Mass Effect........

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About 1/3 of the way through the third game at the moment. Spent the last few weeks playing the 1st two non-stop after getting them for 5$ each on a steam sale. It really is the space opera genre done right. Incredibly immersive and easy to get attached to the characters. Funny thing is despite being the chosen hero in a galactic war and tasked with deciding the fate of entire species, deciding how to resolve the love triangle I'm involved in is the toughest decision so far.

It's my favourite game, I've played ME2 and ME3 three times already. Now, I've played ME1 for the first time, finished ME2 yesterday and started ME3 a forth time because it's the first time I can play the whole trilogy on the PS3. I feel very bad for cheating on Liara in this latest run of ME2, but I really wanted that missing "paramour" trophy!

I romanced Liara in the first game. I cheated on her with Garrus in the 2nd game. Now she's back full time in the 3rd game and she's become a more interesting character (I initially felt she was kinda bland personality wise.) I'm still leaning towards staying with the Turian. Garrus may not be much of a looker but he's smart, funny, badass and loyal. Everything a Pan-sexual space commando could want in an interspecies romance.

I really love the Mass Effect games. Like many others I found the ending to the last title really poor, but everything else before it was so exceptionally good it's done little to sour the series overall. The little nods to things you've done in previous games, even to fairly minor sidequests throughout the series really contributes to the excellent world building the developers did. There are so many other things in the game besides the ending that gave the series a great sense of closure.

Also, the characters were awesome. I think it would be awesome for a spin-off based on the adventures of Garrus.

The endings to ME3 were vastly improved by the free DLC, in my opinion. The original endings gave only abandonment of all technology as the way for the intelligent races to survive - for the nonce (if you cured the genophage, everyone in a star cluster with krogan in it was doomed eventually anyway). The revised endings had more, well, hope for the future.

Me too, I cheated on Liara with Garrus, but I felt bad because I see Garrus as this best friend, drinking buddy kind of guy, it didn't feel right romancing him, but to get that trophy the only other choices for my FemShep were Jacob or Thane... not very good choices in my opinion, I don't like their personalities. I had already played without cheating, hit on Samara and had Kelly to come up to the Captain's Cabin and dance. On ME2 I always chat Kelly up to the point where she can feed my fish, hate when they die...

Yesterday I had to dump Garrus and gave him the let's be friends speech, felt very guilt but I don't want to string him along. Garrus and Tali are my favourite crew members, they are with you now matter what. And even though I hate Liara's coldness towards Shepard in ME2 before the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, I have a soft spot for her.

DeaconBlues: when you play the games again after knowing what the end has to offer, the clues are there from the beginning. I don't hate the end of the trilogy as ME3 has a much darker heavier load for Sheppard all the way through, you can feel what is at stake. And once more I'm not sure what to choose in the end... anyway I'll refrain from saying anymore because I don't know if Geekonychus already played ME3 to the end or read about it.

My problem with the original endings was that there was no hope. No matter what you did, the pattern could not be broken; all was preordained. I hate stories like that. The modified endings give you hopeful finishes (as well as a fourth option that really does continue the cycles, just as they have always been, except that the new beacons don't hide their data in puzzles the way the Protheans did).

And I didn't really see Liara as being "cold" toward Shep in ME2 - just busy. She's still trying to run the Shadow Broker's old network; she doesn't have time to run around the galaxy with her old friend, and she really does need some favors that only Shepard can do for her.

I found Liara colder towards Shepard in the beginning of ME2, she was my LI so there was that one brief kiss, she then recomposes herself and become somewhat indifferent, but only until the start of the lair of the shadow broker DLC, throughout the DLC and while she's busy trying to run the shadow broker network she's back to her normal self, as I see her character in the game.

I've only played the first one, but I loved the story. I went with Liara too, but I found the romance options there rather lackluster and out of the blue, personally Mass Effect didn't lend it self for as much romance development as, let's say, Dragon Age. But I remember it was kind of exciting when Shepard was made a Spectre.

I still think Bioware did the gaming community a disservice by releasing different endings later due to fan complaints. Regardless of the quality of the original endings BioWare made, they should never have given in to fan complaints over story as that will only fuel the entitlement issues already present in the gaming community who think they can b***h and make a petition to change things they dislike. BioWare just gave them precedent for them to keep doing so.

