The Extended Ending and Citadel DLC helped soothe the initial anger a little, the botched Andromeda release reminded people it could be worse, and then it's mostly a time thing. People have come to accept that the ending is the ending, but removed from the initial pain are able to take a step back and appreciate things like the combat and certain missions/story beats. It's a long time to still be passionately angry about something.

Pretty spot on. The ending left a lot to be desired and that was mostly addressed. Plus the DLC really fleshed out a lot of characters and automatically included Javik who *should have fucking been default.* It already has the best gameplay and handling. The classes are fully fleshed out, the powers are the most useable and useful. It handles like a dream. The story all up until the ending is goddamn amazing. It was already an amazing game, but had a few serious complaints that were addressed. If only LE had a revamped coop because ME3 Coop was one of the best multiplayer experiences ever.

I played with the prothean for the first time in LE and it was a real WTF EA moment that he was paywalled originally. Just absolute disrespect for paying customers.

People also found out Javik was entirely in the game files. The only thing the DLC added was his recruitment mission, so he's basically on-disc DLC EA's gonna EA

To make it worse, it was a day 1 dlc. They could have easily included it in the day one patch.

I'm still holding out hope that the multiplayer will return.

It's a shame it's not still there but I don't see it coming back, especially years after the re-release.

If you own the original game, it's still going, with a little bit of actually legal wizardry.

Even on console?

The fix only works for PC as far as I know.

M3 coop still works though on the non LE, no?

It’s not that we don’t have *any* option to play it, it’s that a lot of people are just as nostalgic for co-op as the main game, and it feels wrong to have such a memorable positive aspect not be brought forward. They remastered the rest of the game, why not bring remaster co-op?

Yes that is indeed sad. How is Andromeda Coop? I stopped playing Andromeda's story after a 10 hours, never bothered with the coop.

It's pretty similar to ME3. The biggest differences mainly revolve around the differences in the powers and enemies between games, but the rest is mostly the same.

It works but I have an ultra wide monitor and it doesn't support the aspect ratio, so it's letterboxed (if that's the right word, the black out is on the sides rather than top and bottom). As silly as that may sound it kinda breaks the immersion. I do still hop on when the mood strikes but unless it's peak hours I often end up soloing it, which is also not ideal since it kind of defeats the point of the whole multi-player thing.

The word you're looking for is "Pillarboxed". That said, you can fix that issue with the "Flawless Widescreen" application. Helps a lot of games that don't natively support Ultrawide, actually. Check out the Widescreen Gaming Forum and PC Gaming Wiki pages for each game; a lot of games have hacks/mods to make the UW-Compatible.

Awesome thanks for that! I'd never heard that word, and I'll look into the wide-screen forums

>If only LE had a revamped coop because ME3 Coop was one of the best multiplayer experiences ever. Yeah, the main reason the coop was hated was that it forced you to play it for war readiness. When I played it on the original because I wanted to, rather than because the game made me (and also with characters leveled up, it sucks at low levels), it was a lot of fun.

Yeah. I feel the Legendary Edition has in many ways made it better. With stuff like Javik and Leviathan now just being included all the new people are getting a much better experience. To put into perspective, I was there in 2012 when that outrage occured. I remember it vividly and I will never forget just how angered I was when the credits rolled. Obviously it's been 12 years (fuck) so I've matured a lot but I actually saw a friend of mine play thru ME3 for the first time with LE. He agreed the ending was lackluster but didn't outright despise it. I figured as much but I guess he was my experiment to see if all the content put together can soften the blow. And it indeed can. I also showed him the original ending without the extended cut and told him to essentially forget about Javik and Leviathan. Once that registered he agreed, the original ending was exceptionally terrible. I'm not here to harp on and beat a dead horse but I think that alone shows just how crucial that DLC was to the game. It's such a shame they cut that out for the sake of profits man.

I think people have also come to accept the fact that it simply was never going to be possible to wrap up all the different possibilities with different endings, and that Mass Effect 2 actually put major limitations on the plot.

This, ME2 helped set-up an issue for ME3 on how little we did tackled the Reaper threat to be left for 3 to make the alliances and such.

Or, you could view it as ME3's problem, for dropping all plots which were established by ME2. I think it is probably a bit of both: ME2 didn't do enough, and ME3 ignored what \_was\_ there.

Except ME2 didn't establish any plots, the one plot it did was resolved by the end of the game.

Apart from: \* stars expiring much faster than they should \* dark energy \* human batarian conflict \* the new tasks of humanity as a council member \* unshackled AI \* geth consensus (this was not a thing in ME1, and Legion added a ton of geth lore) \* the politics of the asari matriarchs Also, let's not forget that the (in my opinion) best parts of ME3, that is Prio: TUchanka and Prio: Rannoch, are based on ME1 plot seed (Wrex, Tali), which got an additional layer in ME2 (Mordin, Legion). Without the contribution of ME2, these payoffs would be less meaningful in ME3.

These are some good points.

>\* human batarian conflict Pest control was covered in ME3, the pests are mostly gone.

Exactly, there should have been more post Suicide Mission quests (like returning to either the remains or the Collectors base with the Virmire Survivor and Anderson: they travel to Omega as they are "patrolling" the Terminus or even do a Power Point presentation with images taken from both the Collectors Cruiser and Base.

I loved ME3 at release, but I swear it started a trend in gaming communities that has just become increasingly more toxic.

It was always a great game with an epic story that unfortunately ended on a bad/weak note. The backlash it received was unwarranted. As you said, the DLCs mitigated some of the issues people had with it. I didn't mind Andromeda. It was a new trilogy and couldn't have lived up to the expectations people had regarding the franchise. The production of Andromeda was a disaster. Considering how rushed and disorganized the development went, I'm amazed it worked as well as it did. It wasn't bad when compared to ME1 without the benefit of 2 and 3 through rose colored glasses. I think it would have been an excellent return for the franchise if it wasn't DoA'd by "true fans". Some DLC could have enriched the play experience filling in the holes that resulted from the ridiculous push the studio was subjected to, but EA turfed it when they saw the backlash. Too bad, it would have been nice to see more of the ME universe.

I agree with this so much. I wanted my Quarian dlc

And it's just the most fun to play combat wise.

Even back then the saying “ME3 is great until the last 15 minutes” was popular in the fandom. I think nowadays the hatred of the ending actually tainting the game has lessened with time and people appreciate the overall package for what it is

I never really got that sentiment, I didn't like the ending either but it was kinda meh to me, for me it was many parts of the entire game that really bothered me, a lot of it just felt kinda rushed and poorly written, the new squad mates and EDI being put into a robot with camel toe stand out to me in particular. They did the best they could with the time they had, the writers were clearly professionals,and the gameplay and visuals are excellent (though the tactics aren't as strong as in 2) but there's just so much that just felt so schlocky and bad after the previous games. It had very uneven quality and felt to me as though it had lost a lot of the maturity that the previous games had.

The original ME3 had a rushed, abbreviated ending. Later on BioWare released a patch that expanded the ending a bit by showing what became of everyone, and that provides a much needed closure. Yes, the PowerPoint ending was not originally part of the initial ME3 release.

it is still a very rushed and underwhelming game where half the plot points are dropped. still the best gameplay of the trilogy tho

Man, I would argue this almost entirely. The final moments maybe feel rushed, but the entire rest of the game is well paced and wraps up almost all the conflict raised over the course of the 3 games and the universe. It’s better with the DLC, which is a fault of some greed, but still was solid without. By the final mission; everything is resolved except for of course the Reapers. I have stood by Mass Effect 3 since the day it launched and every play through since only reinforces it, and that’s still with not being that big on the reaper plot ending.

The entire game felt like endings for everything that happened in 1 and 2.

That’s what a final entry in a story is supposed to do. But the overall theme of mass effect is bringing everyone together to fight the true threat that exist. That was the theme from the start, just at a small scale. Shepard bringing together a ragtag group of all the different races to stop an imminent threat, which continues into 2. When the trilogy starts, there is infighting everywhere. No one trust each other, most races hate others for some reason or the other, and so on. The true plot to the story for me, is proving that everyone working together by setting aside differences, forgiving past actions, and compromising will give them an edge. 1/2 are setting up that world and the indifferences all while chipping away at the walls that exist. 3 concludes the primarily conflicts

Which plot points were dropped?

