya wants the throne back and isn't willing to let the talons have it besides that we learned that she was a part of the Taurean military but was kicked out when she started manifesting biotic abilities this seems to imply that the Taurean military only wants raw strength and not magical powers other than that though that's about it Nadine is cool I guess I did find myself drawn to her a bit but only because she's the first female turian We Ever Meet but nothing really comes from it as I said before when talking about Eve I just wish that a lot of the races had more women present so we could learn more about the racist history and culture but nyrene really doesn't give us any info on the topic this isn't really nyrene's fault though because in the context of a DLC when would talking about her racist history be appropriate she's just the one that gets the criticism because she's the only female terrium we talk to after this Shepherd will then meet with nyrene and Arya to discuss how they'll make it to the afterlife so Arya can get her throne back this mission is where we learn about the adjectives Origins and why nyrene is so scared of them the only other thing of note to mention is the final decision of this quest which is deciding whether or not to remove power from the reactor because Narine and Arya are trapped inside a force field and are being swarmed by mechs turning off the reactor would destroy the force field but also remove any life support systems in a few dozen Wards on Omega meaning do we take the quick option and sacrifice the many to save the few or do we try to find an alternative waiting is the only decent option since there is no repercussions for doing so no one dies if we wait despite the fact that the game seemed to imply nerine would likely die once the group makes it to the afterlife nyrene runs ahead and decides to face the edgerton's head on it's quite a nice change of character since she realizes her fear of these creatures shouldn't outweigh her goal of saving people it's just a bit jarring that she sacrifices herself and dies I don't know I just feel like that wasn't really necessary it makes sense that she would do this seeing as she was about to be overrun I'm just confused why the writers opted to create a situation that would force nyrene to sacrifice herself I didn't really feel anything during that scene I was more shocked actually because I originally thought that she put the shield up to protect herself from the blast not to hold the blast inside the shield it does finally kick Arya into action and seeing an asari biotic go crazy is always a sight to behold it's just weird that she needed that to get going you know not the fact that some Cerberus jackass just stole her City due to her hot-headed approach Arya gets captured but Shepard will end up breaking her out and the two confront petrovsky one thing I must compliment Omega 4 is its final decision it's not major but there is still a few things we did in the DLC that impacted Arya depending on some of our choices Arya will either spare him kill him or leave it up to Shepherd to decide now these aren't major decisions but I think that's what I like about them the most obvious one is deciding whether or not to turn off the reactor turning off its power was arya's idea which solidifies her Reckless Behavior but keeping it up allows him of Shepherd and Irene mean to rub off on her which makes her hesitant to kill petrovsky the other decisions though are random dialogue like sticking up for an Irene or telling Arya to not do something dangerous their minor choices with major impacts now admittedly despite it feeling impactful sparing or killing petrovsky really doesn't do much other than just giving the player War assets plus Arya gets Omega anyway it just depends on whether or not she'll rule Omega like she used to with her destructive attitude as for petrovsky he's at the very least an interesting antagonist because according to nyrene he offered amnesty to Talon members who decided not to fight him and he kept his word she'll then eventually go on to say that while he may be allied with Cerberus his mindset and ideals don't really match that of The elusive man with all those details laid out I was wondering if Omega was going to have some sort of grand Choice like leaving Omega to petrovsky with forcing him to cut ties with Cerberus or maybe even letting nyrene run things but there was never a choice like that you may be surprised how fast we finished talking about Omega and that's because most of its run time is spent killing things which is fine it's just that there's not much to talk about the real selling point of the DLC is being able to team up with Arya and getting a chance to revisit Omega and if we're to just focus on those things alone I say the DLC is quite good because it was fun to fight alongside Arya and see Omega again but I do wish we got to spend a bit more time here since we would have been able to see the outcome of our choices and get to hang out with Arya a bit overall though Omega is a quick bite-sized Adventure on one of mass effect's well-known locations and it was a serviceable distraction from the main content probably the most appropriate DLC to talk about next would be Leviathan but instead I want to talk about The Citadel first Citadel was the final DLC for Mass Effect 3 and thus the final DLC for the trilogy which is by the story for this DLC is so strange basically the plot is that Shepard is being hunted by another group of people people this time called Cat6 and leading their group is a clone of Shepherd who also takes the Normandy so a real Shepherd will have to get the Normandy back by killing clone Shepard like I said the plot is extremely weird but that's intentional since it was supposed to be a way to send off the series so the DLC is very comedic and light-hearted while this isn't a terrible idea it can come off the wrong way by accident since this is disguised as any other mission in the game so going from the main quest to this would be quite the tonal Whiplash that's why I recommend you either do this before starting the final mission or even doing this after you beat the game since it's a great way to finish your Trilogy Long play through the DLC starts with an email from Anderson he wants Shepard to have his apartment which is quite a selfless decision considering the fact he's still on the front lines of a war after getting a feel for the place we then meet Joker for some dinner the reason we're even doing this during the war is because the Normandy is in need of a retrofit so while the Normandy is being repaired in service the crew decides to take a load off in the meantime the two come to find out though that something is wrong because Joker thought Shepard invited him and Shepard that joker invited him shortly after this an alliance officer clumsily walks in in and introduces herself Maya Brooks here claims that a Merc group is after Shepard thankfully we don't have to do the hard work as that was already done for us thanks to this exact group raiding the building it's right about here when it comes pretty obvious that the DLC has a heavy focus on comedy jokes and comedy can be quite hard to discuss because everyone finds different things funny but