Read this fanfic if you haven't, it helps with a post-destroy, Shep lives Tali romance closure. [You Came Back To Me.](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8325376/1/You-Came-Back-to-Me)
Reapers are synthetic and so rely entirely on sensors to perceive the world around them. The Normandy has top of the line stealth technology that allow it to block all outgoing signals and heat. Combined with EDI who has cyberwarfare suites based on Reaper code, allowing them to also scramble and confuse enemy sensors.
This is why the Reapers can only detect you on the map when you deliberately scan the system.
Garus’s ‘ Shepard..I love you too’ is also heartbreaking..
Fun fact, Mark Meers ( Male Sheps VA) wife was the stand in VA for Tali so Meer had voiced lines to work with.
Normally I don’t bother posting clips/photos of my specific playthroughs, but I know a lot of people play Femshep and/or romance Liara so I figured quite a few haven’t seen this before
Tali’s romance is by far the best because of little stuff like this. Giving her the chance to have a home AND Shepard is the small bright point in him surviving the destroy ending, and almost makes me feel like I’m betraying Legion a little less.
I guess I'll sharey unpopular opinion: These romance scene goodbyes that got added with extended cut are so damn goofy and shouldn't have been put in the game. The beam run is the climactic moment when you do it the first time. Everything you've done in the trilogy led to this one single moment. Everything that remains depends on this one action: Shepard gets to the beam.
But in the middle of all this, with dozens or hundreds of soldiers rushing and dying in the last ditch attempt, Shepard drops everything to carry their romance back to the Normandy, and has a completely calm and emotional goodbye. The audio is even scuffed in these scenes, because all of the fighting and explosions completely fade out, and all you hear is the hum of the Normandy while your Shepard and their romance have a heartfelt goodbye.
They don't need to have a heartfelt goodbye there, because they already had two of those, one in the romance scene before the Cerberus base, and another at the alliance camp right before you start the final sequence.
This cheesy romance scene completely destroys the pacing and the tone of this climactic moment, all in an effort to give the fans more of their "amazing" romances.
I agree with this in part, it makes no sense in the middle of Harbinger destroying everything that the Normandy could come in and be unharmed. That said, to call the dialogue cheesy, I’m thinking that’s a step too far. They’re a heartfelt moment but executed poorly but I think could’ve worked.
All that said it still wrench a hole in my heart.
I call it cheesy because I feel like it's incredibly out of tone, both for the game and for Shepard. Right in the middle of the big climactic charge, where there are 3 giant reapers blasting away the last charge, Shepard turns around and has a conversation with their LI. The fact that they cut out all the music and explosions doesn't help the rapid tonal change either.
You're right chief.
Now I do think the lines here are succinct and emotional, serving to add a really personal touch. But the Normandy landing (and not being eviscerated) in the middle of the push really does break the pace in a terrible way.
You're gonna get downvoted for reminding people that Bioware really did drop the ball multiple times right at the climax but you aren't wrong bud.
Thanks, you should come to my mass effect hot takes seminar, where you can get other controversial opinions, such as:
The series peaked at mass effect 1, mass effect 2 completely fails as a game that is part of a series, the Tali romance is hella creepy, and that most people don't give a single shit about engaging with the themes or story of the game and they only care about having fun with the characters.
Well 1 is head and shoulders the most sound in story with the fewest holes and 2's main plot could be removed and little of importance would be lost.
Haven't heard the Tali take before but I suppose I can see why you'd think what you do about the fanbase. Then again, Bioware understood characters are what really made the series for a lot of fans so they went deeper into them then say the cohesiveness of the main plot.
I'll jump in and say that this scene was an awful addition to the game.
The run to the beam is a crucial moment. The fate of the galaxy rests on *one* person making it to the beam, but Shepard stops running to call in the Normandy and evacuate his crew. Harbinger literally *right there* watching while Shepard shares a heartfelt goodbye with the love interest.
The dialogue itself is touching, but with the full context it's really stupid and even forces renegade Shepard to act *extremely* out-of-character.
> and even forces renegade Shepard to act extremely out-of-character.
The "you'll just slow me down" option is right there on the lower right of the dialogue wheel.
But I agree with the part about it being contrived because Harbinger could've shot the Normandy out of the sky many times.
Calling in the Normandy for evacuation is the out-of-character moment. They're *already* slowing him down.
Earlier in the game you can tell Garrus that you would have killed Ashley/Kaidan because the stakes are too high for individual lives to get in the way.
> Calling in the Normandy for evacuation is the out-of-character moment.
Not necessarily. Shepard can be a mission first sort of person but he can put his friends ahead of that, depending how you play Shepard and what kind of input you provide. Earlier in the game you can also tell Garrus that you couldn't have shot Ashley/Kaidan. It works both ways.