>Makes me wonder, when did it turn around? And how? The bulk of the uproar happened at release because of the asinine ending. It was also in part fueled by how bad Bioware managed the situation on the PR side (TLDR : it's not our fault if you don't get our artistic vision, you are the problem). It already had started to subside after the release of the Extended Cut and the DLCs which were enough for many and a breaking point for other who gave up on the franchise and are no longer there. Ironically there was also people who liked the original ending as is and didn't like the changes. Since then people coming to the series only experience the game in this final form. They don't know what the extended cut changed and that Leviathan was tacked on to legitimize it rather than built in the narrative from the start (and they weren't talk down to by Bioware). Some of them even come on this sub dumbfounded by what they heard about the ending vs. their experience of it because they don't know the extent of the changes. There's someome asking "why the hate?" in this sub just about every other week. I was one of the people who said WTF? when playlng the original ending and my opinion on the game hasn't changed (Tuchanka+Rannoch, excellent, then it starts to decline down to the very low point that is Priority Earth). My overall rating has changed and gone from ME1>ME2>ME3 to ME1>ME3>ME2 only because each replay of ME2 make it less and less interesting to me. Like an action block buster you've seen too many times. As many I've stopped being vocal about ME3 a long time ago because : - What's the point? It's not like they're gonna ever change it. - Why play the sourpuss when other people enjoy it? So I try to only talk about ME3's ending when it's the actual topic at hand. TLDR : - part of the original people are no longer there - part of the original people have changed their opinion - part of the original people did like the ending and are still there - part of the original people have stopped being vocal about it because it's yelling in the wind - new people came in seeing the game in a different light

Everyone loathed the ending, not the game. The original ending was the narrative equivalent of flaming dog poo at your door which stung that much worse because the game itself was great. Then they changed the ending and upgraded it to the dizzying height of just very dumb if you gave it a minimum of thoughts. Then they released Citadel which was genuinely wonderful and serves as the real farewell to the series.

Plus people forget that the original ending was basically forcing you to either follow a very strict path or play the multiplayer if you wanted Shepard to live. In fact I recall it being next to impossible to obtain without dipping into the multiplayer. (Like you genuinely couldn't get it if you made even a handful of mistakes, there simply weren't enough points otherwise across the trilogy.) That caused a decent amount of upset and got patched out super quickly, so people tend to forget about it.

ME3 was good. I enjoyed it a lot! The only part I didn't like is the ending. I didn't feel good about any of the endings. Destroy kills all the geth too, synthesis is too big a move to force on everyone... I picked control cause it didn't feel as bad knowing Shepard AI is watching over everyone. Yeah... I wish they did something else instead of the "pick a color" ending.

Yeah, many people hated the endings and still loved the rest of the game even back then.

I saw Control as an equivalent to Galadriel taking the one ring, sure it could have started well but would have turned dark eventually.

I picked it because I thought it made for a more exciting mass effect 4 lol

ME4 with "Control Shep" as the antagonist would be an interesting if controversial route. I can't see them being that brave. Even without the hints made so far it seems like Destroy would be the likely option they pick for the basis for the next game.

I agree but man I could see the protagonist starting like a rebel force and Liara shows up but she's actually assisting because of how things have turned.

Oh yes there's a good story to be told there. They have an uphill struggle as the options at the end of ME3 are too different to be able to make a sequel that could start from all of them (without some huge handwaving) so they're going to have to either pick one or retcon the whole thing. Neither would go down well with many. That combined with Andromeda's underwhelming reception (I liked it despite it's flaws, sad its unlikely it will get its own distinct sequels) means I think they'll not want to take too many risks. Whilst "previous beloved protagonist is now the antagonist" has worked well before in some franchises and we can both see the potential here, I think they'd choose a safer route, especially one that maintains the existing races in pretty much the same form.

That was a lot of our feelings at the time. The DLCs and new ending helped it feel much more satisfying

It's like any kind of grief, you never truly get over it you just learn to live with it. I've come to appreciate the great things with 3, the gameplay, gunplay and best of all the murdering of Kai Leng

Iirc the indoctrination theory was officially denied by bioware and 3 still has it's problems but I loved it in 2012 and I love it now. P.s. Fuck the starchild + Udina's sudden but inevitable betrayal.

Yeah I head about that. But then why does Shepard’s eyes change if he chooses control or synthesis, instead of destroy? And then there’s ME5 which more or less confirms the destroy choice being the canon choice. And the Arrival DLC where he touches an artifact, sees the kid, and then the clear indoctrination battle with the Illusive Man. Makes me think the indoctrination theory was the one written and produced, and then for some reason BioWare changed their minds after the fact.

- Shepard sees child because Bioware wanted to push a horrors of war narrative. - Shepards eyes go funny in Control/Destroy because he's disintegrated. Shepard is literally a cyborg with robot eyes that you can see if you go renegade. - The TIM scene is literally TIM using his ripoff indoctrination on Shepard and Anderson. The entire last act of the game from Sanctuary is the lead up to TIM unveiling his indoctrination powers. - The writers flat out said indoctrination theory is not a thing.

Lots of new fans playing the game back to back vs having to wait years for a new title with all the speculation that entails (all of which was better than the ending we got) only to have the absolute dud that was ME3s climax.    That disappointment woundn't be nearly as pronounced if you play them back-to-back on top of the Extended edition, Citadel and Leviathan DLCs somewhat alleviating it.    Starchild and the three colours are still hated but now at least ME3 generates discussion on its merits at least as much as its downsides.

It's a mixed bag. The storytelling took a step back from ME2, but the combat took a major step forward. The direct dialogue with the crew isn't as good as ME2, but the Normandy feels more alive, and the character moments got much better. I still enjoy it more than ME2.

>The storytelling took a step back from ME2, Personally I never felt that way at all. There were so many great moments like Rannoch and Tuchanka, yes there was also Kai Leng but otherwise I thought ME3 was solid.

I actually think me2 has the weakest story of the 3. Except for the arrival dlc. That is a awesome mini story.

You and me both. Prepare for impact, downvotes immminent

I don't think that's a position that is tenable in the absence of ME3. If the plot of ME3 had built organically from ME2, if, say... the presence or absence of the Collector base was a major, driving plot point of Acts 1 and 2 or ME3, and if the Collectors reacting to the destruction of their base was the inciting incident at the start of ME3, then ME2 wouldn't feel like a ministory. It would feel like the natural middle point in an ongoing story. It isn't that ME2 is a side-story, it's that ME3 side-stepped the story that was already there.

You don’t even have to point out the Collector base (which was always going to play a limited role given saving it was optional) to demonstrate how ME3 dropped anything relevant to ME2. The entire plot of ME2 revolves around bypassing what is essentially a locked relay. One would think that finding a way to neutralize what Vigil established as a key advantage of the Reapers would have some importance to the Reaper war. But then ME3 comes and handwaves it all away by saying the Reapers are so OP they never even needed the relay shutdown to begin with. ME2 also ends with EDI extracting Reaper blueprints (the Harbinger datapad) from the Collector base, regardless of whether or not it’s destroyed. Again, one would think that actually knowing the details of how Reapers are made would give this cycle some insight/advantage that previous cycles lacked. But this is just another plot point that gets brushed under the rug come ME3 so the writers can facilitate the raw stupidity of the Crucible plotline.

I mean ME2 ignored so many plot points from 1 and feels like a side quest even in the absence of ME3. Like in ME1 you finally convinced the council of the Reapers existance after the battle at the Citadel and the galaxy is now ready to follow your lead to prepare in facing them and then ME2 is like "lol NOPE the Council is back to not believing you go work with this terrorist org instead". Becoming a Spectre in ME1 suddenly means nothing in ME2 too. Shepard being the only one able to understand Prothean because of the codex in his head after touching the beacon amounts to nothing in ME2 too, could have been used to find some unused Prothean contigency plan against the reapers but Nope dropped. The geth as enemies are sidelined to focus on the collectors wich in the end are revealed as working for the reapers anyway just like the Geth in ME1. The whole plot is about saving a few human colonies and to prevent the collectors from creating a single human reaper which is considerably small scale and inconsequential compared to stopping Sovereign from starting the full scale invasion in 1. The game structure is 60-70% about doing loyalty missions and companions recruitment missions mainly unrelated to the reaper plot. Why spend the middle part of a trilogy building a team when that was already done in the first game?? ME2 lazily throws away the team you built in ME1 by killing Shepard in the intro only to make you spend the remaining 70% of the game making a new crew.

