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ssaalexblake · 1 year

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I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the Ghost Monument. I know some people feel the stakes aren’t high enough, and that maybe if the racers were pitted against each other more it could be a more ‘interesting’ episode I guess, but I find the dynamics of the 2 guest cast to be interesting because they aren’t enemies, they’re not friends either but there’s not a desire to kill each other, because they are their out of necessity and to me that’s more then just being there out of ego or a prize. That surrounded by the history of the Stenza on the planet, it’s fascinating and one where I don’t think I’m fully across yet, so would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Honestly, I was mostly just shocked that people thought this episode was bad? It wouldn't make my favourites list but there's literally nothing wrong with it either in plot or the execution of it imo. I enjoy it in a rewatch! It builds important dynamics and sets up important arcs. The foundation for the main characters are more firmly set.

Also, like, whatever peoples feelings on the stakes in this episode, it should be noted that The Ghost Monument as an episode has a dark twin. Its name is Ascension of the Cybermen. Narratively they function as a pair and the second one is supposed to be a lot darker with more stakes that shows the development of the characters, so you can't really do that if the first one is absolutely Go Go Go GO high stakes all the whole way through? The tonal difference belays the seriousness of the second episode. The contrast shows to demonstrate both how far the fam have come in AotC and how far 13 has fallen from TGM.

Not to say the sitch they're in in TGM isn't serious, it is, but this is not super stressful to the doctor, she's not, till the very end, scared she can't return them home or that they'll die (well. anymore than the doctor apparently normally is. The monologue in Once, Upon Time was fabulous but very sad). The fam are mostly just following 13's lead to get through this all figuring it's their best chance. In the second episode, they show their own initiative. In effect TGM is their training wheel episode that allows them to survive when the stakes get high.

The links between 11x01 & 2 and 12x09 & 10 give me Life. Such brilliant arching plot threads. Great bookends to Ryan and Graham's time on the show.

And really? This is a personal opinion, but disaster apocalyptic scenarios (which this is applicable to even if our group aren't natives of the place) where everybody lives in hell but just fight and try and kill each other as well as the environment trying to off them are just Bad. And belays an absolutely twisted view of us as a species. I feel like them all banding together when it gets tough and forming a community, if a very terse one where not everybody gets along, is actually an accurate portrayal of people in general. Even whatshisface Enzo or whatever joined the group he hated for safety because he was a lousy person, yeah, but he was Not stupid. I cannot stand grimdark crap like those zombie shows where people just kill each other en masse in their warring factions or whatever like the whole of human history isn't us forming societies and working together.

But speaking of whatever his name is, I feel like his contributions to the dialogue of the episode played an important part in delivering the themes they were going for, so making them fight instead would just have damaged the episode's core aims.

Mr 'I love my mum she taught me people are awful and selfish and horrible by breaking my trust and allowing me to get badly injured' is, congrats, the first person in this era to talk about his terrible mother whom 13 Immediately says sucks (gee i wonder why they did that. he even got hurt because he fell and his mum didn't save him). This is also the first time the cycle of abuse is mentioned because uh, the loser in the mother of the year competition did it specifically so it'd perpetuate itself in her son. This is the episode the timeless child is first mentioned. Considering the cornerstone of the arc is that this child in the end Broke that chain of abuse I do not consider this a coincidence. I'd bet him and his mother would think that Tecteun made that child Strong by what they did to them. 13 did Not like this man and she wouldn't, he's a dark mirror but also the victim of a really shitty mother.

There are other things i take note of in this episode. It's the first time out of post regeneration weirdness we see 13 really hit her stride. It's the first time we see her eschew pacifism as Her Thing despite the fact that she's already demonstrated her willingness to use violence with a few bombs the ep previous. Contextual morality. Reoccurring theme. It Wasn't a good idea to use violence in the situation she was in in TGM. Still doesn't make her a pacifist though bc lol, the bomb thing. So it's Kind of the first blatant portrayal of 13's private actions contrasting ones witnessed by the fam which are used to make her look better in their eyes. This will continue all season.

The stenza are now explicitly portrayed as violent colonizers as opposed to weird guys with the universe's most messed up election system. The lady is going through a race from hell is here to buy her loved ones out of the hell of their society. It's the first time the theme Properly pops up in the era. The first of many times. 13 continues to be a support to Ryan here, deepening their relationship. She's dad-ing him. She's not mad, she's disappointed! (she's also mad). She's also supportive of him.

I also think that 13 totally running out of ideas and thinking they're all gonna die at the end when the others disappear and the tardis does Not appear sets up something interesting. The fam, the ones who have been sceptical about her ability to save them this ep but still figure her as their best chance Immediately bolster her confidence and try and prop her up. They continue with the 'you've got this doc, we have faith in you!!' for a while after that, i assume they think she needs the morale boost? But I think it just leaves her with this terrifying pressure in the end?

She tries to let them know later on that this travelling is Dangerous and that they could get hurt but i think they have kind of started to buy into their own hype about her by then and aren't as worried as they should be. They think tim shaw is the worst of the worst the whole of s11 and 13 doesn't barely deign to acknowledge him bc he's so beneath her. So by the time the real bad guys pop out of the woodwork that Actually scare her the fam are overconfident in her ability to save them, which in turn eventually leaves them in the AOTC situation where they have to save themselves because she Cannot save them herself. She gave them an out before then and they didn't take it because they were not worried. I think the journey to that overconfidence starts right here.

I guess if i had to gripe it'd be that the scene where the two racers decide to take the prize together was Way too easy and more of a footnote in the story? There wasn't really another way this was going to end, but still. That seemed a little weakly done to me. I'd like a little bit more time devoted to it because it's not like i can't think of a few different scenarios to get here, it's just they'd have taken more screen time. In the end, I think that the episode had more important plot threads to go into so they just rushed it a bit. Maybe that's where people wanted more conflict? I don't want more conflict as much as a deeper discussion. They Didn't have a gripe with each other beyond that they were competing against each other and wanted to win and it didn't seem to occur to them that they could just share. But also, i've not watched this for a while. Maybe i'm misremembering, but i remember it feeling short to me.

idk, in the end it reminds me, weirdly, of Jurassic park where they're working their way across the park to the guest centre when all the dinos are escaped. Yes they're in danger and at times it's severe, but they have time to talk and bond and work together using their own skills as a group. The stakes Are high, there be monsters out to kill them and they want to go home, but it's also not 100% dire at all times. It hits the same mood for me.

This episode wasn't grim but it wasn't trying to be either so i guess if you Like grim it'd be a disappointment, but it did what it wanted to pretty well with setting stuff up and having a reasonable compelling episode plot.

Also... It's Super pretty. The bright sun. Glorious.

#13stardisposts #dw shit #dw meta #kind of #i mostly just talked #i like this ep and i'm mostly just surprised people object to it so much???

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ghost-of-you · 11 months

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Why do people feel the need to produce break up rumors out of thin air after every tour/album 🫥 the expectations of some people in this fandom are wild to me.

What do people think they should do? Even if it weren't for Michael's baby, they released an album last year and played two tours, of course they'll need some time to recharge now. Why would you expect new music or ANOTHER tour now already?

And they have not said or done anything that would indicate that they are thinking about breaking up and still people choose to be paranoid instead of putting some trust in them and just let them rest.

Idk maybe I'm the opposite of those people who are still traumatised by 1D or whatever but my other favourite band just had a 5 year gap between albums, they didn't play any live shows for like 4 of those years (partly bc of the pandemic od course) and the front man did a solo album + tour in the meantime. One other band member did some stuff as a producer and from like 2 of them I think I saw a total of 4 social media posts during that time lmao. I didn't see a single person worried that they would break up. That never came up as a possibility anywhere. And then I go to 5sos fandom spaces and people are freaking out when the band goes on a break because one of them will have to care for a damn newborn like please 💀

Sorry for ranting, I'm sure you have a lot of this stuff in your inbox now. No need to respond, I just needed to express to someone how truly baffled I am by this behaviour.