there were times when I thought the game just went too far comedy is nice in context and when it sparse and while the Citadel has some hilarious lines most just felt too forced for me I'm going after her find the crew got it hey [Music] you used me as bait go do you use me as bait did you see that savior of the Citadel use the turtle bones guy in the bank I think the idea of repeating a joke until it wears out ruins the initial punchline and the game does this again because during this firefight Shepherd falls through the sushi restaurant and the crew Reams him over this to the point where I was just so sick of hearing about it I'm relieved to see you're in one piece a shame about the sushi place though it was a favorite to me inside but I think to myself someday when I've proven my worth to the Galaxy I'll go there for dinner and then you broke their floor I'm fine by the way restaurant attack has made the news he seem to have been restricted to fish commander in my cycle when we fled combat by falling through tanks containing aquatic animals we usually oh right we never did you are a trailblazer oh they shut down my favorite sushi place that's a shame [Music] Shepherd you didn't I did fell right through the fish tank how did you manage that it's exploded I get it it was funny and maybe a little embarrassing but do we need to mention it five different times that's not to say all of it was bad though because Citadel was a great DLC and it got quite a few laughs out of me especially towards the end it's just that some of these jokes ended up ruining their own punch lines most of the early missions also allow us to stealth our way through them but I couldn't for the life of me figure this out similar to kasumi's loyalty Mission the stealth in this DLC is Clumsy we did at least get a suppressed pistol which is a start but the stealth sections aren't really stealth sections enemies are alerted instantly and will alert others upon being shot you have to download quick enough to prevent this from happening but given that it takes about three shots to the head to down them you likely won't have the time I'm also fairly certain there are no melee takedowns like other stealth games have but even if they did exist I couldn't find a proper time to use them since I'd be spotted right away anyway it's a bit better than kasumi's Mission but only because we actually get a suppressed weapon but her Mission though felt like a stealth Mission even with the loud pistol because we were trying to not get caught in this Mission it doesn't matter if you're caught because enemies will die quick and the pistol's damage is busted this actually became my go-to weapon for the final mission because of how fast this thing chews through armor regardless it wasn't a bad attempt but it's hard to expect a stealth section to work in a series that's never been built around stealth after this though Shepard will run into some of the old crew and then we'll meet with him to discuss what to do next liaro ran some tests on the pistol since it's the weapon one of the guards is using and her Rabbit Hole of information led her to a man named Elijah Khan he's been suspected of smuggling weapons into the Citadel so we'll need to find him to see if we can get more information on these Cat6 mercs this means we'll have to infiltrate the casino undetected this is also a revamp of kasumi's loyalty Mission and in this case is much better you're allowed to mingle and talk with partygoers as well as hack a new security cameras so that they're disabled you can also bring a crew member along which can lead to some great dialogue I kept replaying some of these missions to hear the dialogue since that's where the bulk of the comedy comes from seeing all the crewmates in their different outfits and their reactions to wearing such outfits was great to run through especially when it came to guys like Rex javik and Garris who aren't too keen on formal attire I look ridiculous after spending longer than I want to admit losing my money on Varan racing Brooke says that the door is ready to be open and once we arrive we can see that Elijah is dead once again the team reconvenes it discovers that this mysterious person they found at the casino is using Shepard Specter status to access the Citadel archives so the team gears up and makes it to the archives which is why we discover that the bad guy is a clone as for how that's even possible apparently service created another Shepherd using the current Shepherd's DNA so that he could be used as spare parts if Shepard needed another arm leg or lung then the Clone would be the donor but clearly Cerberus didn't need him but never thought to throw him away which is why he eventually woke up according to him while Shepard was stuck on Earth in between games he was just getting out of his coma and learning how to be human also if you're wondering why this random Alliance officer is so important well that's because Brooks here is working with the cologne and ends up betraying us later in this Mission I think it's quite obvious something was up with her but I'm honestly glad she's not a part of the team anymore since her dialogue is insufferable to listen to apparently Brooks was also the one who put together the dossier for our team in Mass Effect 2 which is kind of an interesting detail But ultimately not too important I think the DLC tried to make Brooks important and not just some random person which is cool I guess but I kind of like the idea that it was The elusive man who actually put it together and not one of his old Associates thankfully though this mission is where the comedy really starts to take off refresh my memory didn't we used to win these things but he said I should go do I sound like that as long as I've known you yeah crazy thought but maybe we should be worrying about this impregnable Vault we've been sealed inside forever how come nobody told me this before I'm open to feedback here well I thought all humans said it like some weird Earth custom or something probably not a lot of air in here either an hour if we're lucky maybe it's I should go I should go I should go Shepherd please why aren't you more worried about this once glyph comes by and unlocks the vaulter seal then the team races to the Normandy to take it back the crew can't get in until trainer comes by and then decides to use her toothbrush as a makeshift lockpick this is completely absurd but may have been the greatest joke in this DLC since the first thing trainer talks about when you first get on the Normandy is her toothbrush and I couldn't help but appreciate the Callback Shepard will then have to face Brooks and the Clone who has an identical moveset to you which means the two of us ended up spamming biotics until one of us went down both of the Shepherds during their Scuttle also fall off the ship until the crew comes by to help I like the dichotomy here between both Shepherds because it shows that you can't just be someone by copying their looks this clone could never be Shepherd because he was never able to inspire such a large group of people that's why our crew helps us in the end and Brooks leaves the Clone to die speaking of dying though Brooks gets quite a satisfying death assuming you let her Escape which is something