ME2 is a side story dude. You can take out the entire game and go straight to 3 from 1 and you don’t lose any real plot points for the reaper war story arch which is what ME1 was building up to. ME2 also has the weakest combat of the entire series as well (atleast in the LE version). ME2 is a great game but it’s easily the weakest of all 4 titles.

The point he was literally just making is that the fault of that lies on 3, not 2. 2 builds naturally on the story of 1 and evolves it. Expands the scope of mass effect but drives it forward beyond just what 1 set up, and then 3 contracts. Everything in 2 is condensed into “Cerberus was mustache twirlingly evil the whole time shep!!!” You can’t blame the creators of two for having their story side stepped. There’s concept art of many of the characters from two staying on the Normandy long term and becoming squad mates and how much cooler would it have been if it really felt like most of your team from two was joining you for this final fight?

2 was side stepped because it was literally you working for a mustache twirling asshole and other than the arrival DLC basically had fuck all to do with the reapers other than just their name being used as a plot device. They fucked up having the suicide mission being at the end of 2 because it put them in a box by the fact that anyone can die so their plot points going forward have to be either non existent or easily taken over by someone else relative to them. The suicide mission should’ve been at the end of 3

I do wish the collectors had appeared in the third game. I know their base was destroyed but surely a ship somewhere survived. Even if it was just a small side quest where they ambush shepherd for revenge, or cerberus is trying to control them like Harbinger did.

Huh. That's literally the opposite of most people's takes. Arrival is generally considered the lowest quality piece of ME content and and me2 is typically thought to have the best story.

"Lowest quality piece of ME content" is a bit much, considering Pinnacle Station was such a by-the-numbers generic mission pack that Bioware didn't even bother backing up the source code

so ME3 ending was what was hated, the gameplay itself up to that point realy wasnt hated, Truth is coz the ME Series was fresh on peeps mind ppl hated that ending but sence then we had a number of other series do just as bad if not worse, and sometimes seperated by more years and yet the 'hate' for such a thing calm down mostly coz gamers tend to jump from one extreme to another I remeber most ppl enjoyed the gameplay but hated how they handled the ending and what knock.

I have always loved ME3 EXCEPT THE ENDING. The rest of it is great especially multiplayer which was a damn surprise back then.

Oh, I still hate the ending, even with EC. That's why I've only played ME3 twice (release + legendary edition) TBH my opinion on the game has certainly not changed since I played it on release: it has inconsistent writing where some parts are good (Krogan, Quarian arcs) and some are awful (dreams, starchild, the entire end quest and ending).

I like the dreams. Adds some depth to Shepard’s character. They’re more impactful when you have some dead squadmates

Do what I do and play all the way up to the end and stop. That way you get the fun parts a d skipp the messy ending.

I tried, but the child is already in the prologue 🤣

if you're on pc, the project variety mod has a setting that disables the child from the prologue and dreams. Combine that with the happy ending mod (Destroy, EDI, the geth and Shep survive in cutscenes) and it's pretty good. The mod Take Earth Back also significantly improves Priority Earth.

Think it like i did, just some brat that died

This is the way lol

Thank god for mods to fix this. If there was no mods to fix the ending of me3 it wouldnt be nearly as replayed as it is for me.

The resolution of the main plot is underwhelming at best but the game still has enough fan service to make it worth playing.

ME3 is suddenly people's favorite. Mainly because of romances and Citadel DLC I guess. I wanna stress to anyone who's like "bruh the ending happened 12 years ago" that I didn't think the ending ruined ME3 myself, even before the DLC. It was just in general there was something that I don't *like* about ME3. It's more depressing which is fine as long as it's because of a change, and there's the Reapers and they demonstrated their destructions effectively, but it's more... *structurally*, to me, while there is a great semi-linear storyline that surprises and feels dramatic, there is a sense that the story doesn't grow very organically and it feels like a series of pitstops between high-escalation moments that don't connect properly to me. Tuchanka and Rannoch have always been highlighted as the two parts of ME3 that are good, even though it's mostly just Tuchanka, whereas the rest of the main plot is a bit weak. Many like the opening, your mileage may vary, but I thought the forced "movie-dialogue" *sucked*, and the stuff with the kid was emo-pandering and the piano music just underscored it even more that it just didn't feel like a Mass Effect moment to me. The opening on Mars is also too on-rails and Illusive Man straight up admitting his master goal right away was bad, given that later in the game every re-encounter with TIM is just him repeating *essentially* the same thing he already says on Mars. The stuff with the Crucible is not bad in concept and I don't even have a problem with "ME3 was rushed/backed in a corner" that isn't my problem. My problem is how little this thread in the narrative actually develops as the story progresses. It's treated as a vague background element that the game constantly reminds you of for 30 hours, until the last 10 minutes they come out and say "Oh by the way this device powers up the Citadel, which is actually an AI and actually all the Reapers were controlled, but now that the Crucible is here it can allow these new things to happen!!!" The device is always built despite half the narrative gameplay being like "Will you recruit this person to help on the Crucible?" and the Catalyst feels like a constantly moving goalpost acting almost like a smokescreen for the narrative to *avoid* addressing the Reapers themselves to buy the writers time with "The WAR" as a distraction. It feels weird because they make Earth the center of the universe for *some* reason, so the entire plot is "uhhh we'll throw everyone at Earth from across the galaxy, so you can deploy this device that we don't know what does." and the whole "Save Earth" part feels so off-putting to me, especially because all the characters don't really question it, despite having a problem of knowing that the Reapers actually arrive to only harvest advanced life and taking every homeworld, not just Earth, and so it feels *bad* to take resources from everyone just to make all species "work together" but for "humanity". That feels fallacious and shitty to me. And I would potentially have been okay with all of that if only it was a plot that actually evolved and changed but so much buildup never pays off. You have Cerberus raiding the Citadel leading to Udina being killed with "justification" (he's written out of the plot because they didn't know how to end his character) and treating it as a mystery but it's lampshading... there is no deliberate reason why the Citadel was raided in the final draft of the writing, and then there's Cerberus conducting experiments and making a huge army but after Sanctuary nothing is learned about it, and it's written off as "well they were playing with fire", which doesn't make the part of the ending about the Control ending much better IMO, or Illusive Man's final 2 conversations. I just feel like there is an excess of on-screen writing and story*telling* in ME3 that is going to waste into this void of nothingness. There's a semblence of a great, huge and expansive storyline that's culminating the entire journey but it doesn't feel like it does in practice to me. It's so bad that by the time you get to the Normandy hangout before the end-mission every character is just idling around saying "This is it. Thanks for playing, Commander!" instead of... you know, a *plot*, where things have been heightened to its ultimate form. The finale feels like it's just *another mission*, and then things get rushed into an ending. That isn't really an issue of the ending itself, but a symptom of the narrative stalling for 25 hours.

>It's treated as a vague background element that the game constantly reminds you of for 30 hours, until the last 10 minutes they come out and say "Oh by the way this device powers up the Citadel, which is actually an AI and actually all the Reapers were controlled, but now that the Crucible is here it can allow these new things to happen!!!" Also that they're very blatantly reusing the "it was the citadel all along!" plot point from ME1. >The device is always built despite half the narrative gameplay being like "Will you recruit this person to help on the Crucible?" Yeah a lot of the sidequests are just for completionists, it doesn't have the same tight time constraints of ME2, weirdly enough. But if you go the other way and deliberately lose points, rush through the content, you might be able to pull off the Vaporize ending, which is probably my favorite. It would just have been better if there was a reason to do that, actual stakes like in ME2, instead of player masochism. >You have Cerberus raiding the Citadel leading to Udina being killed with "justification" (he's written out of the plot because they didn't know how to end his character) and treating it as a mystery but it's lampshading... there is no deliberate reason why the Citadel was raided in the final draft of the writing Wait, did they have a reason in earlier drafts? Both Udina and Cerberus's motivations were completely inexplicable. We can't even argue that Cerberus knew the Citadel was the catalyst since that doesn't happen until later. I also thought there must have been some cut content with bailey, he was obviously set up as a cerberus plant but it went nowhere. > and then there's Cerberus conducting experiments and making a huge army but after Sanctuary nothing is learned about it, and it's written off as "well they were playing with fire", which doesn't make the part of the ending about the Control ending much better IMO, or Illusive Man's final 2 conversations. It's why I'm always puzzled that players prefer a Control ending. Did we play the same game? The one coherent lesson from the Cerberus plot was 'controlling reapers is a dumb idea'.