Honestly, I blame one direction for a large part of it. Obviously not the boys in 1D but the whole culture and the intensity around them. I like them but I was never in really invested in them so I did watch everything that happened from the outside and I keep seeing the effects of it. A lot of people did not handle their break up and since 5sos has this connection to them that ended bringing fans over to 5sos people get triggered. But it's bullshit because 5sos is a band that wanted to be the band they are. To act as if 5sos is doomed to follow 1Ds footsteps is stupid because 1D was a bunch of kids who didn't want to be in a band, who got put in a band package and explored until they broke. And all of them are doing the thing they wanted all along, which is be solo acts, so the comparison is not fair. You can't compare 5sos to the boyband curse, because they are no are not a boyband. And this is the dumbest argument ever but it is true, 5sos has a lot more freedom with each other to do other things while still keeping the 5sos project alive. Everything they do that's not exactly like the 17 yo posting keeks and doing twitcam from a mansion creating a constant stream of content creates a wave of mass histeria and honestly, I am so tired of it. Even if 5sos were about to take a decade long break, which I don't think they will, they like making music with each other too much to just stop, they can. They gave us over a third of their lives already. They are allowed different dreams.

Also I think there's this layer of desensitization surrounding famous people in general, that makes people not see them as real people with real feelings or see them as this character they get mad won't follow the script they made in their heads. And the whole way some parts of the music industry just want a really fast rotation that's not really possible and things like K-pop that end up having a higher rotation that creates a bigger stream of content that's not really sustainable in a healthy way for very long but creates a weird expectation anyway. And people think they're allowed to demand shit just because (and this goes from the temper tantrum for the lack of tour to the obnoxious hbg chanting)

5sos already did the killing themselves for the band. Now they live and have a band. I rather to see things this way. They are happy, they are thriving in other aspects of life. If that means waiting another 2, 3, 5, 10 years for new music, so be it. To use 5sos own metaphor, they're driving the bus, we're just along for the ride so whatever stops and turns they want is what goes. They can do whatever they want because is their life and it's their band. And I'm not worried they're gonna break up. Not even a little bit. If not seeing them for a year while Michael settles into being a father is what it takes for them to be happy and healthy, then so be it, let them exist outside the band.

#i had a longer more elaborate answer typed but tumblr ate it #anon i wish more people thought like you #also people out there if youre seriously this distressed over it. if your well being relies this heavily on something you cant control #get help. im saying this on the most kind way possible. one thing you cant control shouldn't control you like this #you can love something but the second it starts to take over you need to take a step back #but this is not the point here #and you're good im just blocking the annoying people skspskpaakpska #anon 😌#i was asked

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myaoiboy · 8 months

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Rating All The Metal Gears By Hotness

No, not the characters. Yes, literally the Metal Gears. If I forgot any, let me know.

Metal Gear TX-55 - 4/10

This is just a lil guy. A friend, even. Reminiscent of a gonk droid from Star Wars. Sucks that he was made to do murdering. I can see where someone would find appeal, but not really for me.

Metal Gear D - 6/10

This one I can see. He got some depth to him. Kinda shiny. More smooth, less boxy. Kind of insectoid. In most franchises this would be like an 8, but it gets knocked down because of what comes later being so much sexier.

Also can I say that MG2's spriting? Mwah. Chef's kiss. So pretty. Didn't even read the intro the first time I started it up bc I was marveling at the pretty spritework. I fucking love good spritework, just find it so much more satisfying than equivalent-quality 3D art.

Metal Gear G - 2/10

Never actually completed or seen in game. Was supposed to be a smaller, mass produced version of D. Kinda sexy, loses points for being so fictional that it's only theoretical even in the games.

Metal Gear REX - 7/10

OOOO YEAH, NOW WE'RE TALKIN'!! SHINKAWA ERA BAYBEY!!! Man's got impeccable taste. He could make a literal slab of titanium look inviting.

Rex is not the sexiest Metal Gear to me, partly bc Otacon treats it like a son or a pet dog and I find a 25-yo's son-analogue to be offputting. BUT. I must concede. REX is the blueprint for all the sexy traits to come. He's got the hips. He's got the saunter. He's just a lil too brutalist for me.

Metal Gear RAY - 11/10

I know I have psychological problems because this thing's childbearing hips and murderous mandibles distract me during the boss fight.

Why is it so sexy?? What the fuck?? It's like mecha furrybait but specifically for people who are into garrus mass effect. Please tell me I'm not the only one, I'm pretty sure my boyfriend thinks I'm insane.

Arsenal Gear - 4/10

Basically just an aircraft carrier. I would say not fuckable but it DOES, canonically, have a digestive tract and asshole so like. Technically fuckable I think. But at what cost?

Honorable mention for making me deal with Raiden's daddy issues and fight the sexy mech in this thing's enormous rectum (damn near killed 'em).

Shagohod - 4/10

Not technically a metal gear. I can see the appeal, but it doesn't *quite* nail the drider-esque niche for me. It does get a bonus point for the way it moves being kinda sensual tho. Additional bonus point for being piloted by an evil fa-

Intercontinental Ballistic Metal Gear - 0/10

literally could not even find an image of this that wasn't completely dwarfed by the Saturn V rocket attached to it. Not really much to look at. If you've always wanted to fuck a Saturn V, I guess this would be a good way to get introduced.

Metal Gear RAXA - 2/10

Somehow managed to capture "first day of kindergarten" energy in a death machine. I could be convinced based on its behavior tho. Damn, Portable Ops kind of an L design-wise, huh?

Gekkos - 9.5/10

WHY DOES IT HAVE SQUISHABLE THIGHS?? SIR???

And the feet. Like, we gotta talk about the feet. Why? Why the toes? Why does it stomp on me with its weirdly well-defined toes??? Did they make this mech specifically to appeal to dinosaur foot fetishists? Why does it bleed? Why does it MOO???

Extremely fuckable to the point that it loses half a point purely because it *feels* like horny bait.

Dwarf Gekkos - 7.5/10

This is an object that feels like it was designed by and for lesbians. I have no notes. Slightly offputting only due to the odd number of hands but it IS the perfect number for some activities, so honestly that may be a plus.

Metal Gear Mk II/III - 1/10

Adorable. Not fuckable. This is a gopro with a personality. Not to be confused with the vampiric gopro with a personality from Ultrakill, V1. Literally just a baby.

Outer Haven - 5.5/10

Only technically a Metal Gear by virtue of technically being a stolen Arsenal Gear which is technically a Metal Gear. Gains .25 each for being the site of the infamous russian tuant

and whatever fucked up display of devoted homosexuality this is:

also additional bonus point for being piloted by an evil fa-

Pupa - 3/10

This is just the Shagohod but with an AI pod. -1 for being touched by Huey, but balanced out by the +1 from being made by Strangelove. Even if it IS creepy that she made her dead crush/girlfriend's psyche pilot it around.

Crysalis - 6/10

Not super sexy but it does fly and has a rail gun where one could feasibly conceptualize a dick. Kinda MILF-like (has mini-drones). Has a grappling hook, so could do bondage. Probably would, ngl.

Cocoon - 1/10

Pupa, but less sexy. I barely even remember this boss fight because the game became such a rush right around here, pushing you to the postgame/first ending.

Peace Walker - 7/10

Weird dog, functioning by sheer lesbian willpower. She is beauty, she is grace, she would probably rate a lot higher if my emulator didn't suck ass and make me angry every time I see her now, fuck that bitch.

Rage aside, who doesn't love killing their momgirlfriend and then reliving that multiple times throughout the course of a single game, culminating in her just straight up pulling a Virginia Woolf.

Metal Gear Zeke - 6/10

Really just nothing that special. Okay, wait, +2 for being piloted by an evil little girl in her panties for some fucking reason.

Also +1 for the sick ass boss fight.

Walker Gear(s) - 8/10

HERE we go!!! Hell Yeah Babey!!! Basically human sized! Has lil Fuckin' Roller Skates!!! Carries My Ammo! My Best Friend! (Okay, third best friend, after Quiet and DD)

Yeah Huey developed it but it gets WAY more bonus points for letting me manhandle him.

Sahelanthropus - 7/10

I can't deny the raw sex appeal of Sahelanthropus. Also, it's literally piloted by pubescent rage which is something I deeply resonate with ngl.

HOWEVER it DOES get docked points for uhhh

-getting strangelove killed

-making baby otacon a child soldier

-huey :/

Battle Gear - 0/10

Is there even a single frame of this entire thing? Especially without Huey??

negative 1 billion points for blue balling me in the late game, i want to ride this motherfucker right into the kgb outposts and let 'em have it for what they did to babygirl

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carrinth · 11 months

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Whelp I've done it. Just finished Witch Hunt which now marks the end of my Dragon: Age Origins run. 10/10 would recommend. Especially Awakening and Witch Hunt DLC.