I've always done this final scene ends up being the end of the mission but not the DLC as the main reward for beating it is a giant party but overall I think the missions were all right how ever once I analyze this from a different perspective I started appreciating this a lot more when looking up some videos on some of the unique dialogue for the DLC I saw a comment that said that this Mission should have been renamed to Shepard's loyalty Mission and after hearing that I couldn't look at this DLC any other way we as Shepard spent so long helping others with their problems and now it's time they paid us back you could claim that fighting the Reapers and collectors is more than enough and that's true but the difference is that the Loyalty missions were all personal to them it never had to do with a galaxy-wide threat that was just something we all came together to fight but finding the gray box for Kasumi hunting month for Samara and taking grunt through puberty and all the other missions were all personal problems that specific crew member had Shepard's personal problem was a group of mercenaries trying to kill him and take his identity this loyalty Mission idea really clicked for me when in one of the scenes Shepard needed backup but before he could even finish his sentence everyone was providing support not only did they have his back but they knew what to do and when because they've been with him for so long these missions also seem to want to portray this idea because all the crew shows up during these missions especially during the assault on the archives as while we still have our three-man group the others are still in the level fighting other enemies if like the full team was coming together to solve Shepard's problem which makes the idea of this being a loyalty Mission a lot easier to understand once the Clone and Brooks are defeated the party can start the party in Anderson's apartment is probably one of the greatest missions in this Trilogy it's such a fun experience and just like any normal party you never want the fun to end you're allowed to invite whoever you want but most people will likely invite everyone they can this makes the party even better as you can go between groups and see who people are up to grunt was having fun denying people who were trying to enter the party Kasumi was snooping around Shepard's drawers zaeed javik and Rex were all intoxicated and trying to shoot a line of bottles grunt got drunk and needed to sit under the shower water most of the crew starts dancing at one point Shepard does an incredible job of saying dialogue I had no intention of saying James wants to see how biotics work by having Liara pick him up Z tries to hit on Samara but it's sadly not working and a dozen more things I don't have time to bring up I must have spent an hour here just listening to the people and being in the moment to win the festivities the crew takes a photo together and it really highlights how far everyone has come it also really puts into perspective how bad the Renegade playthrough is since the party is a very different experience as with most parties though just about everyone is too drunk to leave so they all sleep over and just like the morning after the party everyone is either extremely awake too hungover to socialize or already left before everyone gets up like I said earlier even if you hate the plot about the Clone trying to take Shepard's identity I think toughing it through just to get to the party is well worth the effort once the guests have left though you can also invite people over individually for some personal hangout time as well as going to the silver Sun strip just like the Citadel and meeting with some of the crew most of it is either just excuses to connect with the crew again or just a chance for the game to throw in some more comedy but probably the most important one though is the memorial for Thane the crew will end up coming by again and say a couple words and it really showcases the love this group has not just for Thane but for each other they may tease and know the out of each other sometimes but they all care about one another cool yet also tells Shepard that he plans to talk to the salarian counselor with I hope that some solarian scientists can make a breakthrough on a cure for Capital syndrome he also gives us some video clips that they wanted to send to Shepard but didn't manage to Citadel though is a really sweet DLC and easily the best one in the game it's got some great comedy and just being able to relax with a lot of the crew and talk about our adventures is one of the greatest moments I've had playing this Trilogy it's a love letter to the series and a love letter to the fans from BioWare Thanking us for playing the series that they created it's a great DLC on its own but it's also a beautiful way to send off the Mass Effect Trilogy and that right there is the reason why I wanted to cover this DLC last as it would have been a great way to send off the video but clearly I didn't do that which is a real damn shame because it's all downhill from here and it all starts with Leviathan Leviathan on its own may not seem like a bad DLC and in hindsight it's really not but to understand the DLC we must understand the ending so for now I'll be talking about its story then circling back to my thoughts on this later once we do cover the ending but basically Leviathan starts with us talking with a Dr Bryson who works on the Citadel he's the lead researcher on a project that was focusing on finding out more about the Leviathan of DS the Leviathan of DS was a corpse found on a batarian planet many assume it to be of Reaper origin but more importantly this thing seems to have died a long time ago and it's possible this creature or species that killed it still exists Dr Bryson was tasked with finding this being that killed the reaper he ends up getting killed though and after some investigative work we Define the location of a research facility where a doctor Garner Works who just happens to know more about this mysterious creature we don't find anything sadly but we do notice that the creature is aware of us chasing it it also indoctrinated the workers here over 10 years ago in order to keep itself hidden we learned that it can indoctrinate and spy on the Galaxy using these orbs which we have seen already in Mass Effect 1 and 2. once it influences destroy Droid though the workers come back to reality and realize it's been 10 Years Part of Me wishes more was done with this though since 10 years is a lot of time for anyone yet all we really see is the research was freaking out of it despite the fact that 10 years can literally change a person's body kind of reminds me when we talked about Soma a couple months ago and even referencing the events of Soma is a pretty scary thing to think about once this is over we go through lots of talking and investigating which I thought was pretty fun until we make it to the location of the creature we then lands on a base floating in the ocean and take a deep sea diver down about 3000 meters until we reach the creature literally called Leviathan see Leviathan isn't a being but a race of beings you might notice how similar they look when sat next to a Reaper and this is intentional long before the