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Mass Effect 3 back to reviews
Don't finish it! (Extended Cut update)
Here's the good: They finally perfected the gameplay. The enemy AI is better than ever before. An inventory system is back without the annoying management that the first game had. Scanning for minerals is gone. Galactic exploration doesn't bring back vehicle sections but the Reaper alerts add at least some tension to it. The story pacing is great, well planned and immersive. The Continuity Porn is there in abundance; the game does indeed address almost every choice you made in the previous games at least in some way.

The bad: The endings are RAGE INDUCINGLY DISAPPOINTING!!! Seriously. When people, who finished the game before I did, started saying that the endings are a huge let-down I didn't believe it. I was loving the game and I just couldn't believe that they could be so bad that they would ruin the experience, but Bioware somehow managed to not notice how idiotic the options they gave us really are. A game who's major appeal is that the choices you make matter, that your Shepard's impact on the galaxy stays with you throughout the trilogy, for some imbecilic reason it makes all those choices moot in the end. Just because the "push this button to get a bleak future" thing worked for a dystopian conspiracy story like Deus Ex doesn't mean it will work for an epic Space Opera.


So that up there is what it was like before the Extended Cut, but is it better now?

Yes, it absolutely is! The loose threads of plot that were left hanging are tied up, gone is the lack of closure and ambiguous fates of beloved characters, gone is any implication of accidental galactic holocaust or the fall of galactic civilization as we knew it(well, with a notable exception). The unexplained space magic, a.k.a synthesis, remains but I suppose that asking for perfection would be too much. This DLC fixed a lot more than I thought it would, so kudos to you, Bio Ware.
But didn't the extended cut cost money?
comment #24971 Mr.Movie 27th Jun 14
Extended cut was a free update.
comment #24973 JackAlsworth 27th Jun 14
Unfortunately, while the plot holes are (mostly) filled in by the EC, it does not fix the big problem, that being that the game has lied to you. Your choices from the previous games ultimately don't matter, the only thing they do is give you the option of choosing ending C, as opposed to only A or B. Mr. Hudson lied to us about the ending, and that's what I can't stand. Still, the fact that they did go back and try to fill in the plot holes and make the ending better does show that they listen to their fans, I'll give them that. I'm even more impressed that the EC was free, that took major chutzpah for a company under EA.
comment #24982 JamesPicard 27th Jun 14
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