And y'know what? Witch Hunt was worth it for this moment. A fitting end for my Warden. Reunited with his love (and baby mama) and peaces out of work and responsibilities via magic mirror. Just look at that face. I think this is honestly the first time I've seen my Warden-Commander smile in a LONG time. Poor guy.

Minor DA2 rant below cut;

Actually I finished it awhile ago but had been procrastinating by replaying Awakening.

Because uggghhhhhh... I don't want to play DA2.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I'll grow to love Hawke again but right now my mood is just... meh. Replaying Origins and all its DLCs just made the differences in quality and content between the two all the more jarring. Aaaand on a more personal level -- I don't want to stop being a Grey Warden. ಥ_ಥ

For the last near 150 hours, I was sold on being a Grey Warden. In fact, I think my best fun was Awakening where I actually got to BE a Grey Warden doing Grey Warden things WITH OTHER GREY WARDENS. We ALL drank the nasty juice! It was a bonding experience! This game spent so much time building up the lore and excitement of being a Grey Warden -- leaving so many unanswered questions about the Taint, the Blight, what it all means, dO wE GET griFFONs -- only to just... drop it all in DA2.

I'm just so confused by the direction DA2 went. Replaying Origins with the knowledge of the upcoming mage/templar plot in DA2, the conflict in Origins felt... minor. Sure we get hints here and there that things are Kinda Bad. But nothing major. Heck, I played a Circle Mage as my Origin and I never felt that 'Oh wow, mage rebellion should totally be Main Focus of the next game!' Like don't get me wrong, mage/templar conflict is 😌👌but the Darkspawn and Grey Wardens was what set Dragon Age apart from other fantasy.

"Well the Blight's over Carrinth, there's no more story to tell about Grey Wardens" you say. And yet, Awakening did a fantastic job of making an entire campaign post-Blight.

Part of me feels like if they didn't want to keep the Main Character the same (ala Mass Effect with Cmdr Shepard) then couldn't they have still made the DA2 MC a grey warden? Like a junior(?) Warden that's investigating Corypheus or whatever in Kirkwall but gets caught in the mage/templar mess. Sure we would have gotten a very different story but would that have been so bad?

In the end, I will likely end up playing DA2, if only for the excellent companions and to reunite with my Sad Mage and Angry Spirit Husbands. But at the moment... *sigh*

So goodbye Marzel Amell. You were the best Warden-Commander and I had fun throwing Storm of the Century on fools, flexing my maxed out Coercion, and painstakingly working out TACTICS. I will probably still keep stubbornly drawing Awakening fanart (because I am Not Normal about those idiots) but DA2 stuff will likely eventually bleed in. ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Farewell Marzel and go live gloriously in mirror land with ur spider lady and kid.

#dragon age stuff #marzel amell #carrinth's continued da adventures #minor DA2 rant

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goblin-face-sucker · 3 days

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Recently been experiencing this fuckery at work where people find out I am trans and start saying the weirdest shit.

"What are your pronouns?" You've known me for over nine months, spoken to me three times a week, said hello to my partner on video calls and received countless emails from me with my pronouns in the signature. You wouldn't ask me before, don't start now.*

"Oh my god I had no idea. I couldn't tell." Yeah because my gender history isn't relevant to fucking dashboards or site tracking, which is the thing we largely talk about. And no that is not a compliment. I didn't transition for this one moment of validation.

"Isn't modern science amazing." Yeah, truly. Chances are, before mass inoculation, 1 in 5 of us would be dead.

And then this one, which is the real kicker.

"Have I ever got your pronouns wrong?"

I am a bald, bearded man, who uses he/him pronouns. I happen to be a transgender man. I appreciate these people are genuinely sidelined by learning I am not what they consider a transgender person to be based on the Daily Mail stereotypes. But if you honestly mistook me for a woman, looking like this, I would suggest a trip to Specsavers.

Normally this is all followed by the itchy expression cis people get when faced with the enigma of my transexuality. They want to ask questions - questions which are 100% HR violations and totally not okay to ask anyone. What they don't realise is that I am a massive oversharer, and will yab their ears off about all the teenage boy effects of testosterone, like bottom growth and how my pussy smells different after my T shot, or how itchy my scars are five years on, or the weird black heads I get on my nipples and how I can't feel them at all, but when it's cold they still get pointy.

That's not information that they want.

The next person who asks me if I have had the surgery is being offered a picture. I will then show them a screenshot of some text which reads "You just asked to see a picture of my genitals. In the work place. I'm telling HR."

*I'm not saying that people asking for pronouns is a bad thing: quite the opposite. But if you only ask for them when the passing trans person tells you they're trans, you need to evaluate just how much you value that information. This weird performative allyship is making it really hard to tell funny anecdotes.

#thinking words #it happened like three times last week #and all the same things #multiple saying “if i ever got your pronouns wrong just tell me” like wtf #i appreciate non-hes and non-shes dont always get this kind of chivalry and treatment #but i wish cis people could be normal for five minutes #heaven forbid they find out i have a secret hidden pronoun #my party pronoun as it were

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icespyders · 3 months

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i honestly really really hate being so negative. dragon age is my very favorite video game series; KotOR was my first bioware game, and i had a lot of fun in mass effect, but i fell in love with dragon age, warts and all. my favorite of the three is DA2 for god's sake, clearly i'm a very forgiving soul when it comes to these fucking games; i've always been so taken by the character writing and the lore that i don't mind all the jank. the gameplay never got in the way of my exploring and romancing and codex-hunting. and some part of me was truly desperately hoping i could find it in my heart to get excited about Veilguard after the first trailer like ruined my entire sunday but i watched this gameplay video twice and i just hate it. the second time i watched i kept notes and i didn't realize how long it ended up, like, it's just this infinite depressing list of things that i didn't like. so i'll try to organize my word vomit. let's start positive.

STUFF I LIKED:

Minrathous looks cool, though i'm pissed we seem to spend so little time there. but it looks totally different from everywhere else we've been in the series and that's cool! the neon-y magic lighting, the big ominous circular floating tower, the narrow streets - some of the layout reminds me of kirkwall which is apropos since kirkwall was originally a tevinter city. so that's nice

Neve is hot! her design is cool and very tevinter and I like that. but the dialogue is so generic high fantasy garbage that I feel like I only got a sliver of her personality (confident + sense of humor which is honestly not much to go on for personality but i'm searching for crumbs here). i'll definitely be interested in getting to know her better, once i inevitably get brain damage and trick myself into playing this shit when it's on sale for like $3 in a year and a half

We only got a little bit of it but I like the reactivity/mention of backstory, anything that acknowledges player choice! Like neve's response to rook's stoic/direct dialogue line, and all the mentions of rook's faction in dialogue, that's all very nice

I don't mind the map markers/waypoints broadly but they're not necessary for this railroaded gameplay segment we see in the trailer. it'll be useful for other quests i guess

I also don't care that we're back to the DA2/DAI-style dialogue wheel with tone tags. i'm glad it's the same icons from DAI so i don't have to learn new hieroglyphics. i know a lot of people bitch about it but it's the neatest way to express the options imo

LORE????

i know a lot of these plot points are set up in supplemental novels and whatever and i personally feel like bioware needs to be banned from putting plot-critical information in novels and comics that nobody in the world wants to read. i've been playing and re-playing dragon age games regularly since 2018. i have never ONCE wanted to read any of this material. but apparently neve and one or two of the other companions are featured in Tevinter Nights and The Missing and whatever and i'm just fed up. no. i play the games. include the information there

so the shadow dragons faction is linked to tevinter/based in tevinter, but broadly, not just in minrathous, based on rook's dialogue about how he's unfamiliar with the city when the others expect him to know more. probably they're also linked to dorian? maybe shadow dragons is dorian's faction of non-horrible magisters?

bioware said in the developer Q&A that it's been 8 years since trespasser. that is absurd. wtf took solas so long to do whatever he's doing, what was he waiting for. the end of trespasser made it seem like disaster was imminent, but apparently solas needed 8 more years to find his little plot knife and set up all those incredibly unstable pillars

Where is the Inquisitor/inquisition??? Why is varric in charge of this???? Esp talking to solas, the end of trespasser makes it very personal between the inquisitor & solas and now they're just AWOL. the fact that inquisition isn't even a faction you can pick according to the developer Q&A is such a mistake, them saying inquisition isn't a major faction in the game is shocking to me. why does nothing matter

The venatori?? The venatori????? they're back but not the inquisitor?????? i thought i killed you losers

so who's that at the end, two of the other evanuris. Solas accidentally freed them from their prison bc rook fucked up the ritual. that's a fine hook but i hate the entire retcon of the evanuris lore but that's a longer rant