events of the game about a few million years ago the leviathans were the dominant species of the Galaxy since they were so strong they made the less powerful species pay tribute to them in exchange for protection over time though they realized that each of these species were wiped out by their own creation they couldn't allow this to happen since if the species are dead then the leviathans don't gain any tributes from them after some analysis they realize that each species was killed by synthetic life as these species evolved they needed more attack to sustain their life which is why they turned through synthetic Creations but over time those Creations killed them off in Mass Effect terms think of the Geth taking over and killing everyone in the Galaxy Tyrion solarians humans all the races would be dead with the exception of the Geth this happened to every species that they surveyed so they needed to find a way to prevent this from happening the leviathans then decided to create an AI that'd be tasked with solving this exact problem however the solution involved betraying the leviathans it created a race of beings built in their image that was made to destroy any advanced civilization that crossed its metaphorical point of no return We of course know them as the Reapers the Reapers look like the leviathans because they were made by Leviathan AI the AI then killed the leviathans and made the first Reaper using their Essence who we know as Harbinger who we saw back in Mass Effect 2. if you're wondering how intelligent they must actually be if they thought solving a conflict between synthetic and organic life would meet the assistance of a synthetic AI well they actually mentioned that simply put since the leviathans were so successful in being the packs of the Galaxy they thought everything was beneath them and at the end I was just one of their tools it makes sense even if it is still dumb but their mistake is what started the cycle however they don't see it as a mistake the AI was built to preserve life in the galaxy and it is doing just that they just didn't think they'd be a part of the harvesting process firstly it's quite hilarious how the reaper on ranox said their goals were incomprehensible seems pretty coherent to me but secondly I want to clarify that advanced Life part in case some of you are still confused we know thanks to javik that the prothean saw all the races of the world grow so if they wanted to wipe out all life they should have killed everyone but they only destroyed the protheans way back in Mass Effect 1 we talked about the Fermi Paradox and the great filter if we bring that image back again we can now say that the step 10 is synthetic life killing off organic life the reapers are basically killing anyone who make it to step 9 and are showing signs of approaching step 10. it's not the best example but it does explain whether Reapers didn't kill Humanity when they fought the protheans humanity at the time wasn't powerful enough to master space travel so they weren't even close enough to developing AI powerful enough to kill themselves that's why the reapers are fighting us now since while the Geth make a pretty good case for synthetic killing organic life the Reapers don't want to destroy the Galaxy they want to save it their end goal is a good one but how they go about achieving it that being the Cycles is the problem as organic beings with free will we should decide on our own when we die but the reapers are cutting that short which is why we fight back we see it as survival the Reapers just see it as part of the cycle also you may be wondering about the death since we did broker peace between the Geth and the corians ultimately disproving that synthetic life will always kill organic life and yeah that's one thing I'm disappointed about Leviathan and the ending don't acknowledge that we were able to do this and seeing as we're already talking about it I think it's time we discussed the ending Mass Effect 3's ending technically starts at the Cerberus headquarters but most of the complaints regarding its endings start when we go back to Earth Admiral Hackett tells us that once we start the attack on Cerberus there's no time to prepare so we must make sure we have as many War assets as possible because we're past the point of no return honestly the Cerberus headquarters is a decent Mission nothing too exciting happens here besides this killing Kai Lang which I'm all for and the fact that we learned about Edie's origin as a refresher the main reason we're here is because Kai Lang stole the prothean vi back on desio so we need to get it back Shepard predicts that they hit it in the most secure part of the station which just happens to be the elusive man's office we know this because well the giant sun in the back I'll be honest I always thought that was fake but the Galaxy map proves that this is real how have we not found him faster that's like the biggest sun in the Galaxy on the way to the core of the station we can see that Cerberus took the human Reaper from the last game and has been experimenting on it regardless of if you blew up the base or kept it the human Reaper is still here so that's another wasted Choice once you reach the Via it tells us that the Catalyst the thing we've been searching for all game is actually the Citadel with The Crucible and the Citadel combined the explosion from the weapon will wipe out the Reapers and win the war Shepard decides that we need to go now but that's not going to happen not only is Kai Lang about to show up and stallless but apparently the elusive man has already made it to the Citadel and has told the Reapers what our plans are furthermore the Reapers have now moved the Citadel to a reaper-controlled area which just so happens to be right above Earth once we take the vi and defeat Kai Lang we then go to Earth and start our assault Earth however is where the problems start to trickle in at the time of recording I had about 6 800 War assets on a good playthrough and 2600 on our bad playthrough it's not the ideal setup as I could have gotten better scores in each playthrough I think 7400 is the highest and somewhere around 1800 is the lowest but a 4 000 war asset difference is still quite substantial especially when you consider that one almost fills the bar while the other doesn't even reach the minimum requirement the reason I bring this up is because the war assets have been the main mechanic of the game it's the thing all the side quests and the main quests have been built around and is the sole reason a lot of our choices have been very Sim simplistic so if it's the most important then it should have a lot of change sadly it doesn't the first cutscene of the assault is really well done Mass Effect has always excelled when it comes to spectacle and presentation and this is without a doubt a great scene the only difference is each playthrough has though is that instead of this Reaper getting blown up one of the aligned ships gets blown up instead and the reaper is still alive it is minor but it does show us that having low War assets is going to get people killed the other change that occurs is the quarians and the Geth if one survives and they report into Shepard furthermore we can also see their fleets in the