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Reaping What's Sown - Mass Effect 3 Deconstructed

Private Sessions

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How does a trilogy end when its first two installments hated each other? Let's find out.

This is the finale of a three-part series analyzing the main trilogy of the Mass Effect games to explore what made these games great and where things needed improvement. All three games are played on the recently-released Mass Effect Legendary Edition with no mods on PC.

ME 1 Analysis: Galaxy of Mystery - Mass Effect 1 In Retro...
ME 2 Analysis: Characters & Tools - Mass Effect 2 Deconst...
ME 3 Paragon Streams: Stream Archive

SOCIALS -
♻️Discord: Discord: discord
🐧Twitter: Twitter: PSessionsYT
🎥Stream Archives: Stream Archive

CHAPTERS -
00:00 - Intro
1 Gameplay Changes -
05:24 - 1.1. Gunplay
10:23 - 1.2. Skills and Leveling
14:26 - 1.3. Enemies and AI
19:53 - 1.4. System Scanning
2. Return of the Reapers -
28:55 - 2.1. Earth
42:19 - 2.2. Mars
55:30 - 2.3. Palevan's Moon
3. Catching Up -
59:01 - 3.1. Friends on the Citadel
1:10:54 - 3.2. Friends off the Citadel
1:31:03 - 3.3. Friends on the Normandy
4. The Allies Arc -
1:46:35 - 4.1. Curing the Genophage
2:15:28 - 4.2. The War for Ranoch
5. Omega and Citadel DLC -
2:35:01 - 5.1. Omega DLC
2:43:12 - 5.2. Citadel DLC
6. The Cerberus Arc -
2:54:56 - 6.1. Attack on the Citadel
3:10:13 - 6.2. Thessia
3:18:55 - 6.3. Sanctuary
3:26:26 - 6.4. Cerberus HQ
7. The Reaper Arc -
3:42:22 - 7.1. Reaper Recap
3:53:34 - 7.2. Leviathan DLC
4:03:24 - 7.3. London
4:12:57 - 7.4. The End
8. Legacy and Future -
4:34:32 - The Search for Meaning and Purpose

MUSIC -
https://rb.gy/58z36e

#Retrospective #Analysis #Review #Privatesessions

20 Comments

@PrivateSessions Creator 4 years ago Pinned

It took 9 months but the Me trilogy has finally been put to bed... Kinda.
I have a ton of topics I had to cut from all three videos that I'd like to discuss, especially the cut content of Me3 I learned about after I finished editing this video. No promises, but I'd like to do a brief followup video covering those topics.
I'd also like to do a 12 hour supercut of the three videos so I can get a chance to fix some of the audio and visual jank of the other two vids and maybe sneak in some bonus content. That's going to be up to my editing software, though. This video was already causing me a lot of trouble, so I need to solve those issues before I can get a 12 hour vid done.
Finally, Andromeda is going to get covered before ME4 releases but I want to take some time off from ME before tackling it.
Thanks for all the support and patience. All you people waiting for TES and Fallout content to return to the channel, don't worry, I got you covered in the coming months.

@shuckeegaming 4 years ago (edited)

In the scene where you shoot Mordin to prevent the cure, you pull out a Carniflex. The same gun Mordin gave you in Mass Effect 2 in his recruitment mission. A good faith present. Doesn't matter what pistol you had prior or even if you didn't equip a pistol. You'll always pull out Mordin's gift to stop him.

@GangstarComputerGod 2 years ago

Captain Bailey is such a low-key badass. Nothing ruffles him. Watches Shepherd & Wrex trying to kill each other, resulting in Wrex getting blasted, and all he says is “What pissed him off” before basically shrugging his shoulders. I love him.

@soapminer7099 2 years ago

Ki lang is a fucking mall ninja with no reason to exist in Mass effect

@dianabarnett6886 4 years ago

The combination of Gwyn's theme with the renegade conclusion of the Genophage arc is pure, soul-crushing tragedy.

@alaricvis09 4 years ago

You do get a choice in the Spectre terminal relating to the soldier getting briefed by the docks. If you drop by multiple times, you hear that her brother joined Cerberus before the war, and her unit is slated to deploy against Cerberus. Not wanting to ever have to make the implied awful choice, she asks to be reassigned to fight against the Reapers. Shepard can make that happen for her at the Spectre terminal.