ART STYLE/UI

oh boy

the rain effect/puddle effect looks like it's from another game + why is it raining everywhere??? the huge ghibli rain droplets on everyone's clothes look weird, they're ginormous and so prominent. why is everyone is wearing hydrophobic clothes lmao

the interact button is ew. the approval/disapproval UI looks weird and it's in a weird place on the screen. the demon designs are bad. the hair textures are suspect. again, what's up with the hydrophobic clothes. but i lost it with neve's snowflake spell effects hahaha oh my god it looks so cartoony and weird, it's so unserious. those snowflakes are SO BIG!!! and SO PROMINENT!! everything has its moments of looking weirdly cartoony; the walls in minrathous stuck out to me as just looking odd in a way i can't quite put my finger on, the walking through the eluvian effect looked SO bad that my immediate thought was "oh wow that can't be the final version"

the lip-sync is...weird sometimes. I can't quite put my finger on why that's bugging me either but it's disturbing my eye

they got rid of so much of varric's chest hair, it's a felony. i also don't like harding's re-design, i feel like they tried too hard to make her pretty and i barely recognized her at first glance

it looks better than the reveal trailer but i don't love it

it's so funny how rook changes armor mid-cutscene. they clearly cut out a menu of the player setting equipment but the first time I watched the thing, I blinked and rook had fully changed clothes and it made me bust out laughing

finally: lol you can see texture pop-ins even in the gameplay reveal video (rook's armor around 8:00) they still can't optimize a game for shit

DIALOGUE

how did they fuck up the dialogue sweet god

right off the bat: the exposition is really clunky, enough so it made me wonder whose benefit it's for. do they really think people will pick up this game without playing at least DAI first? varric is explaining shit that no one in their right mind in-universe wouldn't already know, like "solas bad! breaking the veil bad!" i know that. bioware hates making games for people who already like their games

the dialogue overall is just...boring mostly. super predictable and utilitarian. i get like zero personality out of anybody, like i noted with neve in her intro. i get the SENSE of a personality but it's like. drinking la croix. just a hint. harding is particularly boring (and, side note & apparent hot take: everyone is acting like harding was a big fan favorite and i'm like. she's fine. it was nice to chat with her in DAI in every new region, just to see a familiar face, but narratively she brings very little to the table for me, she's not that interesting. and I don't get how everyone's acting like she was an obvious choice for a returning NPC who gets the promotion to companion. I'd rather have like. Josephine or somebody who had an actual character arc in DAI. Krem from the chargers (i know he can die so it can't be him but i'm dreaming here, sue me). Briala from WEWH. fuck, I'd be more interested in maryden the minstrel honestly, then we have half an excuse to bring cole back too, I feel like he probably has some reaction to all this veil-destroying shit. cole is better friends with solas than varric ever was, why isn't he here talking to solas. isn't varric still the viscount of kirkwall. why is he here at all). the delivery of the dialogue is really bland too, it's like all the actors are reading their lines for the first time and whatever idiot at bioware's in the booth with them was like "ya that's a wrap" bc they wanted to go to lunch sooner

DISHONORABLE MENTION: the entire dialogue exchange in arlathan forest btwn neve and harding is egregiously bad. "I've never seen anything like it!" "The tremors are getting worse!" "We've got demons!" it sucks

COMBAT

i'm just so pissed off

it uh. i hate it. it's my least favorite thing by far and it dashed my hopes the hardest. i can tolerate ugly UI and questionable art and a dumbass story, it's dragon age, that's what i'm here for. but it simply doesn't look like a game i'd enjoy playing. it reminded me of God of War 2018, like the leakers said way back when, and also like the Batman Arkham games with that little alert effect around rook's head and the dodging/parrying and the combos. but it's not what i come to dragon age for and i'm really bummed out. the additional details from the developer Q&A didn't make me feel any better (3 abilities??? i thought DAI was stingy with just 8, to say nothing of DAO and DA2 which, by endgame, grant you so many abilities that you can't even use them all in one fight. i like playing mages, i only get 3 spells? fuck that). it looks like a fixed camera focused on rook in combat, so you're getting attacked from offscreen and there's nothing you can do about it. the little lines showing you how projectiles will move is lame. the pop-ups about picking up gold are silly. i can't control companions??? what the fuck game even is this

I hate the action wheel. I hate that it takes up the whole screen, and it seems you can only pause when you're doing the action wheel. gross

so I see the little line with the dots on the bottom during combat that indicates when you can use special attacks. question: does each companion get their own bar for their own abilities, or does the whole squad draw on that one pool of points/resources/whatever. bc I have a bad feeling it's the latter

lol @ fighting those venatori goons on the edge of a cliff and you can only knock them off once their health bars are empty, you can't shove them off to kill them quicker. you wish you were bg3

it's like they made it to be played on consoles/controllers not PC

10 xp for killing like 8 demons?????

VARRIC & SOLAS??? STORYLINE?????

seriously, can anyone explain to me why talking solas down is varric's job. for real. it's been 8 yrs since trespasser and we're only just now getting to the evil plan???? the fuck is solas waiting for

harding & varric are suddenly besties with solas??? lmao. are harding and solas ever in the same room together in DAI, seriously. i know varric and solas have friendly banter exchanges but all of that content is determinant, the only actual quest that links them is cole's quest and they spend that whole quest respectfully disagreeing

anyway. varric goes to talk to solas (it should be the inquisitor doing that but ok) and solas destroys bianca (death penalty for that alone tbh) and then they just like...keep standing there talking??? why isn't solas trying to hurt him or anything. also, why is he so dumb that rook can sneak around and knock over a pillar to ruin his ritual. how does this ruin the ritual. he's so stupid. why can't varric just tackle him, we're all just STANDING THERE waiting for the world to end

"The veil is a wound inflicted on this world!!" ...yeah inflicted by...you...right solas...come the fuck on. shut up

this intro in minrathous is basically the beginning of me3 including walking across thin planks and doing lame auto-platforming with a recurring character from a previous game while the world is getting exploded around you. come on

THIS IS JUST FUNNY

Varric about Solas, a career liar who he knew for maybe a year and is now actively trying to destroy the world: he's my friend!!! Varric about Anders, who he hung out with every day for 6+ years and merely blew up a church to start a war, which was not a world-destroying event: hes dead to me!!!!!!!

man oh man i'm just. aaaaaaaugh

i think a real big problem in dragon age that bioware clearly has no idea how to handle is...hmm how to describe it. narrative compounding?? the weight of all these games filled with choices that somehow have to cohere over one narrative despite being written and developed by whole teams of different people over the course of like 20 years. it's a problem mass effect doesn't have, at least not in the original trilogy, since the original trilogy is all about shepard. so it's easier to cohere all those choices together, and in ME3 i was actually really satisfied by the sensation of continuity and completion i ended up with, how many characters reappeared and remembered how i'd interacted with them before. i've always liked playing someone new in dragon age, but it makes it really difficult for the story to track all these previous decisions and ensure they have weight. and everyone's gonna get attached to different characters and questlines and outcomes and feel like they're important, but not all of them can actually BE important. i understand that. that's just part of the RPG experience. but i feel we're reaching a point in dragon age where each subsequent game disregards increasingly critical aspects of the previous game's story and it's making so much of the prior games feel retroactively...worthless. like. where's the inquisition? did nothing i do in that game matter? the developer Q&A mentioned that you'll design your inquisitor in the character creator, so clearly they're part of the game, so why ALSO say the inquisition's not a significant faction in the game? wtf are we DOING??? and obviously the Warden's been AWOL since DAO and i doubt that'll change, and the developer Q&A mentioned the Here Lies The Abyss choice won't make an impact so that possibly rules Hawke out too, and as the games go on it just feels more and more absurd that these past heroes have nothing to do with current crises, and all the timeskips create increasingly long lengths of time between each game, making new appearances from old characters seem more and more unlikely. and so many of the companions/old heroes can die in their respective games, so if bioware decides, hey, let's bring merrill back or whoever, how do we write around that? there's just too many choices, but the POINT of the games is the choices, and it's just become impossible to account for everything, but ignoring past plot beats/decisions/characters is frustrating for people like me, who play and replay and try different options and speculate about what might happen next based on their own specific choices. and some of it is understandable. like, i'm biased in favor of my preferred characters and questlines, obviously, and i can't always get what i want. but it's such a bizarre choice for something like...oh idk THE ENTIRE INQUISITION to stop mattering. ugh. augh!!!!! i can't take it