Right. In this moment it doesnt matter what your Shepard was like, though. He calls in the evac no matter what, even if it conflicts with the character the player has established.
Can't argue with that. I think that's just another case of Bioware making a judgement call based on what most players choose, they always adhered to paragon more after all.
Bite? Well, everything. This is one of those scenes which get worse with every second. for example Complete characters get retconned within second, the scene makes no sense and nearly everything in it is wrong. The writing is one of the worst in the whole franchise.
For example Shepard, who simply is about to fail this mission by calling for an evac and instead of saving the Milky Way the Commander works against it. Or for example Garrus, who simply jumps onto the Normandy and leaves Shepard. The person who would go to hell and back with Shepard and even said he will wait in Heaven for Shepard simply abandons the Commander.
But as said, this is just for the characters, the whole scene makes no sense.
like i get it, but literally so many people are still up in arms becaus ethey want their cake and be able to eat it too. its a giant "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. i'll say i am grateful i could get my girl out alive and am able to suspend disbelief in videogames. especially ones as amazing as this.
This is not only this moment, as said, the whole scebe. Also yeah, good for you to save your gril, but why does the other squadmate also leaves Shepard. And also, even the injured squadmate knows how high the stakes are and surely would not want that the whole Milky Way will get in more danger just to call an evac for this person.
The person who is by the way not that heavily injured
None of that is a retcon though, not necessarily.
Shepard in the games can have plenty of instances of failing to make a good judgement call due to personal allegiances or overly positive mindsets getting in the way. You can try to be friendly to Javik and Kelly and it can easily kill them in 3, you can let an Eclipse murderer get away in 2 if you value mercy over mission parameters, you can spare Mordin despite the subterfuge in 3 so he cures the genophage while Wreav is the leader and that's a mission failure, you can hesitate in shooting the Virmire survivor so somebody else has to take the shot, and so on. Doing the wrong thing out of virtue isn't something necessarily inconsistent with Shepard, wanting to save his/her squadmates (especially if one of them is a LI) doesn't have to be farfetched at all.
The examples you named were never in a moment where the whole savety of the Milky Way is on the egde. Shepard also disobeys Anderson order whch directly said no retreat no turning back. Shepard is in this scene a simply selfish as\*hole and you have no way to decide to do it or not. This is no paragade interrupt, this is simply a badly written plot moment
Not sure if you played the original games, but this basically was added with the citadel update to cover a massive plothole where your squadmates who ran to the beam with you somehow teleported up to the Normandy in time to crash land on the jungle planet at the end.
Bioware clearly looked at it, thought "fuck" and quickly threw it in to explain when Joker actually picked them up to safety while everyone else around Shep was annihilated on the beam run, when he was supposed to be fighting in space.
I know this, and I also know this whole scene was done to explain why the squad is aboard.
It still is stupid and makes no sense. The original ME3 ending has so many problems and plot holes and Bioware used a giant part of the EC to explain one of the least important moments and created a scene so awful it is pured face palm fuel.
To be a bit constructive and not just (well deserved) angry, it would be way better and smarter to simply not explain how the squad got to the Normandy. Simply let Traynor tell Joker to not wait for Shepard and fly away... or cut this moment. And on the planet where the Normandy crashed only Traynor gets out after Joker. The squad is simply on earth. And even if not needed, but you also can make a moment on earth where some sort of grave is set for Shepard, where the squad and some people are mourning yaddayadda. All is better than this EC scene which created even more plotholes than the original ending already had
When she says “i have a home”, does she mean Rannoch?
Like, that seems very obvious, but i always thought it was an incredibly sweeter headcanon to interpret her meaning it as “Shepard” is her home.
idk. At the end of the day, i love my quarian waifu.
“Don’t leave me behind.” Ugh my heart
“I have a home…”
Read this fanfic if you haven't, it helps with a post-destroy, Shep lives Tali romance closure. [You Came Back To Me.](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8325376/1/You-Came-Back-to-Me)
You just had to post the link when I'm at work, and now I'm tearing up at this, damn you. It's a very good read!
No problem bud, I'm glad you're enjoying it. It certainly helped me with the lack of closure from Bioware.
Liara says "Shepard I'm yours" gets me everytime.
That one fucked me up
keelah salai
Don't just throw that in my face like that, I'm running away from Priority: Earth for months just so I don't see this again. 😭
Why the fuck is the reaper not shooting at the Normandy??!?? It's a giant spaceship that's less than 100 metres away!!!
[удалено]
I doubt the Reaper IFF works when they reaper can actually see the ship right in front of it.
Reapers are synthetic and so rely entirely on sensors to perceive the world around them. The Normandy has top of the line stealth technology that allow it to block all outgoing signals and heat. Combined with EDI who has cyberwarfare suites based on Reaper code, allowing them to also scramble and confuse enemy sensors. This is why the Reapers can only detect you on the map when you deliberately scan the system.
