If you started the ME series on the 3rd game, you're doing something wrong.

Sometimes sequels get rid of their interesting mechanics and story elements. After years of research I have come to call this, The Mass Effect.

I've noticed that a lot of series make the same mistakes: They start out with something that is both simple and good. It sells really well. Then if they're lucky, they make a sequel or two that is also really good. But as time goes on, they try to "improve" on the base game (or movie - movies do it too) and become so obsessed with "improvements" and "expanding on features" that they lose sight of what made the game work in the first place.

In some cases, they manage to "improve" in such a way that they survive by taking on a host of new players, even as they disenfranchise thousands of others. Both Fallout and the Sims series seems to have done this with their latest iteration. Mass Effect, I think, failed at doing this because the storytelling was so intricately tied to the previous games. So it not only disenfranchised players - it also had very little appeal for players new to the series.

What these higher ups repeatedly miss is that simple is often a good thing! And new or flashier mechanics don't automatically equal good gameplay. They could learn a lesson or two from classic games. One of the most popular and long-lasting games in history is chess and although tons of complex strategy can be used, the objective is the same every time and it's very simple: Checkmate. Once you understand the objective of chess, the sky is the limit and you can learn at your own pace.

When the objective is unclear, or you're given fifty different objectives to sort through while wham-bang flashy features parade across your screen, it gets really frustrating and really exhausting really fast.

One example is how the Assassin's Creed series progressed. In the beginning, it was pretty much... kill this guy and this guy and this guy and try not to die while doing it. In the beginning, being sneaky was a pressure you felt because taking the bad guys head on was very difficult. Then in later iterations, they started turning it into "kill this guy and this guy and if they spot you, your mission is failed instantly FUCK YOU WE'RE IN CHARGE HERE."

It's so important for players to feel like they have a choice in a game. Even if one of the choices is a terrible one that puts them at a disadvantage, they still need to have the option. Otherwise, it's not a game. One of the fundamentals of gameplay is that the idiotic choices need to be there, so that you can tell what the good ones are by contrast. If you protect your player from shitty choices with instant-fail mechanics, you undermine the point of a game being a game.

An example of this in ME3 comes pretty early on the story, when you're on Mars. You're chasing down doctor somebody or other lady, being forced to do a chase sequence that literally has nothing to do with normal gameplay and plays out exactly the same, no matter what you do. That would have been the perfect opportunity to give you a choice that has an impact on the rest of your game. Instead, it's like quick time events... forced and unnecessary and takes choice out of the equation, all so that some art guy with a hard-on for ships crashing into each other can get off for a moment and your crewmate can be forced into a tragic, near-death situation.

Part of the issue here seems to be one of storytelling overriding gameplay concerns. I am a sucker for good storytelling in games, but I didn't enjoy the hell out of KotOR back in the day because of a cutscene with a bad guy shocking somebody. The story was great, but what had me in from the first beat was the dialogue choices and the clear impact it had on what sort of environment you were creating.

Choice should always be the overriding priority. Always always always. Fuck.

I think you missed one major design flaw: The fights against Kai Leng! Why even bother when you lose anyway, because the plot demands it?

The person narrating this video seriously sounds like a salarian

I really love the Mass Effect Games but to be honest, Mass Effect 3 with totally no DLCs feels so empty when you play it.

Bioware treated Mass Effect 1 like it did not even matter.

There is one thing that you CAN'T flaw in ME3. Thats the soundtrack!

I think the games would have ended much better if they left the Reapers mysterious.

It shouldn't matter why they exist. I know a lot of people would be pissed if they didn't get that "answer"... but in the first game, Sovereign basically tells you that the existence of the Reapers is incomprehensible to organic life.

And yet, they come up with an answer to "why" that is just so incredibly simple, it destroys that concept entirely.

If Sovereign states that we can't comprehend their existence, then I think it would play off so much better if that question is never answered. They would truly be incomprehensible then. They were evil, they wanted to harvest organic life, and they needed to be stopped. That's really all that needed to be said. The deus ex machina that they used to explain their existence was far, FAR worse than if we were simply given no explanation at all.

I played through the first game over 10 times. I played through the second game half as many times (it's where they started losing me), and I played through the third game once. ONCE.

They destroyed the love I had for the series in the last 30 minutes.

All these years later i came across this video for the second time due to the recent announcement of the remastering of the ME trilogy, and i must say this is still the best analysis of ME3 on the internet.

Finally! Someone hates on the decrease of dialogue options in ME3! I could've sworn I was the only one :/

Awesome video. Well thought out with emphasis on the entire game rather than just the ending. Best ME 3 critique I've seen yet.

This is an EXCELLENT video! I just wished it lasted another 20 minutes! Well put together!

Thank you so, so much for making this. It's the one question that would not stop ratting in my head, what went wrong. I think I can finally have some closer now lol I do hope over all Mass Effect will be positive learning experience for all games in the future.

I loved the side quests in 3 but I was expecting to actually command my army, to strategize and use what I built. I did every side quest to get 100% and I was pissed that I got nothing for that.

I agree 100 %. They simplified the dialogue so much and theres even an option to NOT HAVE IT! Are you kidding me? How much does it take you to press a button if you don't care about the story? They were clearly trying to cater to newer people and to do this they made shepard have a lot of auto responses.

The guy in this sounds like a Salarian.

2022 And I still want a better ending

Good old Marauder Shields, he tried to save us from the ending and the Extended Cut fixed nothing.

Spot on. What I believe happened was they tried to appeal to a different fan base in order to gather more followers, just like Star Wars did with their latest movies. Both franchises here screwed over all the old fans that made the franchise into what it is today.

Still cant forgive ME3 for the massive insult it gave me when I first launched it, that being:

If I want to skip the roleplaying element.

I mean srsly, why would I even want to play ME without the roleplay element. Imagine playing Kotor without dialog options. What a depressing experience....