IN CONCLUSION

if varric dies in this game you will see me on the news

#dragon age #Veilguard negative word vomit don't like don't read etc #like. a lot of word vomit. this is way too long #i'm sorry. i really am. i hate being so mad about this game already. i wish i loved her. i just gotta get my thoughts out

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kawaimoonshine · 11 months

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I'm amused with myself

I think I'm repeating the same thing with Mass Effect 2 that I did with the first game which is starting it over before even finishing it

When I was playing the first game, I wasn't sure how my Shepard would look like, so after deciding on one and playing for a while I was just like "no-- this is not it,, and started ALL OVER. I think I restarted the game like 3 times in total if not 4, I can't remember, at one point of the game I was in Virmire before starting over XDD and I guess one of the reasons also was that how I overall played it, not just the looks of my Shepard and there was also one where I had liked her and then proceeded to restart and make a new look but in the end I went back to that look and now it's my official one

With Mass Effect 2, I now restarted once bc I didn't like how I was playing it the first time (thankfully don't have to worry about the looks) and now that I know how things work (with the missions and storyline, I was afraid if I first time went to the Reaper whatever thingy it was, it would have started the suicide mission as you get Legion but I can take a breather xd)

Originally I was thinking of just restarting to when I did Tali's loyalty mission but I'm not sure if I would've had the save file for it anyway, so restarting the whole game wasn't so bad

I honestly don't know where my patience comes from for being able to restart the game before finishing it for more than once just bc I didn't like something

Tho I do sometimes take massive breaks from playing them and only play when I'm feeling like it but my PC only has space for it and Minecraft (and two drawing programs) so if/when I feel like playing something else, I'd need to uninstall Mass Effect Legendary Edition in order to play another game 😂 so juggling with between games is a pain in the ass to say the least and often times I struggle to get MEL back bc I don't got enough space lmao

I really need to have an extra storage device for my PC bc I've got no idea where half of the storage even goes to (I've got some Adobe programs bc of my school and they are like under 6gb each and together they don't even make 100gb and my PC got space in total of 237gb (rn it got 7,12gb free so yeet))

#this is kinda funny #why am i like this tho #rambling #mass effect #mass effect 2 #mass effect legendary edition

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furrylibrarian · 6 months

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Alright so here's the team I'm taking into endgame for my Fire Emblem Engage Hard Mode run. I don't think any of my class picks are too weird, but I barely did any reclassing on my first run, so it feels significant to me. Units are listed in order of recruitment. I'm putting down a "read more" in case people are worried about getting late-game recruits spoiled, any also just so this big long post doesn't clog up people's feeds too much.

I hope you like Canter, because I sure do

Alear (I named her Syldra)

Sword Griffin Knight; S-Rank Xander; Sword Power 4, Canter

Since Alear gets her Emblem form, I was comfortable switching her off an Emblem Ring. I consider this a pretty straightforward build; Flyer mobility and Canter enable her personal skill very well, and then Sword Power and Chivalry ensure that she'll do solid damage. My only complaint is that I didn't think of reclassing to Griffin (and necessarily unlocking staff proficiency) or of using Sword Power until after losing the first batch of rings, so I didn't get to use Alear in her final form until the lategame.

Clanne

Lance Hero; Sigurd; Dual Assist+, Reposition

I like this setup a lot. Brave Assist, Dual Assist, and the movement boost from Sigurd make Clanne effectively a damage boost for the rest of my army.

Framme

Martial Master; Lucina; Canter, Staff Mastery 5

First and foremost a utility setup. Debilitate with staffs, protect allies with Chain Guard/Bonded Shield, and occasionally bash some kneecaps with Flashing Fist Art.

Anna

Sword Mage Knight; Byleth; Canter+, Momentum

I like Byleth on a mounted character because more movement is good for Goddess Dance. Plus, the big Luck boost helps trigger Make a Killing, which is helpful for me specifically because I am not good at making financial decisions in video games nor in real life.

Yunaka

Thief; Corrin; Canter, Gentility/Bravery+

Daggers+Draconic Hex can cripple most targets, and Fog Dragon Vein+Trained to Kill with a crit-boosting engraving on her weapon means she is occasionally really good at securing kills. Bravery ensures that she can always deal some damage, therefore ensuring that her daggers properly debuff things.

Diamant

Successor; Roy; Canter, Speed +5

Honestly kind of a filler pick when I realized that I had 14 deployment slots for the last few maps and not 12 like I thought. I went with Diamant because he can use S-rank swords and I wanted to start using my legendary weapons.

Ivy

Lindwurm; Celica; Canter, Speed +4

The other character I added to my lineup to fill a newly-acquired vacancy, but unlike Diamant she fills a genuine niche, since I didn't have a good fit for the Celica ring on my lineup that didn't have a different Emblem I really wanted on them.

Kagetsu

Sword/Axe Wyvern Knight; Lyn; Canter, Gentility/Bravery+

Very much a meta pick. I took who seems to be considered the best physical combatant and put him into what seems to be considered the best physical combat class. Lyn ensures that he can double enemy speedsters like Swordmasters and Wolf Knights.

Fogado

Cupido; S-Rank Leo; Canter+, Bow Focus 5

Fogado exists for one purpose and that is to annihilate flyers with the Radiant Bow. Ideally I would have a Claude bond ring for Wind God, but the RNG just didn't pan out.

Panette

Warrior; Ike; Vantage+, Pair Up

Blood Fury+Wrath+upgraded Killer Axe=consistent 100% critical rates. Vantage and Pair Up help to prevent my hubris from killing her.

Hortensia

Sleipnir Rider; Micaiah; Canter+, Staff Mastery 5

Here pretty much exclusively for wacky staff shenanigans, using Micaiah to warp and debilitate en masse. My only regret is that I used up most of my Freeze staffs, and the shop never got them in unlimited supply like I thought it would.

Seadall

Dancer; Leif; Canter+, Quality Time+

Just straight grooving. He gets Leif because I struggle to find another unit that really wants his skillset more than another Emblem's, and Arms Shield protects Seadall from bows and tomes, which are most of the weapons directed at him whenever I fail to move him out of the danger zone.

Mauvier

Royal Knight; Eirika; Canter, Lance Power 4

I gave him a Brave Lance to take advantage of Lunar Brace. I've moved him and Alear to healing duty so that Framme and Hortensia can devote more of their inventories to wackier status staffs.

Veyle

Sword Wolf Knight; Marth; Canter, Gentility/Bravery+

Levin Sword Lodestar Rush goes brrrrrrrrrrr. She can't debilitate as well as Yunaka, but she still can add to poison stacks, which is neat. I also made her Alear's S-Support, and the two of them have tag-teamed a healthy amount of chapter bosses so far.

#fire emblem #fire emblem engage

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fanstuffrantings · 7 months

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Rewatching the mass effect: Paragon Lost movie and once again reminded of the mixed feelings I have on it. It's been a while since I watched it but I got my hands on a new copy of the movie and I have such a jumbled bag of feelings about it.

I like that they decided to give us a movie about Vega and show us just how much of his ideals and actions revolved around his hero worship for Shepard, it really helps put into perspective a clear picture of their dynamic from his view and in a way I think it aligns him more with the player's opinion. Mass effect players also tend to idolize Shepard and speak about them very similarly to Vega.

I like that we see him in a leadership role making a tough decision that explained incredibly well why the N7 program wanted him and also why he wouldn't really be eager to take on the role given what choice he had to make. The ending of the movie not having some clean happy tie up in his romance with Treeya since yes he saved her and in doing so saved data that would help in the war, but he had to actively ignore hundreds of civilians dying in the process and it's an action that he would always remember when she was around. The Liara cameo was also fun.

That said, there wasn't enough content with the other members of his team for me to really care when they were dying and I think in a movie where Vega loses almost everyone, caring about the people he loses is important. I had a large amount of distaste for Essex because it wasn't just him flirting without taking a no, he actively sexually harassed Camille and touched her completely violating her consent.

In general, this movie didn't have great writing for the female characters. Part of that has to do with run time, part of it was the writers just putting in creepy men where they didn't have to. I think Treeya was the best written woman in the movie which makes sense since she got the most screen time, and I could even fully understand and sympathize with her hatred of the military.

I originally thought in the beginning she had a romance with Christine based on their interaction/dialogue and I do think pursuing that idea and having her and Vega just become friends who understand each other would've been a solid angle. This also could've led to Treeya actually wanting Vega to save the colonists because her wife/girlfriend was on board and hating him for saving her but also understanding why he did when the data was on the line.