background during the cutscene and if one survives then a representative will meet us at the alliance base a bit later those representatives are Tali or her and admiron if she's dead or a Geth Prime unit if the death were chosen it also seems like the peace option defaults to the quarian outcome meaning if the Geth win then only the Geth show up if the quarians win then only the corians show up but if both broke her peace then it just seems to be only the quarians for some reason also random side note the giant ship we see in the beginning is not the destiny Ascension or at least doesn't seem to be since I destroyed that in the other playthrough and it still appears after this Shepherd and crew will then land again in the ground assault most of it is fairly straightforward and I did enjoy the war torn cities of London even if they'd become a bit samey after a while the differences here are that if you didn't do Cortez's side mission on the Citadel then he'll die during the attack he'll still get hit regardless but in our Paragon playthrough he manages to pull through furthermore if you have warrant as a companion she'll appear as a Banshee meaning the Reapers got to her first this also means that we have now officially killed every companion from Mass Effect 2 as her and zaeed were the only ones left and he died back on the Citadel from here we get escorted to a nearby Alliance base and then get the chance to talk with some of our new crew call our old crew and discuss the next step with Anderson by now you may have noticed that the gameplay has shown a lot of alliance members and this is probably my least favorite part about the ending see Mass Effect 3 on launch had a terrible ending it was probably at the time the biggest gaming controversy in a long time I haven't seen this much hate towards something gaming related in ages nowadays this is a monthly occurrence since games are released have finished and some devs over promise and under deliver but back then this was different Mass Effect 3's ending was rushed to import poorly thought out because of that one of the dlc's release for the game was called Extended Cut That solely focused on fixing the ending now most of the problems with the ending will happen in a couple minutes from now but it is starting to show its layers already the cutscenes we have seen are the same thing in both playthroughs furthermore there was no acknowledgment of our choices each of the cutscenes in this ending show tyrion's solarian Krogan and asari these are the default guaranteed races that join us no matter what even if we sabotage the genophage or a cure it the Krogan will always join us so BioWare added them in the cutscene but races like the Geth corians volis Alcor and even the smaller groups like arya's mercs X Cerberus employees the rachni and all the others never appear because it's not guaranteed that a player will get them on their team getting the guests to join means we have to make sure they win the war or broker piece but as our playthrough show they can die thus they're not guaranteed to show up in the ending so any race that isn't the four I just mentioned will not appear in this ending with the one exception that we saw earlier which was the quarian fleet reporting in that is ludicrous I wasn't kidding earlier when I said that we would never see the rachni queen or her people again that side mission is literally the last time arachni appears in the trilogy because the game never shows them in the final battle despite the fact that we saved the rachni queen twice and the fact that she promised us she would attack the Reapers when the time comes she is never seen again like I said these numbers and these pictures are all fake it's just numbers on a screen it's not tangible it makes you feel like there's a ton of different species coming together and contributing to the war but they're not getting back to the more positive stuff talking with the crew both old and new is really nice it's really just about saying goodbye just in case things go wrong because we're about to make the final push Jeff also talks about ending his life once this is over because he'll have served his purpose and brought Victory to the protheans it's sad but makes sense the protheans are all dead with him and the Reapers being alive are the only reason he's still alive and kicking his whole purpose in this cyclist to defeat the Reapers and if we do that well his purpose has been fulfilled besides that all the others were really sweet and I like this a lot as it's not only just an opportunity for Shepard to say goodbye to the crew but for for us to say goodbye as well just like the Citadel DLC it also really set in how badly the Renegade playthrough has gone since I literally couldn't talk to anyone on the comms Channel since all the old crew was dead the only crew I had alive at the time from all the games was Liara James and Edie but don't get too happy they're not safe just yet according to Anderson the plan is to make it to this device they called a conduit not to be confused with the conduit for a Mass Effect 1 however this is similar just not the same device to get to this device we need to defeat the reaper that is defending it that requires us to get past the No Man's Land zone so the tanks can get within range of the reaper this is basically a very long and unsurprisingly very tough fight despite that I really enjoyed the action that came from not just this Mission but the whole assault it really felt like the final push now as we just mentioned the game doesn't exactly help sell that idea too well but when you're on the front lines fighting you do feel it a bit once the reaper is destroyed it is now time to run to the beam Harbinger has come by though to stop us so it's a Sprint to the Finish Line it was kind of like when the Allied Forces stormed the beaches of Normandy back on D-Day that's the vibe I was getting from this anyway basically don't worry about the person next to you or the thing in front of you just keep running and don't look back this is also one part that was changed during the Extended Cut since in this scene your companions are presumably running with you but then all of a sudden they show up at the end of the game just fine despite the fact that pretty much everyone including Shepard gets blasted by Harbinger the Extended Cut added an additional scene where Shepard takes the crew to the Normandy so they can leave and get medical attention the running then resumes and Harbinger blast Shepard knocking almost all of his armor off your companions though will only survive if your War a set score is high enough if it isn't Harbinger kills them so goodbye to Liara and James while the Running part is cool so much is wrong with this scene one why doesn't Harbinger have any dialogue he and Shepard easily have the biggest beef in the galaxy and Harbinger says nothing throughout this fight honestly had the game not said that Harbinger was defending the beam I would not have known that was even him also why didn't he shoot the Normandy it was stationary for over a minute long even if people were rushing to the beam I'm surprised that Normandy wasn't the first priority since he seems to shoot the magos first as they're clearly faster also once he he kills