You don't see people petitioning movie studios to change the endings to movies, but because games can be patched many people expect everything they dislike to be changed.

I'll finish ME3, and after the new Tomb Raider, I'm going to play Dragon Age Origins and 2 again. You should play the whole mass effect Trilogy, it's worth it!

eelektrik: I'm one of those who didn't mind about the end.

Anyway last ME3 DLC is out tomorrow, the trailer came out today: ME3 Citadel DLC trailer link
(edit: not sure why the youtube btn didn't work, placed the link instead)

IMO, the best romance option is Tali.

Her romance dialogue in ME3 is simply hilarious...

Oh, and...

I am Garrus Vakarian, and this is my favourite spot on the Citadel...

Just don't have too high expectations for the end of Mass Effect 3.

If I know Bioware was going to drop the ball so badly, I would have never played ME1

I do feel bad for my Paragon Shepard cheating on Liara (part of the reason was I accidentally put myself in a relationship quest thing with Jack) but part of me feels that due to the massive improvement of game and story elements I found Jack to be much more personality having and I like my idea of my Shepard healing her wounds and making her into a better person.

I've just only played the first two games and I bought the third one but am somewhat anxious of playing it because of it being a finale of sorts.

Anyway I played each game twice, one male and one female of paragon and renegade morality, respectively.

Paragon Shep (Earthborn/War Hero): Saved the council, saved Rachni, Queen, saved all Zhu's hope colonists, saved Wrex, lost Ashley, lost captain Kirrahe, spared that asari scientist working for Saren, saved Major Kyle and his cult of biotics, got Helena Blake to not commit major crime (didn't have enough PP to make her reform), talked Saren into killing himself to try to stop his indoctrination from Sovereign, made Anderson a council member, saved all the crew of the Normandy 2 and no one on squad died on suicide mission, lost Vido but still got Zaeed's loyalty), got Kasumi to destroy greybox, spared Maelon and kept work on genophage cure, spared Jack's jailmate at biotic facility, got Tali aquitted from treason charges, resisted Morinth's mind control, destroyed the Collector base, overall tried as many paragon options as I could and I forget a few others.

Renegade Femshep (Colonist/Sole Survivor): killed the council to Anderson's disgust (they were as*holes), killed half of Zhu's hope colonists, killed Wrex, lost Kaidan (who I was romancing too for adding Femshep angst), Udina was made into head counciler of all human council, killed asari scientist working for Saren, saved captain Kirrahe, killed Helena Blake and lost surviving member of old crew (Sole Survivor backstory), lost all but one member of the crew of the Normandy 2 (Doctor Chawkwas), lost half of my squadmates (Jack, Legion, Thane, Tali, Jacob and Zaeed in that order) , kept the Collector base and generally acted renegade (except in some cases like saving the Rachni queen).

I needs the money for the SB dlc and the Javik DLC of ME3.

I love Mass Effect.

I always play FemShep. If I am doing a full trilogy run, she will romance Liara. If I am starting a new game of ME3, she romances Sam Traynor. I don't start new games of ME2, I just import for that.

Favourite squadmates for missions....these are the ones I like to use unless I am forced into taking other people with me or unless it's tactically better to take someone with different powers.

ME1: Liara, Garrus
ME2: Garrus, Kasumi
ME3: Liara, Javik, Garrus, Vega (any mix of these 4 suits me fine)

My Shepard is paragon unless the situation calls for a little bit of renegade. Spacer. War Hero.

My Shepard tries to keep as many characters alive as possible.

I love the new ME3 dlc, Citadel. I completed it yesterday with my Liara romancing FemShep. Going to play it again tomorrow with my Traynor romancing FemShep.

BioWare need to hurry up and give more details on Dragon Age 3 now that there will be no more ME3 dlc. I need more BioWare games ;P

I loved the series. Got to the ending at the third, now I hate the game. All your decisions meant nothing, and the fact that they had to add free DLC to fix their crappy game didn't help. And now that they're making another Mass Effect? Ugh, they won't be getting my money again.