I think a longer run time or it being a series would've allowed for more development between her and Vega romantically if they were planning to go this route. I just felt like her change towards him happened a bit too fast for my liking.

We get a jump cut to Vega being with the colony and integrating into it after 2 years which I would've loved to see happening so we can more easily care about all the people. I honestly think this could've been a mini series with us seeing what the Normandy companions were up to during the 2 years. I know they tell us but it could've been cool to get glimpses of their lives while still having a heavy focus on Vega since he's the on were building up.

I wish they'd actually taken the opportunity to have Treeya show up in ME3 for a quest where we get some interaction between her and Vega. I don't need it to set up a romance or anything but them being able to talk and catch up would've been a nice Easter egg.

I also felt like the military heavy hand was a lot stronger in this movie than it is in the rest of mass effect. I'm aware mass effect is military propaganda but this movie felt like it was going to at some point turn to me and ask me to join with dialogue we got.

Not a terrible movie, but definitely could've been far better. I do wish it was a mini series. I think if you're a mass effect fan and haven't seen it you should check it out and decide if it's for you on your own.

#mass effect #mass effect paragon lost #james vega #molten rambles #i love james so the watch was enjoyable none the less #also watching it makes me know for sure i could never romance him with shepard

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annalyticall · 2 years

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Thoughts on Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect Trilogy

Well. It's over.

I'll keep it real with you chief, Mass Effect 3 was by far my favorite of the three games. That might be controversial given what I know about the divisive endings (basically the only thing I knew before I started these games), but as a newcomer to the series, Mass Effect 3 had a lot of what I was looking for from the previous entries. I also realized that fundamentally I can't compare these games to Dragon Age because the truth is I still like the Dragon Age games more individually but I do like Mass Effect more as a unified trilogy.

Again, I played Shiv Shepard, colonist Sole Survivor, Sentinel, and Paragon. I played her with survivor's guilt in ME1, with a burning hatred of Cerberus for bringing her back from the dead (and for the Akuze thing) in ME2, and a mix of burning hatred of Cerberus and a survivor's guilt over Earth in ME3. I don't think I ever mentioned this but I intended Shiv to be Irish/Korean, full first name is Siobhan

You see that bit of red? Those are renegade points I got every time I talked to the Illusive Man.

Major Story Decisions: Continued relationship with Kaidan, let Mordin cure the genophage, killed Councilor Udina myself with Kaidan on my side, secured peace between the geth and quarians, killed the Illusive Man myself, and chose the Destroy ending (which I'll get into later). I entered the war with 8000 war assets and the only character deaths I saw were the scripted ones (Mordin, Thane, Legion, Anderson, presumably EDI). I also beat James' 182 pull-up record.

The Pros and Cons lists are a little tricky for this one since I found a lot of the good came with some bad and a lot of the bad came with some good, but I'll try to keep it all in neat bullet points.

Pros

Satisfying Ends. From Mordin curing the genocidal disease he helped perfect to the control-hungry Illusive Man driven crazy by the same control he sought to have, everyone gets a nice and neat bow on their character arcs that had been set up since the beginning, or at least since Mass Effect 2. Honestly, playing ME3 made me like ME2 more than I had before since I could now see the consequences of my actions on the characters I grew close with in the previous game. Speaking of...

Consequences. Moreso than Dragon Age, it's fun to see how much my choices from previous games impacted my experience throughout the trilogy following a single character and her friend group. Of course, it's not going to be perfect - I AM miffed that my major game-ending decisions of ME1 and ME2 like saving the council, rewriting the geth, and destroying the collector base ultimately resulted in very little change in the story. Weirdly, it was the lesser decisions that mattered most - keeping Wrex alive, preserving the cure data in Mordin's loyalty mission, not cheating on my ME1 love interest, resolving Legion's and Tali's hostility, and reuniting Thane with his son were all very effecting choices on my story since they all add up into a pool of possible outcomes rather than dichotomous decisions (it makes sense Kaidan might trust me a little less in an armed standoff if I cheated on him I guess lol). And I appreciate that even the minimal choices were at least represented as war assets.

Gameplay. ME3 had the best gameplay of all games by far. I think it's telling when I could spend over 3 hours in the combat center just trying out different modes. Unlike in ME2, I didn't feel as restricted in playstyle with the introduction of a bonus power and a healthier shield. My favorite bonus power was Aria T'Lok's Flare, a large biotic blast critical in any fight with bunched-up enemies. I'm glad I got that one early on because it helped me survive so much of the game.

It looks good. Not that I hated the graphics in the last two games, but this one had some nice cinematic angles, richer colors, and grander set designs that made it more immersive for me to get into.

Pace and Scope. ME3 really pulled off the feeling of scale in a galaxy-wide conflict. It didn't hold back with its bang of an opening as we survive the reapers attacking Earth within the first 10 minutes, then slowly we see these behemoth machines devastate every other alien homeworld and invade more of the map in each story arc until it culminates in a grand final stand. I was worried the game would, in a sense, "nerf" the reapers since it took so much to take down just one reaper in ME1 and a single half-built reaper in ME2, but although we kill many more reapers in ME3, each one is an earned spectacle that requires either a lot of combined firepower or a giant thresher maw to do the job. Side note, I do like the irony of my sole survivor Shepard getting saved by the thing that killed her whole squad in the past.

Romance and Friendships. Listen, I don't think I've praised a Bioware game on its romance since Dragon Age Origins (Alistair my beloved) and while this game is still a little sparse in the romance department, the DLCs more than make up for it with a lot of great content for the love interests. I enjoyed the flirty, lively banter and the cute domestic scene in the Citadel DLC (Kaidan my beloved), and how worried he was about Shepard's safety in the Leviathan DLC. But even outside those addons, I liked the quiet moment shared before the final Cerberus mission, and while I typically cringe at Bioware sex scenes, I found this one to be, uh... tolerable. The romance in ME3 felt like an oasis after the lonely desert I suffered through in the last game lol. As for friendships, I loved the little platonic dates you get to go on with your squadmates both in the base game and the Citadel DLC. I never felt closer to these characters than I have here.

Cons

Contrived Means. Although I enjoyed the satisfying ends to many subplots and character arcs, I didn't enjoy the somewhat forced means it took to get there. I can forgive the last-minute sabotage that doomed Mordin to die since ultimately the end it led to was most fitting for Mordin's story. However, I took issue with a lot of the geth/quarian buildup, mostly involving Legion and the reaper codes. To be honest, I LIKED the geth being a completely alien hivemind and existing as a neutral anomaly that takes effort to understand and accept in ME2. The focus of becoming an individual (the original question the geth asked was actually "do these units have a soul", not "does this unit have a soul" as ME3 claims) undermined what I thought was compelling about Legion and the geth in the first place. Also, Legion's sacrifice felt unnecessary, especially when the reason for the reaper code upload not working was flimsy. And don't even get me started on the Citadel...

The Citadel. Holy shit, what happened there? I'm not talking about the Citadel as a location - I liked exploring the Citadel more in this game than any of the other games - I mean the Citadel as a plot device. For one, I was very surprised to learn the Citadel was the Catalyst when it was already an important plot device in ME1, where it was revealed to be a secret reaper mass relay. Now it's the key to a giant super weapon against the reapers whose original designers are never specified? Okay? But my biggest issue was that it was inexplicably "moved" by the reapers in the last mission despite millions of people living on it, then we can use it to blow up the reapers, destroying the Citadel and I assume most people still on there, so we're basically condemning millions of people to die and never get to see the impact of that decision. Granted, this is not much different than the weird 300K Batarian mass murder Shepard commits in ME2, but the difference is that these people are people we knew and spent a good amount of time helping and building relationships with throughout the game. What happened to Captain Bailey? What happened to Kolyat? The game never bothers to address that.

Kai Leng. Now, I don't expect every character to be wonderfully fleshed out. I accepted Kai Leng was just a plot device to stand in the way of Shepard and her goals, but his presence still left a bad taste in my mouth. He's never mentioned in any of the previous games, then he's introduced here as having a badass reputation despite his best move being a shield. He is so painfully one-dimensional compared to literally any other character that killing him didn't even feel good. I think it would have been cool if Kai Leng was someone else, maybe a character scorned by Shepard in the past who wanted revenge. Or, he could have been another character revived by Cerberus and abandoned in favor of Shepard, which was hinted at in his video logs but wasn't completely followed through on. I guess maybe I just wanted it to be Evil Clone Shepard from the Citadel DLC because even she was more compelling. What a waste of Troy Baker.