everyone he leaves not only is the Beam still on but who's to say that someone else doesn't come in and enter the beam it doesn't even have to be Shepherd it could literally be anybody there there are still thousands of soldiers still alive in this fight so if the conduit is so important why isn't there a Reaper here at all times furthermore why not just shut it off they're clearly powered somehow so I would assume there's some kind of off switch all they had to do was turn off the beam and boom the Reapers win one Shepherd enters the beam we learn that this is a processing room the Reapers were taking humans and throwing them here to be used for processing but what's going on with the citizens of the Citadel people still live on that thing and another got teleported to Earth or dragged here both of which would likely be a problem for its inhabitants also did the Reapers harvest the people on the Citadel or are they just chilling in their Apartments after this though we hear that Anderson has made it inside as well but he got transported somewhere else he also managed to make it to where we're currently going faster than us despite getting there later than us and the only reason they did this was so that the elusive man could hold Anderson hostage it's also very obvious that this room exists for just this interaction because why would someone build a central room that is connected to various other rooms with the only thing of importance being a control panel the control panel seems to open up the arms of the Citadel which is similar to the council's room from Mass Effect 1 but we were already there and this looks nothing like it so what they move the arm control panel to its own room as we approach we see that the elusive man is fully indoctrinated and somehow uses biotics to force Shepherd to shoot Anderson I'm not annoyed at the fact that the elusive man has biotics although it is a bit weird we learned that now I'm more concerned about what he just did with them biotics are a weird topic of discussion in Mass Effect because there's never been a clearly defined line as to where they stop biotics can move obstacles teleport someone a great distance suspend them in the air and even drain someone of their life force the thing is though is that this just seems too far-fetched for biotics you could claim that it's re-protect but that wouldn't make sense either as it's only Tech Mass Effect 2 clearly defines the differences between Tech and biotics Kasumi and Tali were Tech experts so if you brought Samar to the tech section of the suicide mission she would die the Reapers gave Sarah an upgrades but they were Tech upgrades not biotics regardless the ability to manipulate someone to pull a trigger on a gun seems way too far-fetched in the world of biotics and unless I'm mistaken this is the only time someone with biotics has done this you would think a lot of people would try to use this power but we never hear anything about it until this exact moment similar to sarin though we can talk down the ellusa man and have him kill himself if not he dies anyway we just shoot him instead apparently his biotic mind control ability was on cooldown or something with the elusive man dead Shepard and Anderson opened up the arms of the Citadel and wait to die the two are severely injured and are likely not going to make it and honestly had the game ended here I would have been fine with that but there's still more to go The Crucible won't fire so Shepard goes back to the control panel as if hitting it again would have worked collapses and then gets taken up to the top of the Citadel the thing controlling the lift is the Catalyst the Catalyst was not the Citadel it was an AI this is the AI that the leviathans created to stop synthetics from killing organic life as such we already know its goals and its intentions here's the issue without the DLC this is the first time we're hearing about the Catalyst and what it wants to do it also never mentions the leviathans at all during its dialogue so we're unaware that this race of beings even exists and the fact that it created the Reapers from them the Catalyst also goes on to say most of the stuff Leviathan already said about synthetics always killing Organics which is infuriating because even though we taught Edie how to be organic created an organic and synthetic relationship between her and Joker and stop the death in the corns by brokering peace between them we can never say this to the catalyst this would immediately disprove its entire argument yet we're not allowed to say anything we just have to accept that the AI is right I know that in cases such as this you should probably focus on the rule rather than the exception but this exception is huge not only is what we did the opposite of what the Catalyst thought would happen but our solution completely undermines its whole argument so in this case the exception should be considered but it doesn't doing all this change is nothing the extended card also changes a line from the Catalyst as it brings up how it knows about The Crucible yet it never made any attempts to remove its data you know the thing the Reapers do every cycle well the extended card adds a line that says that the Catalyst knew about it but thought its data was gone this line is a really good representation of the whole ending because while the Extended Cut does go to Great Lengths to patch things up it's like putting a Band-Aid over a bullet wound the only way to make this ending better is to completely overhaul the whole thing from the start continuing the absurdity this final three minutes also changes the whole theme of the game without any Rhyme or Reason Mass Effect 3 and arguably the series has been about Unity I mentioned in Mass Effect 1 how one of the themes of this game is synthetic versus organic life and that is still true but is only part of the game AI is something that is considered dangerous which is why the council put in numerous restrictions it's not the main theme but it is one part of the game that does connect to the game's main theme this ending completely flips it on its head and says that Mass Effect 3 and possibly the trilogy has always been about Organics vs synthetics this is so very clearly not the case and all it takes is one playthrough of the trilogy to realize that all the races in this game have broken fractured intense relationships the turians and the solarians Neutered the Krogan this caused tension to occur between them the asari are more focused on hiding State secrets and preserving protein Tech than getting into other races Wars Humanity was shot at the first time they saw alien life and some turians and humans still haven't forgotten that war the races of this world tolerated each other not accepted each other it wasn't until this world-ending threat came along that the races of the Galaxy finally got together and even then it took ages for that to happen since Shepard had to do most of the work on his own Mass Effect 3 is really where the races of the Galaxy finally accepted at each other and realize that there are more important things at stake than Petty rivalries and secrets once again that's not to say Organics versus synthetics as a theme didn't exist it most certainly does but it was sort of