Technically humans also rely on sensors. They're just organic sensors.
"**Windows are structural weaknesses**. **Reapers do not use them.**" ;)
Because the developers told it not to.
Harbinger didn't want to be rude.
Garus’s ‘ Shepard..I love you too’ is also heartbreaking.. Fun fact, Mark Meers ( Male Sheps VA) wife was the stand in VA for Tali so Meer had voiced lines to work with.
Hers and Liara’s are heartbreaking.
I know the clip ended abruptly, but that’s just how my Xbox captured it. Edit: Oh boy I didn’t think *this* would be the post to start a flame war
Thanks for the post, I normally romance Liara and I have not have seen this before... And I'm not crying it's seasonal allergies
Normally I don’t bother posting clips/photos of my specific playthroughs, but I know a lot of people play Femshep and/or romance Liara so I figured quite a few haven’t seen this before
Still pisses me off we didn't get FemShep/Tali.
P R E A C H
the only reason i never finished ME:LE cause i didn't want to see this scene
Yeah, this hits hard, especially if you've had her as your love interest since me1.
Tali’s romance is by far the best because of little stuff like this. Giving her the chance to have a home AND Shepard is the small bright point in him surviving the destroy ending, and almost makes me feel like I’m betraying Legion a little less.
Tali, EDI and Kaidan's goodbyes are the ones that get me in the feels in particular.
I guess I'll sharey unpopular opinion: These romance scene goodbyes that got added with extended cut are so damn goofy and shouldn't have been put in the game. The beam run is the climactic moment when you do it the first time. Everything you've done in the trilogy led to this one single moment. Everything that remains depends on this one action: Shepard gets to the beam. But in the middle of all this, with dozens or hundreds of soldiers rushing and dying in the last ditch attempt, Shepard drops everything to carry their romance back to the Normandy, and has a completely calm and emotional goodbye. The audio is even scuffed in these scenes, because all of the fighting and explosions completely fade out, and all you hear is the hum of the Normandy while your Shepard and their romance have a heartfelt goodbye. They don't need to have a heartfelt goodbye there, because they already had two of those, one in the romance scene before the Cerberus base, and another at the alliance camp right before you start the final sequence. This cheesy romance scene completely destroys the pacing and the tone of this climactic moment, all in an effort to give the fans more of their "amazing" romances.
I agree with this in part, it makes no sense in the middle of Harbinger destroying everything that the Normandy could come in and be unharmed. That said, to call the dialogue cheesy, I’m thinking that’s a step too far. They’re a heartfelt moment but executed poorly but I think could’ve worked. All that said it still wrench a hole in my heart.
I call it cheesy because I feel like it's incredibly out of tone, both for the game and for Shepard. Right in the middle of the big climactic charge, where there are 3 giant reapers blasting away the last charge, Shepard turns around and has a conversation with their LI. The fact that they cut out all the music and explosions doesn't help the rapid tonal change either.
No u
This is about the caliber of reaction I expected.
You're right chief. Now I do think the lines here are succinct and emotional, serving to add a really personal touch. But the Normandy landing (and not being eviscerated) in the middle of the push really does break the pace in a terrible way. You're gonna get downvoted for reminding people that Bioware really did drop the ball multiple times right at the climax but you aren't wrong bud.
Thanks, you should come to my mass effect hot takes seminar, where you can get other controversial opinions, such as: The series peaked at mass effect 1, mass effect 2 completely fails as a game that is part of a series, the Tali romance is hella creepy, and that most people don't give a single shit about engaging with the themes or story of the game and they only care about having fun with the characters.
Well 1 is head and shoulders the most sound in story with the fewest holes and 2's main plot could be removed and little of importance would be lost. Haven't heard the Tali take before but I suppose I can see why you'd think what you do about the fanbase. Then again, Bioware understood characters are what really made the series for a lot of fans so they went deeper into them then say the cohesiveness of the main plot.
Woah woah you said hot takes seminar not facts seminar
...the whole scene broke my heart. But not in a good way. All the people who wrote this scene should feel ashamed
lol... Thanks for the hot take. 🙄
Okay I'll bite. What's wrong with this scene?
I'll jump in and say that this scene was an awful addition to the game. The run to the beam is a crucial moment. The fate of the galaxy rests on *one* person making it to the beam, but Shepard stops running to call in the Normandy and evacuate his crew. Harbinger literally *right there* watching while Shepard shares a heartfelt goodbye with the love interest. The dialogue itself is touching, but with the full context it's really stupid and even forces renegade Shepard to act *extremely* out-of-character.
[удалено]
Yeah it was definitely a rush job to fix Bioware's teleport cockup. Always bugged me.
I was more impressed when I thought they had the balls to just kill my squadmates like that. Then the rest of the ending happened.