Let Me Speak. It's complicated because I do think ME3 has some of the strongest dialogue in the series (I didn't have the same jarring Talk No Jutsu problem as I did in ME1 because even when you're talking down a literal war, the dialogue feels earned and natural). However, the cutscenes went on noticeably longer without any input from the player character. It was frustrating since I felt like sometimes Shepard was railroaded into saying or doing something I wouldn't have chosen to do otherwise, but so is the burden of being a finale, I suppose.

Femshep Romance. Listen. I like Kaidan's romance. I like Garrus' romance. I like Liara's romance. If you chose to romance any of them in your playthrough like I did, that's great! You get a good romance. But if you're playing femshep and don't choose those 3 options... you don't. Thane dies early-ish in ME3 (which, I mean, I guess that could be good if you like inevitable tragedy) and Jacob cheats on you (which is terrible and I have NEVER seen in a video game romance before). And if you want to romance a girl? You get Liara or some minor side character, and that's it. You don't get Tali, Ashley, Jack, Miranda, or any of the several other female options that male Shepard has access to. Even in ME3, a male Shepard can romance Kaidan if they want a male companion to romance. Ashley doesn't get the same bi treatment. It's kinda sad just how limited femshep's options are for romance compared to their male counterpart.

The Synthesis Ending. Yes, I chose the Destroy Ending for rather complicated reasons that I will get into, but after watching the outcome of the other endings, I have a bone to pick with Synthesis. I discuss my opinion on the endings in a later section if you want to skip to that.

The DLC

Omega. It was fun. Not much more I can really say. I liked Nyreen as a character (and it was nice to finally meet a female turian) but I also felt her sacrifice was rather hollow. Aria grew on me and I was able to get her to spare Oleg at the end, but really, the shining star of this DLC was earning her Flare ability.

Leviathan. It's a double-edged sword because while I liked the expansion of reaper lore (and the extra dialogue with the LI and EDI) I also think that overexplaining the reaper backstory ruined a bit of their mystique. It also had strange implications for the ending, as the reaper AI explains its purpose in a more convoluted and obfuscated way than the Leviathan does, so it adds to the frustration of the limited ending dialogue choices given to call the reaper AI out on its vague statements.

Citadel. This is possibly the best DLC of any game I have ever played, I'm serious. With the exception of maybe Trespasser from Dragon Age Inquisition, never have I thought a DLC was so perfect for the story it was accompanying. Granted, I think the idea of taking forced shore leave is a little laughable when the fate of the galaxy is at stake, but I digress, the DLC was near perfect otherwise. It had fun in-jokes, meaningful time to spend with squadmates past and present, great scenes with the love interest, and, yes, I did spend 3 hours in the combat simulator just to get the rare One and Only achievement. And that pistol? It was the only thing keeping me from dying to brutes and banshees during the last Earth mission. I am not exaggerating when I say most of my enjoyment of this game actually comes from this DLC, and I consider its bittersweet ending to be the real ending for Mass Effect.

The Squad (including past Squad members)

Kaidan. Once again, I am listing the squadmates in relative order of how much I liked them, and Kaidan skyrocketed to the top within the last 30% of the game. I mean, I had to like him enough to romance him in ME1, but ME2 made me sour toward him, and even at the beginning of this game I was a little bitter that he was still so prickly about Shepard's forced involvement with Cerberus. However, after the hospital and the initial awkwardness of rekindling a strained relationship, I fell in love with his character all over again. He's not quite as deep as the other characters, true, but his human and down-to-earth presence is SO needed in a cast of complicated and eccentric aliens, and the random things he says are some of the only things I ever laugh at in this game. It almost makes me grateful for the mid-series break, because, for all the frustration, the relationship feels earned by the end. He might not surpass Alistair for top Bioware romance for me, but he comes close. Also, the unconditional reassurance he gives once realizing Shepard had actually been clinically dead and may not have been completely the same when she was rebuilt by Cerberus was so nice to get after the accusatory headache that was the Horizon mission in ME2.

Garrus. Admittedly, I don't think Garrus adds much to the narrative of ME3. Even when helping me cure the turian-ordered genophage he doesn't have much stake in the story, and then he has almost none after the genophage is cured. But that doesn't really matter when his purpose is actually just to be Shepard's rock. He is such a good friend and his presence is so comforting that I wish I could take him on every mission even if he's got nothing relevant to say. His farewell to Shepard at the end was the only other farewell besides Kaidan's that made me tear up. Shepard said it best: there is no Shepard without Vakarian.

Tali. I still love Tali, but she was shafted a bit by the lack of screen time she had in this game. It's a shame that she comes to the crew so late, although I guess it's understandable given that she's an admiral now. Still, I loved seeing her wistfulness as she dreamed of her new home on Rannoch, and her time in the Citadel DLC was very fun.

Mordin. Despite his fourth-place ranking on the list, I think Mordin is THE best-written character in Mass Effect. He has one of if not the best character arcs, and he's so likable that I can't not love Professor War Crimes. His singing as the building was falling down around him... it was so sad but a perfect way for him to go.

EDI. Her earnest and heartfelt quest to understand what it means to be human was endearing to me, and her relationship with Joker was great. I brought her along most times if Garrus or Kaidan didn't make sense to take. I am heartbroken that my chosen ending means her death, but it was a sacrifice I still decided to make, especially after she said she was willing to give her life to save the person she loved.

Liara. While I like Liara, I still feel like there's something missing in her character that I can't quite put my finger on. That said, I like the friendship she has with Shepard. There's an implication to their interactions that suggest she never stopped having romantic feelings for Shepard even after I turned her down in ME1, but I like how she still wants to be a close friend to her rather than be bitter about it.

Thane. I think the story did him justice, giving him a pivotal role to play in the amount of time he had left. The prayer read as he was dying sincerely touched me. He wasn't my favorite in ME2 but ME3 gave him a boost for me.

Legion. Despite some inconsistencies I noticed in his writing, I still like my little robot guy. RIP, buddy, sorry your sacrifice was kind of for nothing.

Grunt. Similar to Thane, ME3 (and especially the Citadel DLC) made me like Grunt more than I did upon his introduction to the series. He wasn't as important, but his enthusiastic welcome and his "last stand" made me feel like a proud mama.

Samara. I liked Samara enough in ME2 to try to flirt with her, so I was excited to see her again in this game, but unfortunately, she didn't have much to do. Then again, she doesn't really need to, given that her arc is to accept being a mother to her remaining child rather than her jailor. I still felt like there was lingering unspoken sexual tension between her and Shepard though...

Wrex. It was good to see Wrex again, and I sincerely love how the game portrays his openness to cooperation as the key to saving his people.

James. I feel like James fulfilled the Krogan Companion role for me in this game, which is: I like him, but not enough to bring him anywhere. His flirting was rather alarming to me at first since I had every intention of reuniting with Kaidan and didn't want to turn James down so early, but when it became clear that he wasn't serious about any of it, I liked playing along, though really femshep doesn't have a choice in the matter.

Javik. Don't get me wrong, Javik is incredibly interesting and I think he's a critical companion to take on a lot of missions because the Prothean perspective is so unique and necessary in some instances (seriously, how did Liara not realize her goddess looked suspiciously similar to Javik). As a person, though, my Paragon Shepard didn't really gel with him. Also, my Shepard is rather sentimental and values memories, so I may have accidentally doomed Javik to a tragic post-game death with that memory shard. Oops.

Kasumi. Speaking of dooming people with memories! I told Kasumi to keep her lover's memories last game, which felt meaningful to my Shepard at the time since it happened before Horizon and I was still playing a lovesick Shepard who missed Kaidan and could empathize with her situation. That was, uh, maybe not the right call to make, and I'm a little sad that I basically condemned Kasumi to waste away her life reliving the past.

Miranda. I don't really have a lot to say about Miranda. She lived in my game, and I thought it was a good end for her character to finally fight back against her father. But she is rather bland to me, and I almost wish they kept her the cold-hearted bitch she was introduced as, just more sympathetic. You know, kinda like...

Jack. I like Jack A LOT more in this game than in ME2. I think putting her in a teacher role was a perfect decision that displays her impressive growth as a person and her ability to overcome her traumatic past to give future generations of biotics a better life. However, she is still Jack, and her inherent abrasiveness meant I always felt like I was walking on eggshells picking dialogue options with her.