@ferghalicious1480 1 year ago (edited)

I think one important thing I’ve learned recently, which these videos have sort of helped to reinforce, is that when you love something enough, you’ll inevitably start to notice flaws in it. Mass Effect was one of my favourite game series growing up, but as I’ve gotten older its flaws have become much more noticeable e.g. the paragon/renegade system, the lost potential of ME2, the end of ME3 etc.

Does this mean I don’t like Mass Effect anymore? Absolutely not. Like I said loving something this much inevitably leads to looking at it through a more critical lens and coming to terms with its flaws. By contrast, If I truly don’t like something, it doesn’t even occupy space in mind most of time, and if it does I’m usually just thinking about how bad it is overall without trying to find the few points of strength in it.

Moral of the story: The things that end up disappointing you are usually the things you love the most.

@fmsyntheses 4 years ago

Your Andromeda video should be called 'ME:A Culpa'.

@hammieli1875 4 years ago

4 hours and 16 minutes in I just realized why he keeps referring to The Illusive Man as Tim.

@gee_woah 4 years ago

Really interesting choice to do the review on primarily the renegade character, seeing Mordin getting shot kills me 😢

@NoMaloneUnturned2 3 years ago

Man, one of the moments that made me kind of sad is the part where you and clone shepard are hanging off the bay and shepard is like "what do you have that I don't have" and then shepards squad helps him up and clone shepard is still hanging off the edge looking at brooks while she tries to retreat. If you try to save him he's like "then what" and you say "you live" and clone shepard says "for what?" And let's go so he could fall off and die. Made me real sad because it seemed to me no one really cared about him, even though he was a clone he was still a living breathing entity with emotions, all he will be known as is just shepards clone which doesn't give him an opportunity for individuality

@CosmicToad5000 4 years ago

Mordin's scene in this game, just holy shit. if you go paragon it's such a bittersweet end to his character arc, and if you go Renegade you get some fo the most powerful dialogue in the series. iirc this scene is the only time Mordin ever says "I" instead of distancing himself from his own decisions with logical reasoning.

@Armorion 4 years ago

These three have been honestly the most interesting video essay / discussion topic videos I've seen on mass effect because of the depth you went into and because you went almost full renegade which as someone who has never played the game and has only see things from outside, I've never seen or heard about before. It's always been about the average playthrough and the twists going down the paragon path that I've heard about.

Thank you so much for the videos, can't wait to see more of your work. : )

@someguyidk7823 4 years ago

My take on the whole "Wrex is different in ME3 than in other games" is that they made it much closer to Wreav in order to save on development time/dialogue/work

@SouthernPecan86 3 years ago

The scene of Mordin regretting his decisions, standing up to Shep, and struggling against his own death in a fight to right all his wrongs, is heart-wrenching. 😭

@Williminal 1 year ago

I believe the only clean way out for Mass Effect was for it to become two trilogies. ME3 should have been about ACTUALLY preparing the galaxy for the reapers, bridging the gap for the war to come.

Working with the alliance again, getting reinstated as a spectre, subterfuge and black ops missions and political favors to get groups and races on board with preparing for the reapers, and the finale could have been about addressing the geth/quarian conflict, the Genophage, and maybe Cerberus.

Then, the next trilogy of games is about the reaper war.

@Ember_1213 4 years ago

About Wrex, I like him regardless. I like when he's joking, I like when he's serious and GOD DAMN do I like that bro moment with Shepard on Tachunka. Didn't have anything to say, just expressing my love for everyone's favorite Krogan

@hoo2042 2 years ago

It took me 6 hours of video (the last one, plus part of this one) to realize that when you were calling The Illusive Man "Tim", that was an acronym and not just his first name... Boy do I feel dumb. But honestly, now I'm just sad the devs didn't sneak a normal-sounding first name for him in as an easter egg 😂

@talus9663 2 years ago

I’ll always think this series should have been a planned tetralogy instead of the messy trilogy we got in order to both elaborate on the story that began in the first game while also allowing for character stories like in the second game.

@isaiahdavis5758 4 years ago

The scene where Shep threatens Mordin just solidified for me that he is one of if not the best written character in the entire series, and his death is undoubtedly the saddest death in the whole franchise no matter how he dies.