a background plot that fed into the history of some of the races like with the quarians the ending in the Leviathan DLC are the only pieces of content that claim the opposite which is why I have such an issue with it Leviathan seems to be a DLC that was retroactively added into the game as a response to the criticism surrounding the ending the only proof I have though is a blog post from 2012 that states that the production on it began after the release of the game the only issue is that the Leviathan of DS was something that was briefly mentioned all the way back in Mass Effect 1. so it is possible that the team had this idea for a while that's what makes this so hard to talk about because it could have just been a DLC that had been planned since the beginning but it just as likely could have been a DLC that was made in response to the ending and the fact that Leviathan and the ending are the only pieces of content to connect to one another makes it seem like that's the case a lot of these problems regarding the central theme of the game could also be attributed to what we talked about in Mass Effect 2 regarding the Dark Energy plot if you recall we mentioned intoli's loyalty Mission how haystrom's son was abnormal I said this was supposed to be a tease of the events to come regarding Dark Energy it seems like the Reaper's main motivations for killing life was to prevent dark energy from being used because too much of it would basically cause an explosion or some kind of heat wave that would kill off all life in the galaxy this was going to be somewhat explored until the main writer left the company which is why we have the current plot oh okay enough about the ending what about the choices the Catalyst provides Shepard with three choices one is controlling the Reapers one is destroying the Reapers and the other is merging organic and synthetic data to create a synthesis there is a fourth option that was added in the Extended Cut called refusal where Shepard just gives up but I never found that ending to be satisfying so I won't mention it much as for the controlling part the Catalyst says that the elusive man was correct you can control the Reapers but they already controlled him so he could never be the one to control the Reapers Shepard can however because he's not indoctrinated in the destroy ending Shepard blows up this tube which somehow fires The Crucible killing all synthetic life this also includes partially synthetic beings which also mean Shepherds and Cerberus rebuilt him synthesis requires Shepard to merge his body with The Crucible so that everyone can have similar DNA and controlling requires him to give up his physical body to basically be an AI that controls the Reapers so no matter what happens Shepard is not making it out of here alive that is unless you have 7 400 more assets and thus a shortcut scene appears after the destroy ending showing Shepard taking a breath this to many is the perfect and Canon ending of Mass Effect 3 specially given the recent trailers about the new Mass Effect game regardless what exactly happens when these endings occur I don't actually know the endings were made to be vague BioWare wanted the community to speculate and theorize as to what the endings could mean but they gave us so little information that it's impossible to theorize the destroy ending is probably the most coherent of the bunch as synthetics dye and Organics live simple synthesis is a bit better because Edie says that peace was created and that given enough time the Galaxy may even transcend mortality itself the control ending though is the one with the most vague story because the shepherd AI takes control of the Reapers but we never hear what happens the only thing that is shown is that the reapers are being used to repair the mass relays most of the dialogue is fluff such as when he says with knowledge comes power or how it'll be a guardian for the people of the Galaxy all these endings share a common theme and that's that they're telling us what could happen and not what did happen BioWare has shown though that they can make proper endings because every Dragon Age game has ending slides that show the outcomes of your choices now obviously BioWare has multiple teams so it's quite possible the Mass Effect team never interacted with the Dragon Age one but still this isn't a foreign concept because because obsidian and Bethesda did it with Fallout 3 in New Vegas Fallout New Vegas has the much better end slide so I'll just be using that as an example to explain what I mean it's all right if you've never played the game before but basically you have to choose a faction to side with at the end of the game choosing a faction though changes the game's setting if you chose the NCR you discover that after some time all the Mojave fell under their Banner but the game doesn't just stop there because it also tells you how the other places and groups were affected by their rule such as the fiends who end up fighting the NCR and will win or lose depending on whether or not a certain side quest was done or the people of goodsprings the first town you visit in the game they'll be forced to leave town since the NCR tax was too high for them to pay Fallout New Vegas not only has endings that change depending on the main faction but also how those factions interact with the lesser-known groups of the Mojave furthermore all of what I said and more is explained in the game itself fault New Vegas tells you what happened and then lets you come up with what could happen in the future if we were to apply new Vegas's endings to Mass Effect 3 we could say that with the shepherd AI fully under the control of the Reapers the Galaxy was able to rebuild faster than if they hadn't had them at their disposal but maybe because we killed the gathon ranok the AI could possibly make things worse because it discovered that synthetic life was wiped out for no reason and thus becomes the new Catalyst but if we only save the gath and killed the corians maybe the same outcome happens anyway but it's because it sees synthetic life as Superior to Organics the peace option would be the one choice that stops the AI from becoming another Catalyst now admittedly I just came up with that on the spot and it's probably not a great ending in hindsight but that wasn't the point I want you to see though what could have happened had Mass Effect 3 did something like New Vegas it would give us a chance to see the immediate future as a result of our actions and also see how small our choices created the overall narrative that makes up the epilogue of the trilogy this would then lead to community discussion as to what the future could be would the AI attack the Galaxy again using the Reapers or would it go into hiding those are the what could happen questions that come from details we learned in the ending but as it stands now none of that appears in these endings that's why Mass Effect 3's ending was originally so disappointing and it's still disappointing now because after three whole games and hundreds of hours our choices come down to three paths with vague explanations that's why I created the Renegade playthrough because I wanted to see how drastic things were yet that didn't happen either some of the end slides do show