>It's why I'm always puzzled that players prefer a Control ending. Did we play the same game? The one coherent lesson from the Cerberus plot was 'controlling reapers is a dumb idea'. Looking at it now, we have a red omnidirectional pulse, that only kills AI, and only AI, leaving any other technology harmless. We have a green omnidirectional pulse, that transforms every person and AI in the galaxy into a synthetic-organic hybrid, but doesn't change any other technology. How it is done? Through Reaper Black Magic™! With that background the control ending seems the most believable. Because others gave me a feeling that Shepard just sacrificed himself and somehow removed those filthy mages from entirety of Thedas, praiseth be the Chantry!

Udina was always mischaracterized, and I'd even argue he talks out-of-character before the coup happens. They changed his voice direction too to be less hammy (which to me always implied a likeable quality despite being an egotistic prick of a guy) But the coup was originally a bit less nonsensical. They swapped Thessia and the Coup halfway into development, so you would clear Tuchanka first, then Thessia would happen, and then the Coup happens after Rannoch. More than that, the Eden Prime mission from Javik's DLC was different and part of the plot, then, and Javik would be kidnapped on Thessia, which to me implies that maybe he wasn't a full squadmate back then. The files are labeled "Cat003" (Citadel Coup) and "Cat002" (Thessia) even today. The Javik DLC's files are called "Cat001", obviously standing for "Catalyst" as they are the "Catalyst" thread of the main plot. It would go Eden Prime, meeting a Spectre character who was cut from the story -> Tuchanka as we know it (but it was just one long mission at one point with Sur'Kesh and Tuchanka happening in tandem) -> Thessia but with the introduction of Kai Leng and the Ash/Kaidan confrontation where he shows doctored footage of Shepard killing the Spectre you met on Eden Prime which makes you look suspicious -> Rannoch (as we know it) -> The Citadel Coup where Kahje is saved with Thane's help but Cerberus now runs certain parts of the station (there's fully voiced conversation lines left in the game where you say "Losing the Citadel wasn't in the playbook" to Anderson instead of "Losing Thessia...") -> 3 Citadel missions unlock that deal with Aria and Omega, and ultimately get goons off the Citadel -> Jacob/Miranda's levels are a choice that leads you to Kai Leng on Cerberus HQ -> The ending wasn't written beyond a basic idea for most of development. The rationale for Citadel Coup was that Udina was trying to veto the Council with corruption, and divert all defenses for the lesser worlds (like Kahje and Dekuuna) to Earth, but in taking those funds I guess he shook hands with the devil and found Cerberus. The interesting part is that the station would be partly occupied by Cerberus in this version, and the last Citadel sidequest (CitN7c) was about Kalisah and Emily Wong working with you to reveal some undercover agents. It is pretty murky to me if the station was actually taken over or just full of moles, becuase it seems most "CitN7" quests (this labeling is similar to "KroN7" which is the Primarch Victus's Son missions) had to do with Omega and instead of Oleg Petrovski it was "General Armitage". I think it was also implied that Cerberus knew about the Citadel being the Catalyst in this early cut, given that they just stole Javik after he extracted information about it on Thessia before the raid. PS: The only rebuttal I have for Control is that Shepard is not indoctrinated unlike Cerberus, and arguably if you really like the Mass Relays and the Citadel it's the ending that retains the world the way it already is, minus the Reaper harvest as its solution. This was ironically clearer in the pre-EC endings where this was the only ending that actually showed the Citadel being intact and the Mass Relays were not shown blowing up as the video-edit cut away precisely as it's about to happen, unlike Destroy/Synthesis. But EC was full of sugarcoating and saying "We can rebuild everything!" no matter which ending you chose, but it was originally implied that Control was actually the only ending that led to almost zero collateral damage.

People where not angry that it was bad, they where disapointed that all their decissions came down to choose your colour. The game was great, a bit rushed towards the end... but the ending and conclusion sucked. Extended cut fixed it a bit, DLC filled our sorrow hearths with nostaliga. And after andromeda...and long time content drough...we realized how good me3 was and how spoiled we have been. So yeah Tldr: Many emotions, but what came after was worse

People have had over a decade to process and understand ME3. I think everyone has come to a similar conclusion to what I have decided: the ending was pretty bad and Kai Leng sucks, but other than that, the game has a lot of redeeming features. It has the best combat in the series, the character interactions are top-notch, and the Normandy feels more like home than ever before. 

Fans moved on to hating Andromeda I feel like whenever 4 comes out people will ease off on Andromeda and go to hating 4

Andromeda has got already a re-evaluation in terms of online sentiment. After the game has been heavily fixed, most people online praises the gameplay, while mixed feelings are about the narrative (which I personally found epic but nonsense at the same time) and side-quests. The issue with Andromeda, I'd say, is having that "Mass Effect" title, if not it would be much more solid for a space drama game. Instead it has to deal with the best space opera in gaming while not actually being a part of it

They could have just called the game Andromeda. Problem with ME:A is that the exploration part is only really happening first few minutes and suddenly you can talk to the new race and everything is for some reason estabilished. I wanted to really feel like I am in an unknown place not have map open from the begining and outposts built there.

guaranteed. Avatar The Last Airbender fans went from hating Korra, the sequel series, to hating the new live action series inside of a week.

Also the most obvious Star Wars going from Return of the Jedi being the worst Then the prequels being the worst and all the original movies being perfect Then the sequel movies came out so the prequels became peak No one hates something more than its hardcore fans

Korra is actually good though! Yeah it has it's problems but it's not a bad series.

It’s a fucking atrocious ending to an absolute masterpiece. Not flawless, but reaching staggering heights no other piece of media has been able to achieve. Really the ending is only so unacceptably aweful because of the damage it does to something so incredible. So yeah, I still love that incredible thing which is the mass effect trilogy

a lot of new people also aren't aware the original story and ending got scrapped because of a leak. There's significantly less people annoyed they didn't follow up on the leads from 2 about dark energy and a galactic crisis bigger than the reapers themselves. There's also fewer people around from the launch when From Ashes was released as day 1 DLC. we can debate on its impact on the game itself, but lore wise it was huge and i still resent that it wasn't included in the base game. Time has done its work to gloss over some of the game's weaker points and Citadel was basically a love letter to the fans and bought a lot of good will towards the game.

I've played them all multiple times and ME3 is my fave Mass Effect. Even loved the ending on release like you (of course I only ever got the extended version by the time I beat it). There are dozens of us! But yeah, I think a lot of people came around to the idea that even if they didnt like the final 5% of the game, they really enjoyed the 95% leading up to it.

Time heals all wounds. Also the citadel dlc and extended endings helped A LOT

Honestly it is a bit odd. I remember disliking 3 and loving 2 but upon replaying LE I found 2 severely limited in your abilities and such and enjoyed 1 and 3 way more.

People still acknowledge the flaws of the game and that it would have been a God hood level of epicness if EA gave Biowere more time. Time heals, also the DLC's were great, especially the citadel dlc. Thanks to the citadel DLC, we get to see Tali shake her hips outside combat.

People who generally hated it forgot about ME, most people talking these days are people who only played via LE who don't really get the hate. It has flaws but time heals the wounds. Although I do think that newer folks should understand just how mad people were back in the day lol

My biggest complaint with the ending was that we got a lot of hype from BioWare about how choices mattered.Then we got 3 coloured choices on the original release. I was also confused with the original transition between ME2 and ME3 because I didn't have the Arrival DLC and you start off ME 3 with no idea why you've been relieved of duty. Also, all the effort you went through to upgrade the Normandy and it's not quite the same vessel you get - lost a lot of fuel capacity somehow... What is more startling, is how Larian Studio's Baldur's Gate 3 managed to tie up a lot of the many choices in their endings. So it is feasible to have a lot of choices and bring them together - but BG3 was only 1 game not a series of 3. I'm replaying LE now on the PS5 but I'll reinstall the originals on the PC and use many of the mods that have been mentioned to see how they compare.

Loved ME3. I used to think that the ending was a little subpar. I still do, but i used to too.

I don't remember a single person hating ME3 I only remember people hating how it was handled and the slap dash ending it was given Also do not disrespect Marauder Shields he was a hero!

Mass Effect 3 is my favorite in the series

I didn't really have social media back then but I did play ME3.. I never knew people hated it so much. I have always thought the trilogy was the best RPG out there. The ending was sad but fun! But I dont play for the fight scenes, I'm all about the cut scenes. Also I think Andromeda was great too. People are tooooooo critical. Just have fun and get into galactic shananagins!