Jacob. Unlike almost everyone else on this list, I downgraded Jacob. I didn't mind him so much when I was playing, really - I liked that he was having a baby and that meant he would get the chance to be a better father than his own was, and I liked the little get-together I had with him in the Citadel DLC. I thought he was still a little boring but nothing offended me. After learning he can cheat on femshep though? Yikes, dude.

Zaeed. I wouldn't say I hated him as I did in ME2. He was just... there.

Miscellaneous. I liked Samantha Traynor MUCH more than I liked Kelly Chambers, so I was glad to see her fill the role. She was resourceful and a bit awkward but not annoyingly so. Let's just say, if I was actually in the ME universe, I'd probably be Traynor. Steve Cortez was also a great addition. I grew to care about him a lot, and I'm glad Bioware gave us a face for the person driving our shuttle around lol. Diane Allures is, uh... there. Dr. Chakwas and Joker are great as always. That goes without saying.

THE ENDINGS

I want to preface this by saying I thought the ending before the ending, aka the Illusive Man standoff, was well done. I was a renegade every time I talked to him, meaning for my last action I was able to shoot him point blank and he was able to give an ending speech about how he wished Shepard saw the Earth as he did. I thought this was an interesting angle for my Shepard to take since she was so Paragon in ME1 that she was able to talk Saren down. Having the ability to do the same with the Illusive Man and not taking it gave me the chance to show some growth in my Shepard, finally willing to put her foot down and abandon the moral high ground when dealing with the person who both resurrected and ruined her life.

Now to the final endings. I will not be discussing the Control ending, as I immediately dismissed it as a possibility. It was what the Illusive Man wanted, and if my Shepard was anything, she was staunchly contrarian to Illusive Man's ideology. That's to say nothing of what I think of it, which is - eh. I think it's a good ending for a renegade Shepard, and possibly a paragon Shepard that wasn't as anti-Illusive Man as mine was. Still, the other two endings are what I want to talk about.

I will also not be calling the reaper AI the Star Child because I think it's misleading. To me, the child-like appearance seemed like a ploy to appeal to Shepard, and I didn't want to forget that this is essentially the same AI that appeared on the Arrival DLC asteroid I hurtled into a mass relay just to tell me he was going to destroy me. With that in mind, when he gave me my options and explained what synthesis would mean, I took a long, long time deliberating on what to do. The game presents this option as the unquestioningly best one to take. After all, it's the hardest ending to obtain, it's the option the reaper AI clearly favors, and it's the default platform you're standing on when it comes time to choose.

But here's the problem: if I were Shepard, even a paragon Shepard, even a Shepard who loves EDI and respects the geth, as mine did, I would not choose Synthesis. Because I can't trust that what he says would happen. I asked him why it would work this time around when all their other attempts at synthesis were horrific failures, and all he said was "they were not ready. You are ready." Even for a seemingly all-knowing AI, that's not enough to convince me to fling my body into a particle beam and potentially give up on this one and only chance to stop the reapers for good. Of course, as a player, I can use context clues to know that it WOULD happen. I'm playing a video game after all, and this choice is presented honestly to the player. But I decided to think as Shepard at that moment, not as myself.

He's also... wrong. He says conflict with synthetic life is inevitable, but it isn't. My Shepard knows this. She obtained peace between the quarians and the geth, and she's watched as EDI grew into her own kind and compassionate human consciousness. So while it sucks that they will have to die in the destroy ending, I ultimately chose it because 1) my Shepard can actually see it happen and know that she sacrificed her life for something real, not just a promise of what could happen, 2) destroying the reapers was what the whole galaxy unified to do and they didn't agree to anything else, and 3) destroying the reapers gives organic life a second chance to live and learn from their mistakes and to do better by synthetic life in the future. Maybe, in the wake of Shepard's sacrifice, the galaxy would see that they can work together, and ensure any future synthetic life will never be abused as the geth were.

But there was another reason I didn't choose Synthesis: it didn't make sense. I'm not talking about its practical application, although the space magic it takes to imbue technology into the DNA of every living organism in the galaxy is a little hard to stomach even by Mass Effect standards. I'm talking about its thematic purpose. Throughout all of Mass Effect, the main message has been that working together and sympathizing with people fundamentally different from you is critical to making positive change in the universe, DESPITE the differences. Synthesis, as a solution, is suggesting that conflict is inevitable until you ERASE the differences. This isn't letting people take the time and effort necessary to truly learn about and understand others, this is a no-effort solution that negates that very core theme. It's like saying there would be no conflict in the world if everyone on Earth were of the same race and nationality, because, one, that isn't true, and two, that solution erases so many beautifully diverse cultures that would have existed otherwise. To me, the Destroy ending allows the galaxy to rebuild what was lost while preserving most of the diversity that is so important to keep, especially since the diversity that was lost, namely the geth, theoretically CAN be rebuilt.

There's also another thematic problem: the conflict between synthetics and organics was not the main conflict in Mass Effect. Sure, it took up a lot of screen time in ME1, but it always felt secondary to the conflict between all other organics. There were tensions between the alien council species and the humans, there was tension between the krogan and the turians and salarians, there was tension between humans and humans, there was tension everywhere you looked. Your role was to be a mediator, a shepherd. You guided the people toward a better understanding of themselves and others, and by doing that, you were able to achieve impossible things together. Synthetic life was only a piece of that puzzle. But by making the conflict ONLY about synthetics and organics, it undermines the things we learned about other organics. If this solution was only meant for the quarians and humans, maybe it would make sense - these species have already achieved AIs that they could come into conflict with. But WHY should I make this decision for the krogan, an alien species not even close to developing AI advanced enough to go to war with? Why is it fair to them that I'm rewriting their DNA to ensure they never see a war that they might have never seen anyway? Haven't they already seen enough outside meddling in their bodily autonomy?

So I chose Destroy. And since I had enough war assets, I was able to avoid mass devastation, and somehow Kaidan seems to think Shepard is still alive. Oh, look, I guess she is. Not sure how that's possible, but I'll take slim hope. Overall, I was satisfied with my ending, although I was sad that I had to deny life to the synthetics that wanted it.

Then I watched the Synthesis ending and saw that it was basically perfect. Besides Shepard dying, everything is just better. Everyone understands each other now, there's no more disease, no more death, EDI is alive, and apparently, everyone is just cool with their new DNA. It was a utopia. And I thought that kinda went against everything I saw in Mass Effect. Sure, there are good choices, and some are definitely better than others, but rarely should there be perfect or easy choices. I'm not saying Synthesis should be a bad ending, by all means, make it a good one. Make it the best one, even. But it shouldn't be perfect. Maybe some people are upset that they were genetically altered against their will (hell, my Shepard had an existential crisis about this after learning how she was resurrected by Cerberus, and it's not a fate she would have imposed on anyone anyway). Maybe the husks and other synthetics that were once organics live a hellish existence in between existences and can never reconcile with their living loved ones. I dunno, something. Like I said before: thematically, it doesn't follow what was learned in the narrative, and therefore should not be the perfect solution to problems that the solution had nothing to do with.

I want to stress that I'm not judging anyone who chose the Synthesis ending. I deliberated it a long time for a reason: it is a promising conclusion if you want to avoid Control and you want to save EDI and the geth. I totally understand that. I just think the way that choice is presented and executed by Bioware is clunky and counterproductive to the narrative. I've also seen people dismiss the Destroy ending as genocide, and I won't argue that. It IS genocide, if you consider synthetics a valid form of life in this game, as I did. But I chose it anyway because doing so would stop the reapers who were the Ultimate Genocide Machines, and if there was any situation where genocide could be justified to stop genocide, uh, I guess that would be it. Sure, Synthesis would finally give organics a chance to understand and cooperate with the reapers, but that is only on the basis that everyone fundamentally change themselves at the request of the reapers under threat of mutual annihilation. The reapers had made no effort to truly understand and sympathize with organics outside of their one-sided conversations with Shepard until this point, so I didn't really feel bad I was killing them all, to be honest with you.

Okay, so, those were my thoughts on Mass Effect. This took a whole day to write. As frustrated as some parts of the game made me, I loved the rest, and I'm very glad I played it. Giving it a score like the other parts feels wrong, since I know now it's all part of a whole, but if I had to give it one, I'd say 8.5/10. I'll be missing my crew for some time, I think. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read my thoughts on this franchise!

Now onto Andromeda...

#anna plays mass effect #whoo #longest thing i've ever written on this site I think #shiv shepard

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