some change like the chonka remaining a Barren Wasteland because we didn't care the genophage and the Earth being completely scorched but that's probably the biggest change the only reason I can think of as to why this issue with the playthroughs happened is because the game is afraid to give out bad outcomes even the refusal ending the ending where we literally give up it still has a substantial amount of optimism in it since it shows liara's time capsule in a base talking about their war with the Reapers the other big disappointment was the companions there are no slides that talk about our companion's deaths it's this black and white remember the Fallen kind of thing and not Shepard had absolutely blew it when raiding the collector base and got everyone killed in the process what an awful leader she ended up being the game would rather just omit them from the ending entirely rather than show the player the consequences of their actions which is not only strange because a lot of people died but it's confusing because honestly none of this is really a happy ending to use The Crucible effectively we had to shoot the pulse to all the mass relays which completely destroyed them not only did they not explode like the one in the arrival DLC that killed 300 000 batarians but the game never brings up how this could literally the entire galaxy the mass relays are the most important piece of technology in the universe they're also the sole reason the races of the galaxies made it to where they are today it's also the most used piece of technology and now that's gone so no one can use faster than light travel everyone is stuck on their current planet or solar system so just about everything in this ending is a happy optimistic look towards the future but the one part that is actually terrifying to think about is never mentioned and is just pushed to the side why it's also Canon that these blew up because the most recent Mass Effect trailer that came out a year ago still shows them blown up to top it all off and probably the funniest scene in the entire ending the crew or lack thereof come together to put Shepard on the Memorial Wall I never talked about this but the memorial wall has existed in the Normandy for the whole game it's a really subtle way to show how the war has affected everyone around us Shepard of course gets put on the wall because he died but the wall is wrong the top people on the wall are Caroline and Charles but on the actual wall it's not BioWare forgot to add the first five people on the memorial wall so this isn't even the correct number I think the reason this exists is because in the final mission Edie Liara James javik and Cortez can die so they removed the first few names to make room for the others because in the Renegade playthrough their names appear but still why did they remove the other crew members names plus that's also assuming they died in the Paragon playthrough none of these five did yet their names are still removed furthermore the game has this strange epilogue where someone called Stargazer talks about the story of Shepard basically the trilogy and its choices are now a tale of Legend that's been passed down to other people over time we have no idea who these people are or when this is so it's really just weird and out of place and if I want to be really nitpicky similar to Tally's old masculus photo this is just a stock photo of a picture called winter space you can just Google it but I just thought that both of these scenes were really funny because of how unpolished a lot of it is and that's ultimately what happens when a game gets rushed things are broken lazy and unsatisfying the ending is literally the reason the thumbnail says disappointing because I've never seen a game do so well in its opening moments only to Fumble at the one yard line Mass Effect 3 is a solid game and it has an impeccable story and is a wonderful entry in the Mass Effect Trilogy it has some great missions and it really starts to feel like the game is going to end on such a good note it's just a shame that the ending failed twice if there was a part that BioWare shouldn't have failed at it was the ending I would have given it a pass if it was the opening moments or somewhere in Act 2 but it's the ending that took the brunt of the problems that's a major issue not just because this is an ending to a game but because it's an ending to a Trilogy a three-game long journey that took people hundreds of hours to complete filled with Incredible moments Incredible characters incredible choices and so much more all for it to be worthless by the end and that's heartbreaking to have to go through I wasted so much time playing this Trilogy only to be given that ending and ending and partially a game that made my choices worthless by either completely overriding them or making the difference so small it's not even worth talking about an ending that didn't even consider my choices and just decided to not show any of the Allies I had acquired on the journey and an ending that any person can get regardless of the choices they made Mass Effect 3's ending is bad thankfully it does not sour the taste of the whole trilogy the meeting with Sovereign the companions we grew attached to the successes and failures we had along the way all of it was incredible it's still one of the greatest games of all time but the journey was much better than the destination but apparently our journey wasn't even close to over Mass Effect 3 to many myself included felt like the end but BioWare wasn't willing to end the series just yet Mass Effect 3 sales numbers show that the IP was nowhere close to death but how do you make an entry in a series that so tight-knit well I have no idea but apparently BioWare did we'll talk about that another time thank you all for watching today and I hope you enjoyed as opposed to the last video I promise you will not have to wait two months for Andromeda as I'm already working on it as we speak so it should be out either by the end of the year or as soon as 2023 begins only reason I say that is because I personally haven't played Andromeda so I have no idea how long it'll take to beat regardless thank you all for the support on not just this series but all the videos in the past few months I'm not sure if this is going to be the last video of the year but just in case it is thank you all for an incredible year the growth and the support has been insane and I can't thank you well enough also keep an eye on the community tab as I may have a few things I want to announce as always though like the video if you enjoy and subscribe if you're new and thank you to my returning viewers for coming back to another video take care everyone goodbye

Channel: Gingy

Views: 735,231

Keywords: mass effect 3, mass effect, me3, mass effect story, mass effect 3 story, mass effect story summary, mass effect 3 story retrospective, mass effect 3 endings, mass effect story retrospective, mass effect companions, mass effect 3 companions, mass effect review, mass effect 3 review, mass effect 3 analysis, mass effect analysis, gingy, gingy mass effect, gingy mass effect 3, gingy story, mass effect endings

Id: dNhiUZ48l6w

Length: 139min 39sec (8379 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 21 2022