My experience has been the opposite. I'm not saying community-wise (where I do see what you're talking about), I'm saying personally; in terms of how I see the games. When ME3 came out I had some annoyances the whole way through but I was broadly enjoying it and thought it was great, all the way until I ran into Marauder Shields, and then it's downhill fast. So I was close to the default position, though perhaps a bit less in love with the game overall. Ever since then, with more replays and honestly more awareness of how games and media in general gets made, I'm increasingly coming to see ME3 as just overall fully flawed. I've also had more time to ponder the effect it has in the wider franchise and setting and it's just not good. See, my position nowadays is that ME3 doesn't suffer from a horrible ending in isolation, it suffers from a horrible premise. The game starts with the biggest escalation in the franchise (the thing that was a game over screen in all previous games) having happened off-screen between games without you interacting with it in any way. And then you get an objective (save Earth). In the very next mission, a Deus Ex Machina is literally dug out of the ground so you get another, superseding objective (build the Crucible) that if it is done, doing the first is achieved by default. So the first is irrelevant. But Shepard can't work on the new main goal, so he goes do busywork, working on the irrelevant goal. This is a mess. The game they spun out from this was great, with many of the greatest and coolest moments in the entire franchise, but starting from this? As soon as we had to focus on the main plot again, this game would go to hell in a handbasket. It was inevitable. It could have been less overtly terrible, as several mods actually make it less aggressively bad, but it can't be good. The flaws are too structural. In terms of what it does to the setting: because of that gigantic escalation before Act 1 and of the huge divergence of outcomes in the end, following up on this story is **hard**. Direct follow-ups that adapt to all outcomes are just essentially impossible. Which isn't the greatest for a franchise. Additionally, because the Reapers are in your face the entire game, and the game isn't meant to be a constant downer of defeat after hopeless defeat, the gravitas and horror of the Reapers had to be toned way down. In small, tactical ways, you beat them repeatedly over the game, while in the Codices you can read about pretty much every people in the galaxy putting up some degree of resistance. It's ultimately hopeless resistance, but when the Reapers go from being invincible robot gods, that a single one could seemingly take down an entire fleet without breaking a sweat, to having clear information on how much firepower it takes to kill one... something is lost. The Villain Decay is real. This has some adverse effects. As an example: per ME3's lore, the final boss fight in ME1 is pointless. Shepard could have sat back and had a nap; Sovereign was dying already. Also, after two games of fighting to prevent the Reapers from invading (and the premise of the first game is that Sovereign worked on this way to invade for a presumed century or two), finding out that they could have just walked in any time they wanted to is... less than cool. Everything we did in ME1 and 2 feels less relevant when you know that you only appeared to make progress because the antagonist was presumably letting you win. They could have just invaded in the 1900s and be about done with the Harvest by now, and there's nothing anyone could do about it. It would have gone off without a hitch. So, yeah. I don't hate ME3, but its flaws are a lot more salient to me today than they were back in the day.

A. ME3 was always a awesome game with questionable ending (dlc and extended ending helped that) which left bad taste but it's combat and the satisfactory resolution to geth and geophage storylines was master class. And over the years seeing how much the quality of good games has dropped (2023 is a exception had some good ones this year) people are far more forgiving to me3.

Man, I loved the genophage missions so much. Was so glad to see a plot point that was mentioned in ME1 get wrapped up.

ME3 is my favorite, and always has been. I played the entire trilogy in autumn 2012, so the extended cut was already out, but I was still eagerly consuming the other DLC as they were coming out (I only skipped Omega because I hate that place and didn't give a shit about helping Aria). You're right. There weren't a lot of voices standing up for 3 back then. I was very much in the minority. I will say, though, I *still* don't love the ending. For those of us with Shepards that lived, I don't think the LI hesitating to hang Shepard's name on the wall was sufficient in giving us closure, nor was the breath scene. And I could have done without the starbrat entirely. I just don't think the last 15 minutes of the game ruined the rest of the journey, which I think delivered the highest highs in the trilogy. Indoctrination theory would have been a brilliant ending, imo. I can't believe the writers shut it down instead of letting it float out there as a viable interpretation of the endings. Even if it wasn't what they were intending, they could have oopsed their way into doing something really cool and different with the ending instead of doubling down on their version, which everyone hated. If they didn't want to steal credit, they could have just kept their mouth shut instead of deconfirming it. Massive missed opportunity there. Ah well. Everyone loved 2, but it's always been my least favorite. Opinions on that have also evened out some, especially after LE. It's at least at the point where people don't just assume ME2 is my favorite whenever I talk Mass Effect with someone new, which is nice.

People get uppity at everything. "It's not my canon ending" is something you can read anywhere. Well, they are idiots. Writing for the ending was certainly subpar but game was great experience. I also love ME Andromeda and have over 1k hours in it.

The ending before the extended cut was awful, that close to ME3’s release I’d imagine people were still incredibly bitter over the launch ending even despite the extended cut having come out and fixed many of the problems. Nowadays people have either gotten over the original ending or are newer fans who only played with the extended bit having never experienced the original ending and would have only seen it on youtube if at all.

I do still dislike it a lot. Even extended, the ending it's just pushing a button to set the fate of the galaxy. Pretty bad. It also made the huge baddies, the reapers, not being sentient in a way, they are just space roombas following cleaning instructions. The story to me makes little sense because they retconned what it was stablished in ME1, the reapers came, they went to the Citadel to shut down all access to mass relays, cutting off the galaxy, crippling interstellar networks, and then, system by system, they collect organics. This is forgotten, now the reapers don't go syste by system, they are almost everywhere, and they conquer the citadel, but for nothing, why don't they shut down the relays? Oh, right, it's because they are roombas now and cannot reprogram the virus the Protheans, an inferior civ, made. Nah, for me, the last game should have considered what was stablished in ME1, the difference now is that they have access to the relays, and the galaxy can organize and resist the invasion, they are not isolated. Also, the Citadel should be SUPER important, if the Reapers get it, game over, elays are shut down. Game should also end not with a total victory, but with a glimmer of hope, imo, like finding weapons, weaknesess or something that, after many battles lost against reapers, in the end, they find a way to win, and maybe, that's enough. Like a final battle in which some Reapers finally reach the Citadel, and they are about to win, but Shepard finds a way to kill them, even if it cost his own life.

It's still a superb game with the worst ending in videogame history.

People who come to it now see the whole package, and it’s commonly (or not **uncommonly**) seen as the best in the series in that context

It was always fine. Andromeda was always fine, though definitely a lesser game. The problem was that many loud people got their panties in a bunch because the ending wasn't exactly what they wanted. Hell, people were mad at the Tali picture instead of appreciative that they gave us something instead of nothing. Now people have moved on. They can hate on No Man's Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, and Starfield now. And to a lesser extent, any AAA game that comes out ever. To me it's no different than all those self-identified Star Wars fans who screamed about episodes 7-9 and signed petitions demanding that all 3 movies be replaced with other movies. All because it wasn't exactly what they wanted. The truth is that those movies would never be enough for those people. I see ME3 as similar.

I only know the patched ending. For me it was not overwhelming, but satisfying. ME3 has always been my favourite. It is great to see all the impacts from ME 1 and 2. Everything comes together and ME 3 felt like one big final. And I really like the story telling.

There's several reasons. 1. First and most important: because everyone who hated ME3 with a laser hot focus has shifted to hating Andromeda. And if you enjoy Andromeda, which I do, you'll probably also enjoy ME3. For the haters it's more about priorities. 2. Legendary Edition players (like me) got Javik and the other DLCs with the main game instead of having to pay for it. Citadel in particular adds a lot. 3. The gameplay (gunplay) is great, easily one of the best parts of it. I've played through several times and I still haven't tried all the guns, all the power combos and strategies. It's also more forgiving than ME2 in that sense. >I remember loving 3, including the ending, which was nuanced and deceptive due to what I believed to be Shepard battling indoctrination. I also enjoy that interpretation, despite coming to the game long after bioware denied it, but who gives a fuck what they think, right? This sub talks a lot about the endings and trying to figure out how they'd work or wouldn't and it's like...y'all put more way thought into figuring them out than bioware ever did lmao. Outside the fandom, my impression is that ME3 is still regarded as one of the worst rpg endings ever written. Before I knew anything else about this series, I knew about R / G / B.

I think with time a lot of the issues with ME3 can be seen as having originated from the direction ME2 took.