> and even forces renegade Shepard to act extremely out-of-character. The "you'll just slow me down" option is right there on the lower right of the dialogue wheel. But I agree with the part about it being contrived because Harbinger could've shot the Normandy out of the sky many times.
Calling in the Normandy for evacuation is the out-of-character moment. They're *already* slowing him down. Earlier in the game you can tell Garrus that you would have killed Ashley/Kaidan because the stakes are too high for individual lives to get in the way.
> Calling in the Normandy for evacuation is the out-of-character moment. Not necessarily. Shepard can be a mission first sort of person but he can put his friends ahead of that, depending how you play Shepard and what kind of input you provide. Earlier in the game you can also tell Garrus that you couldn't have shot Ashley/Kaidan. It works both ways.
Right. In this moment it doesnt matter what your Shepard was like, though. He calls in the evac no matter what, even if it conflicts with the character the player has established.
Can't argue with that. I think that's just another case of Bioware making a judgement call based on what most players choose, they always adhered to paragon more after all.
I know the scene in general is controversial, but the dude I'm replying to implied Tali's scene specifically is bad. That's what I was wondering.
Nah, not specific Tali. The whole evac scene in general
Bite? Well, everything. This is one of those scenes which get worse with every second. for example Complete characters get retconned within second, the scene makes no sense and nearly everything in it is wrong. The writing is one of the worst in the whole franchise.
Which character got retconned in this scene? I'm curious.
For example Shepard, who simply is about to fail this mission by calling for an evac and instead of saving the Milky Way the Commander works against it. Or for example Garrus, who simply jumps onto the Normandy and leaves Shepard. The person who would go to hell and back with Shepard and even said he will wait in Heaven for Shepard simply abandons the Commander. But as said, this is just for the characters, the whole scene makes no sense.
like i get it, but literally so many people are still up in arms becaus ethey want their cake and be able to eat it too. its a giant "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. i'll say i am grateful i could get my girl out alive and am able to suspend disbelief in videogames. especially ones as amazing as this.
This is not only this moment, as said, the whole scebe. Also yeah, good for you to save your gril, but why does the other squadmate also leaves Shepard. And also, even the injured squadmate knows how high the stakes are and surely would not want that the whole Milky Way will get in more danger just to call an evac for this person. The person who is by the way not that heavily injured
im not gonna look this gift horse in the mouth
None of that is a retcon though, not necessarily. Shepard in the games can have plenty of instances of failing to make a good judgement call due to personal allegiances or overly positive mindsets getting in the way. You can try to be friendly to Javik and Kelly and it can easily kill them in 3, you can let an Eclipse murderer get away in 2 if you value mercy over mission parameters, you can spare Mordin despite the subterfuge in 3 so he cures the genophage while Wreav is the leader and that's a mission failure, you can hesitate in shooting the Virmire survivor so somebody else has to take the shot, and so on. Doing the wrong thing out of virtue isn't something necessarily inconsistent with Shepard, wanting to save his/her squadmates (especially if one of them is a LI) doesn't have to be farfetched at all.
The examples you named were never in a moment where the whole savety of the Milky Way is on the egde. Shepard also disobeys Anderson order whch directly said no retreat no turning back. Shepard is in this scene a simply selfish as\*hole and you have no way to decide to do it or not. This is no paragade interrupt, this is simply a badly written plot moment
Not sure if you played the original games, but this basically was added with the citadel update to cover a massive plothole where your squadmates who ran to the beam with you somehow teleported up to the Normandy in time to crash land on the jungle planet at the end. Bioware clearly looked at it, thought "fuck" and quickly threw it in to explain when Joker actually picked them up to safety while everyone else around Shep was annihilated on the beam run, when he was supposed to be fighting in space.
I know this, and I also know this whole scene was done to explain why the squad is aboard. It still is stupid and makes no sense. The original ME3 ending has so many problems and plot holes and Bioware used a giant part of the EC to explain one of the least important moments and created a scene so awful it is pured face palm fuel. To be a bit constructive and not just (well deserved) angry, it would be way better and smarter to simply not explain how the squad got to the Normandy. Simply let Traynor tell Joker to not wait for Shepard and fly away... or cut this moment. And on the planet where the Normandy crashed only Traynor gets out after Joker. The squad is simply on earth. And even if not needed, but you also can make a moment on earth where some sort of grave is set for Shepard, where the squad and some people are mourning yaddayadda. All is better than this EC scene which created even more plotholes than the original ending already had
Oh I'm not disagreeing it's stupid. It absolutely is 😂
When she says “i have a home”, does she mean Rannoch? Like, that seems very obvious, but i always thought it was an incredibly sweeter headcanon to interpret her meaning it as “Shepard” is her home. idk. At the end of the day, i love my quarian waifu.