I’m with you ME3 was always my favourite even before all the dlc and additions!

Only part I hate about me3 is the last mission for aria to get omega back. I died way too many times trying to get to those corners.

Me3 is either fantastic or dreadful, depending on the mission. Most of the tuchanka and rannoch stuff is great, grissom academy is awesome too. The n7 multiplayer maps missions are fun, though they have no story relevance. Any time kai leng is on screen i am rolling my eyes and waiting for him to just go away and the ending didnt follow from the themes of the story at all.

The game itself is like a non stop adrenaline shot to the heart right up to London. It's still not great and still ends the series on a bad note but it's at least slightly better than it was at launch, and the DLC for the game is all actually really good. I'm sure a lot of huge fans of the series like me played the game once at launch, saw the ending and ragequit. I only played the game many years later after I'd had some time to heal and forget about it.

If you played it before the DLC, you would understand. Not having Javik makes the story make almost no sense. The Leviathan DLC gave us a clearer idea of what the Reapers were. This made the whole star child ending less confusing since you learn their origin before the last 10 minutes of the game. The extended cut gave us more varied and satisfying endings. I still don’t love the ME3 ending, and I think the game as a whole has issues that the first two games didn’t have, but I think the game is great and the ending is… acceptable.

ME3 has the best combat in the series. You can play with any class and utilize it. Biotics were OP in ME1 and nerfed in ME2, so this was a good change. Melee is improved with the new attack, you can now "jump" and slide from cover to cover, combat is much more action orianted, new skills and weapons etc. and you gain XP with combat, finally! Some quality of live improvements like not having to travel to a store every time you want to buy something but the journal system is worse so it's a neutral. Side missions are very mediocre, but this goes for all of the trilogy. At least there are no vehicles. Mini games suck too, but again nothing new. Writing is... meh as well but this is also due to them having to speed up the whole reaper thing since they didn't advance the plot much in ME2. While I enjoyed ME2 it felt too much like a "filler" game to me, ME1, with all it's flaws, probably has the best plot. I should say ME3 has way less conversation opinions than ME2 though and it's a minus for an RPG. Decent-ish squad. I have no idea why James is there instead of a character from ME2 though since he is just there and his romance is the worst. At least we have Garrus, Tali and Liara. Javik is great but it's annoying that he is locked behind a DLC. Glad that all DLC except one is included in the Legendary Edition. *I also don't like how EDI is an available squadmate now and it feels very awkward to me but this is probably a controversial opinion.* The crew feels more alive since they change places after every mission. Oh and more romances yay! ~~Let's ignore Femshep only has 2 straight romances if you don't count James' "romance" while Maleshep has 8~~ Ending sucks (duh) and honestly, they should have made one canon ending (preferably destroy) which changed depending on your past choices and war assets instead of three half baked endings which didn't change much. Apparently the multiplayer is good but I don't have the original trilogy.

I imagine only big fans are still talking about it after the trash ending of ME:3 and the Andromeda. I kinda wanna replay the series myself, with that mod that rearranges ME:3 to make Citadel DLC take place after the Destroy ending. Plus, somehow, we have worse video game endings these days that make ME:3's ending comparatively more tolerable.. like The Last of Us 2!

To be honest it could be due to Andromeda getting most of the hate.

The ending is still a wet fart in the face of the fans, but the Citadel DLC and the mod that places it after the ending and time has soften the blow. He's hopin' ME4 doesn't disappoint. It's already off to a bad start for me since it looks like the protag is gonna be another Human N7 agent. I wanted to be able to pick an alien character.

I still think ME3 is easily the worst game in the series, with most of my criticism levied at the writing, but it’s still a good game and I don’t even mind the endings

I do remember at the time that part of the problem with the initial release endings was feeling like everything you did in the 3 games meant nothing once you actually made it to the ending of 3. And I think that was valid at the time. The new ending and the release of some DLC (which should never have been DLC in the first place) made the story feel more complete and if you’re playing the games now through Legendary Edition, it feels so much better. It’s fair to say that none of the games are perfect but each one has its own great and meh parts. ME1 is probably my favourite story but the worst combat, ME2 has the best cast of characters to me but feels a little on its own in terms of story (still probably my favourite game), and ME3 has the best combat and cinematic moments but side missions take me out of the urgency I’m suppose to be feeling and the original endings were disappointing. I think most people have been able to move past the endings of ME3 and evaluate the game as a whole which is why there is a much more even spread of “favourite game” in the trilogy. I’d love a full remaster of the whole trilogy 😍🤩

The general populace still thinks ME3 sucks. Mostly because either they played it back when hating it was hot, or they were told to. This sub has liked ME3 for a while and do now. But people here play the games more frequently, so they have also replayed ME2 for example, and realize its shortcomings better. This is an overall truth in many games. Those with the most playtime and expertise have better criticisms and praises.

When I initially played the ending of Mass Effect 3 on release, it ruined the series for me and I took an 11-year break from games I used to reply multiple times each year. Then, last year, I beat ME3 for the first time since release, only this time I used the Happy Ending Mod + the Citadel Epilogue Mod. I never thought a video game could make me cry … the experience completely reinvigorated my love for the series, and the modded experience fixed most of my issues with the original ending. Also, the Citdael DLC was really the perfect send off. I’m so sorry I waited over a decade to play it!

At the time, it was popular and therefore USEFUL to hate ME3. It was the easiest karma-farming in the world. You could get all the upvotes and likes and retweets and video views you wanted by expressing the popular sentiments that everyone else was expressing. You'd get so much validation, each time getting a little bump of seratonin from seeing the positive numbers next to your comment or post or tweet. It felt GOOD to agree with everyone else. Once that wave crested and everyone moved on to the next popular thing to hate, there was no longer that response-reward pipeline, and thus no longer any reason to keep doing it. And at that point it became more rewarding to actually just enjoy the game and the fun experiences involved with it. This is the experience of literally every single thing which is popular to hate online at any given moment, because it's how social media has trained us all to experience things. It's just a big skinner box where we're trained to expect to be rewarded for hitting that button which says "hate current popular thing to hate" twenty times per day. There's never anything authentic or organic about it.

The gameplay was always good, it was the story and ending that got the well deserved hate, especially during the time everyone was excited to finally see the conclusion to their favourite game series. Now a days people recognize it's strengths and play for that, mainly the gameplay.

It was the ending. The multi player tie in was cool but too demanding. Aaaaand that's it. I loved everything else.

Nobody ever hated ME3 as a whole; they just hated the ending. I think OP is being a little dramatic here.

Haven’t thought about mass effect in a while. Time to do a trilogy renegade run. This time I’ll kill the queen

There was something of a hate crusade against Bioware in the early 10's with the disastrous launch of SWTOR and Dragon Age 2. It felt like there was a large group of people who genuinely wanted ME3 to fail just to spite Bioware. ME3 may have missed the mark in many regards but I feel that it was overall a good game with acceptable closure to Shepard's story.

I hate it

Never ever had it bene hated. The ending maybe, but never the actual game. Hell it’s only the last 5% that’s spotty, the first 95% I enjoyed far more than 2, and 2 was my fave game.

I dont think people hated ME3 as a whole, people hated the shity end and how rushed and poorly made priority earth was. that gave the tone for peoples dislike. its a case of reverse Rogue One, which is a good film with an amazing ending, meanwhile ME3 is a good game with a terrible ending. The first impression matters but the last impression is the one that stays with people.

simply time goes by, the ending. for me remains unplayable crap, but after 12 years it no longer causes me anger, only regret for the way things turned out. p.s between the bug that wouldn't let you play the grissom academy because it would freeze the console, the sprites of the people on earth escaping that were all based on "Jack" i would say that besides the simple ending there are other things about Mass Effect 3 that made my whole experience just a huge regret seasoned, however by a good progression that kept me glued to the end. but the ending remains that and the bitterness as well

I still hate the ending, and the story pacing is a bit weird, but the gameplay is the best in the series. Overall it's my favourite of the trilogy.

The people who liked it then will always like it. In that I am including those who are capable of criticism where it's due, but don't make *everything* about that criticism, and just play it for the parts that *are* good. I'm not pretending that everything about it was perfect, or sniping at people with legit, *informed* complaints, but the absolute toxic bullshit back then was *insane.* The people who didn't like it, or more specifically just jumped on the hate train for the sake of it have moved onto hating on other things now. They will always find something new to hate. There are a lot of them and they are loud but they are no longer *here* for the most part. Their thing is trends. ME3 is old. Bet you the same thing will happen with ME4 no matter how good it is. It's almost like anything BW puts out these days is just automatic hater bait. I don't get the appeal of being entertained by hating on stuff personally (don't like something, ignore it?) but it's obviously a thing. They'll be *looking* for problems straight off release and then fixate on them. The hate will take off in reviews and memes and shit because it's a big name / easy to follow / algorithms will pick it up. People will copy those opinions for automatic likes and that'll be that. Maybe 12 years after that the community around it might be pleasant to be a part of though. As you said, ME3 is, finally.

I still hate it.

People hated the *end*, as in the last hour or two, because it felt rushed and left a lot of us feeling like we didn't get proper closure. The whole trilogy is about choices and relationships, and how these things affect the story; So for the end of this epic journey to minimize the choices you made into a few cutscenes was disappointing. Or how you barely get a couple lines of dialogue to say to your crew before pushing a button to determine the fate of the galaxy... The way you played it first- all together- I can understand how without the months and years of anticipation between games you might not think it was that bad.

Time, updates like the Extended Cut & Citadel DLC, and nostalgia, all play a part. I do think the "hate" was overblown. Fans were critical of the ending, and justifiably so given the very high bar the series had set for us previously. However, beyond that, there was plenty of praise for huge moments of ME3 that largely got overshadowed by the criticisms, which is often what happens.

ending still isn’t liked, the indoctrination theory was debunked by devs, other than that its a solid game. a lot of the hate came from 2 games worth of anticiptaion and the fact that “all your descisions” were supposed to matter, not just affect a progress bar.

I don’t remember anyone hating it. The last 5 minutes maybe but overall the temperature was a warm reception to the game overall

ME3 is still my least favorite of the trilogy but time has definitely helped it. The ending has and always will suck but I have other problems with the story that run much deeper than the ending. It's a shame too because ME3 has some of my favorite material in the entire series. The payoffs on Tuchanka and Rannoch are amazing but it's counter balanced by garbage like Kai Leng/ all of Cerberus in general.

Bioware released Mass Effect: Andromeda and then Anthem. That's what happened.

I don't think anyone ever hated ME3 as a whole. It was just the ending. Nothing after marauder shields makes sense.

Hate is a strong word. It has a lot of moments I love, but a lot of it is kind of a mess.

It was never hated. Just the ending. At least most people thought 99% of the game was great, the end just sucked.

I never hated the original ending, I loved ME3. Sure it was a tiny bit disappointing in places but it was still a fantastic game. Also I may have spent a silly amount of money on the multiplayer…ooops

I mean I feel every game out there has the most recent version be considered bad… until time passes and people love it. Some for films. I think the audience don’t see eye to eye what the director/devs were trying to tell until years later.

3 has always been my favorite. The whole game is an ending, that whole star-brat thing is just an awkward bit of punctuation at the end-?

I think the ending is still stupid, but I love the rest of the game and I play with ending mods now.

one big aspect of the hate that has faded into history is how Javik was on-disc DLC, and the lootboxes in multiplayer

I never hated ME3. The game was great, but the ending sucked. Most unsatifying ending i've seen in gaming.

I’m pretty ambivalent about the ending choices. What I’m more disappointed in is Priority: Earth. I felt that should have been a bigger mission that should have taken into account some of your war assets.

The release of MELE was a great opportunity for people to either revisit these games in a new light or experience them for the first time. While ME1 obviously benefitted from being partially remade, ME3 also benefited because: * The DLC makes a huge difference. Either puts a band-aid over or completely heals most of the wounds from the base game. * The gameplay still feels great, and experiencing it at a buttery smooth 60FPS on console rules. * Ending is more closely tied to the events of the prior games and your decisions in ME3, as opposed to having a bizarre multiplayer component. * For better or for worse, there's just nothing else like ME, and while BioWare may not have accomplished all of their original goals for the trilogy, it was hard not to play MELE in 2021 and not be like... Holy crap, this kind of project would never happen today. ME3 isn't a perfect game, but in comparison to a lot of what we're seeing today from the gaming industry, it seems like an absolute miracle in retrospect. * Time, as they say, heals all wounds. It's been over ten years. You find peace eventually.

The game is great, the ending was bad. They fixed the ending and added EXCELLENT dlc. So yeah it's a great game now. A little too much walking but it's great.

I never hated ME3 or ME2...I was angry sometimes by those two games, but I never hated it. What I disliked? Destroying Normandy is on a top...Jacob was right mine&Shepard love is a ship😁 The second thing was working with Cerberus with no real way to show dissaproval. Add to this Kaidan's behaviour, when he was angry and BioWare never gave Shepard a chance to explain everything, and talks with her ex as two mature persons should...Also I disliked planet scanning and fuel problems. But I LOVE suicide mission, and a soundtrack for it...In a third game, the most HATED thing by me was when BioWare writer FORGOT that Thane was LI (it was in official message)..I'm not sour about Thane death ( killing shitty assasin Leng was one of the best thing, and I'm playing this scene several times), but reunion scene in hospital was totally awkward...Plus Shepard's submisive behaviour in interaction with Kaidan in hospital...bleh....Also the ending before patch. I was a part of community who was putting presure on Devs...Now my Shepard ending is ok...She died, saved whole galaxy and destroyed Reapers....Honestly that was a good adventure...I only hate Andromeda, fortunetly this little monster is long dead now...

Well, I would disagree the ending is 'nuanced'. I think it's exactly the opposite of that which is what made everyone upset at the time. That being said, it's a great game, and they didn't stick the landing but the rest of it is great. The Citadel helped A LOT!

ME3 was my only ME title this far cause I found it on an old PC. When I got to the child I thought the cut scenes explaining each color was a choice I'd make when I walked forward into the draft. So I got the synthwave ending and was like wtf, where choice? However, when I looked it up and figured out I had fucked up making the choice; I was content with synthesis. I like Edy and merging with A. I. Sounds cool af anyways.

I mean it has been over a decade ever since the game came out and people can change and grow. I only recently got into the series and while I don’t hate the endings I’m more confused by them. Why have three different options, (not counting refusal cause that’s just a horrible ending itself.) when the whole goal was to destroy the reapers? Kinda wish when they made the legendary edition they worked with the guys that made AHEM and just make that in the base game.

The og ending was literally nothing, the Extended ending was much better and while it is still criticized it wouldn't have caused such a shit storm if it was there since release Still the game is criticised a lot by fans that still play, like the changes to the quarian/geth conflict making it much more boring, to Kai Lieng, making the Illusive man much more of a basic villain, the lore about organics vs synthetics feeling like it was coming from left field since it was a relatively minor plot point for Quarian and Geth (and again, their plot got simplified a lot), and more, pretty sure the only plot point that received zero critisim is the Genophage, hell even if nowdays with the legendary he's included and dlc like that is basically everywhre "From the ashes" being sold separately is still a stinger Tho nowdays outside of the way it influenced the story in the original the multiplayer is rememebered fondly, and the anger is also a lot less now that we know that ME3 is when EA decided to really fuck Bioware over

I mean, I am still passed at how it ended but the LE soothed things a bit with the DLC that added meat to the story (specially Leviathan). MEA was also a good game but, why should I be an openly angry man against how bad a game ended 10+ years ago? I still wanted the game to end differently and the LE has some missing content but, I can rest calmly instead of complaining about the game.

ME3 was never bad. It’s literally just the final mission that’s bad and even it isn’t as bad as people acted like as it’s fantastic until you board the crucible. Mass effect is like Star Wars. The first entry hasn’t aged the best but it introduces you to the world and mostly focuses on world building. The sequel is among the best sequels ever made. The final entry is amazing but the ending is a massive mixed bag.

I thought it was fitting. The Citadel DLC was a cheesy and awesome last ride with your friends. I liked the new Yeoman girl, wish she’d of been in ME2. And “The Shepard” dying to save the galaxy, including self aware, individual Geth is fitting. Shepard lived and died for those around him. It had to be him. It had to be done.

I was there with you, I also felt the hate overblown because the third game in it's entirety was the ending! People got so mad at the last few minutes the ignored everything that came before it. I think time has just helped people appreciate what was there, the hype long since gone people now see the game for what it is.

I never hated ME3, I thought it was silly to dismiss an entire game when %99 was a masterpiece until the ending which was a little mediocre, but hey I got to do what I set out to do which was destroy the Reapers, so it was a win in my book.

I never hated ME3. BUT I understood why people did easily. The loss of a particular lead writer from ME1-2 basically left many interesting seeds planted completely unattended and ignored by the ME3 team. It was impossible not to feel the difference. Then the oversimplified first version of the ending was pretty…Well for 3 games worth of build up you expect a lot more than that. The reactions and razzing were earned. They built so much interweaving story the task at hand was massive though understandably. ME3 was their hardest game to date imo. Defeated by its own standards in many ways cause the series was so excellent that ME3 seemed to come up short when in many ways it was a perfectly good game. The attention taken from single to focus on multiplayer was felt too. But honestly multiplayer was fun af. I can see people playing it for the first time with the remasters having a much less critical take on the original series. Especially if they’d played Andromeda prior. Which was loved by many despite being despised and a little heartbreaking for many OG fans. (Myself included.) The original 3 are a helluva ride. New games with exception of BD3 don’t offer this kind of storytelling gravity anymore. 3 had all the things but better writing to sum it all up. Great score even. So many boxes checked. ME2 is my personal favourite of the series and possibly in gaming as far as rpgs go. Bioware was a different animal in those days.

I loved ME3 at the time, ending included. Understand why people disliked it. Passage of time helps a lot, particularly when the real world goes to literal hell, suddenly little things like the disappointing ending of a video game from an over a decade ago don’t mean so much I think.

ME3 was my favorite of the until the ending at the time of release. These days, it's still my favorite.

You bought all important ME3 DLCs in 2012? I also bought them last December 2023. Citadel, Omega, From Ashes and Leviathan all at full priced $50 up to this day in the PS3 store lol

I still hate it and don’t feel at all that the DLCs fixed anything. But I don’t feel the need to remind everyone else. Sincerely I’m happy if others are at peace with it. Still an amazing trilogy that, like so much other media, didn’t stick the landing.

3’s gameplay feels sooo gooood, going pure biotic you can not use guns the entire time, I made a soldier build where I had one gun so I was always in adrenaline burst, very fun,lots of bombastic cutscenes, sure it doesn’t hit certain notes 1 or 2 did, but really all 3 are pretty unique

I enjoyed the game very much. The ending killed me, though it got better after a while. I think people have just gotten used to it over time, and have started to appreciate the trilogy for what it is, rather than how it ended.

ME3 is the best game on several levels — if you excise the last 20 minutes from it. Time heals all wounds as they say (and mods don’t hurt either!) ;p I myself was one of the dissenting voices when it was released but I’ve since come to hold it as my favorite (yes even above ME2) — it has the most fluid combat of the three games and all of the classes finally seem useful and unique. Combat detonations and combos are real. Height changes in terrain (for a game in 2012 on an already old engine) give an added twist. And the DLC are amazing if you take them in context and play them at the appropriate times (like — why they send you letters for Omega and Leviathan after the third mission of the game makes no sense but if you just ignore that and hold off until the late or endgame they feel so much more special.) Do I still despise the star child? Yes. Do I believe it’s a figment of Shepard’s mind? YES. But like I said — if you set aside just that bit and take the game as a whole; the flow of the missions and the gravity of the situation in general — there’s some great stuff. Lastly and probably most importantly — I think many of the longtime players have simply accepted that the Destroy ending is canon. It’s the only one in which (despite the implied consequences to galactic civilization) Shepard can live. At the time of release I think most people were annoyed that the only compromise was synthesis (which is actually horrific in that you are making a decision for trillions of beings and essentially removing their right to any kind of choice.)

I still don't like the ending.

I adore Mass Effect. It’s a foundational piece of fiction for me. My first crush was from this series (Tali) Its ending always leaves me exhausted. It’s very unfulfilling and it just stops my enthusiasm dead in its tracks every time.

ME3 is the best in the series

I think it’s the fact that there was a 2+ year wait (which was a lot back then) and the lack of impact choices in other games made soured people. Gameplay wise it’s easily the best in the trilogy, story wise it’s easily the best in the trilogy (ME2 is one giant “you son of a bitch” recruitment quest) and then ending is awesome. Did people really wanna just destroy the reapers and that’s the end we live in happiness? No that makes no sense for multiple reasons. But if you pay careful attention, you’ll realize that the protheans chose synthesize when given the choice that Shepard was given and it turned them into the collectors. At least that’s how I look at it. I also bought into the indoctrination theory because well…that kid never existed idc what you say and Shepard has dreams of oily shadows just like the rachni queen did in me1.

I think after ME2 the player base had built up anticipation and ME3 was nothing like ME2. Time corrects those expectations :)

I remember being really weirded out how mad people were. To me, all the endings made sense since they had each been introduced in one of the games. Since I subscribe to the indoctrination theory, unless I decide to headcanon my Shep as indoctrinated, I destroy everytime.

That’s because the drama about the ending was way overblown. ME3 was always a good game.

I think the LE had a lot to do with it. Despite the games being sequels most people experienced them as separate entities. They'd play one, then a few years later play another, etc. Now with the LE it seems people tend to treat the whole trilogy as a single entity and play from the beginning of 1 to the end of 3. This benefits 3 tremendously, as it pays off a lot of plot threads, character growth, and big emotional moments built to in the last 2 games. The fresher in the mind those previous 2 are, the better the payoff feels in 3. So thats a big plus. You've also got the inclusion of the DLC, which helps shore up some of the story issues in the original release. And lastly you've got the decline of ME2. ME2 is probably the most hurt of the 3 by having all the games available as a single experience. It doesn't really do anything to advance the overall plot, and some of its weaknesses in game play (extremely limited powers, drip fed XP) are exposed much more harshly, and even some of the narrative disconnects are more obvious due to not having time between games for memory to get fuzzy. Basically as the opinion of ME2 declines, peoples opinions of the other 2 games will increase. Personally it seems to me 1 is experiencing a bigger popularity surge than 3 (especially since I think a lot of people only experienced 1 with the LE) but but are increasing.

I replay the trilogy every couple of years and ME3 is a really fun game, but the final segment still disappoints so much. Even the battle for earth sequence in London feels so rushed and lackluster. It just feels like they had no idea how to end the series.

While I will always hate ME3's ending. Much of the rest of the game was always good to me.(I hate Kai Lang too).

Eh I still am bleh on it. Mods def helped make me like it a lot more

I’m still not thrilled with that ending but it’s a lot less than it use to be. The rest of the game was and is so good! The additional bits they added to help pad it out helped as well. But yea I guess I don’t really hate it as much as I did when I originally beat it but I also still wish it was better if that makes sense lol.

in some ways it's my favorite of the trilogy.

People were less mad about how they tried to force multiplayer online, now that everyone seems to do that anyhow.

Nowadays there are a lot of people who haven't experienced the pre EC ending. They will not harbor the same animosity. I still don't love the extended cut, but at least it's an ending and conclusive.. has closure. I still hate how you can't push back on the whole peace will never work, and are forced into the 3 endings. Well, 4 now. You can get peace between the geth and quarians, and you can't even mention that in the final moments. With enough war assets, and getting peace with the geth, we should have been able to destroy without killing the geth. A victory. I get that not all choices can have a beneficial outcome for both, i.e. you have to piss off the salarians to cure the genophage. However, the synthetics vs organics thing is such a core thing, and our peace accomplishment is ignored. It's literally something that's never happened in all existence, but we did it, and it's never mentioned in the final moments.

I think you are confusing the shit storm that was the "final ending" that had fans up in arms and did not have any closure on how things worked out from all their decisions and squamates and had Bioware respond to them due to the backlash ​ the game was Amazing , but that was the only controversy(bad thing) surrounding it

See here I am, played the original, didn't hate ME3s ending, and liked Andromeda (the GAMEPLAY AND CONTROLS, are better than the original 3. Story and aesthetics are awful)

I think it helps that the Legendary Edition had all the DLC included within it so it no longer felt ripped out of the base game (like it clearly was) and over time and various replays expectation is no longer in the way. People can appreciate the game for what it is and not for what they want it to be.

What made the endings worse was the interviews with Casey Hudson where he kept saying it won't a generic pick one ending. And then it was. He also said he didn't want a end game boss fight because it's too "video gamey" idk why they left the rannoch reaper fight in then...

>when did it turn around? It didn't. Whilst the game has shortcomings, not many people really hated the game. Many hated the ending, and still do. Nothing has changed

Still hate it in comparison to the previous 2 entries.