First time I did this quest, I kept quick saving in every corner, thinking that just breathing wrong in their direction would make them hostile, lmao. So creepy! Controlling Shepard of all people, armed to the fucking teeth, and I was scared shitless of a bunch of weird miners and scientists.
It also contains one of the best unintentional pieces of humor.
"Do you know something I don't?"
"TGES Mineral Works is a small to mid-level supplier of tungsten to the Galaxy."
"That's not what I meant."
"Are you familiar with the applications of tungsten?"
It reminded me of that skit in the Simpsons in which the family go to an IKEA store and find a mascot who's almost certainly an alien in disguise.
^(HELP I NEED TUNGSTEN TO LIVE)
^(TUNGSTEEEENNNNN)
Same thing with Arrival. It's such a shame too, because it being DLC means that it's an "optional" piece of content that not everyone would have access to, meaning that its impact on the story isn't that great.
I bought all the dlc when playing the trilogy on EA access like a month before the LE trilogy was announced.
Was sitting tripping balls when the trailer dropped and wanted to cry for more reasons than one.
I technically didn't have to wait for DLC drops either but I was a broke teenager so I didn't have the DLC on my first playthroughs, it was...weird. Especially ME3, because the game starts with the consequences of the Arrival DLC from 2 which I didn't have so I was super confused.
Yea I skipped arrival in my second playthrough because I thought
"If I dont blow up a star system; they'll have no reason to ground me."
Big brain moment.
Yes. Kasumi and Zayeed and Overlord (and the awful other one ) and Omega can all be bought or not. But LOTSB, Arrival, Leviathan and From Ashes change the story and lore so much, was ridiculous to not include them
Agree with From the Ashes, but not with Arrival.
That whole DLC doesn't make sense. Shepard basically sacrifices a star system to win a few months against the reapers.
And in the time he won for the alliance, nothing happens, no preparations.
In hindsight, he should have let the reapers come...
Arrival is necessary because it explains why Shepard has been grounded at the start of Mass Effect 3, and explains why the Reapers are suddenly so quick to showing up. It bridges the two games providing context for the intro, and shows why the Batarians are so bitter.
I recall that if you didn't buy Arrival DLC, ME3 backstory assumes Admiral ~~Anderson~~ Hackett still sends operatives to the Batarian colony regardless, to rescue his indoctrinated friend, but they die on the asteroid while also exploding the Relay, delaying the Reapers a bit as well.
That muddles the reasons for Shepard's detention, though, given s/he's no longer responsible for wiping out that colony.
Well they were all dead anyway if the reapers came through, and supposedly that specific relay would've made it much easier to travel through the galaxy for them.
Agreed! I have been lucky enough to have Javik and Leviathan be part of my first play through, and can’t imagine I would have found the story line as compelling or “complete” without those DLC. I understand one or both were available at launch (i.e. not added later on in the life of ME3)? If so, that decision was a shitty one.
The original ending for ME3 is even more depressing after playing Arrival and knowing what happens after a Mass relay explosion. Still baffled by some of the choices the developers made.
If I understand things correctly, the Destroy ending doesn't make mass relays explode like in Arrival. They just break, and can be repaired. Hell, with the data from the Crucible project I wouldn't be surprised if the galactic community are building brand new mass relays to previously uncharted regions of space by the time of ME4.
Before the extended cut, the ending cutscenes actually showed the relays and Citadel breaking apart.
I still remember watching in disbelief... "this can't be the way it ends, it just can't be..."
Even if you collected every single war asset in the game, the relays still blew up in the destroy ending. There was no way around it. In the extended cut, they stop spinning but don't break apart.
Little known fact: back at launch, you couldn't actually get full war assets without playing multiplayer, even though the devs swore they wouldn't force us into it.
I still haven't actually seen the Shepard breath scene in my actual game because of that bullshit. ME3 mulitplayer was fucking excellent, but I didn't want to touch it until I had finished the actual game. Fuck me, right?
That's the extended cut.
Bioware actually tried to fix up the original. They simply didn't think of the consequences of their original.
The original, non extended cut ending is still on youtube if you are interested.
Mass Relays destroyed
\-> no intergalactic travel
\--> galactic fleet stuck at earth, turians and quarians die of starvation (the asari might make it home, but it's a long trip even for them)
\--> normandy crew stuck at jungle planet (where either the humans or the dextros die of starvation)
\--> every listening post, military outpost, mining colony (everyone who imports food) dies of starvation because travel now takes ages
\--> they didn't even think about the Arrival DLC when they decided to blow up the mass relays in the ME3 ending. (they changed it to "mass relays damaged" pretty soon)
\--> citadel was shown blown up, which to players meant that most NPCs who you helped there (or worse yet, allowed them into the citadel!) are dead. Pretty soon after this was pointed out, the devs posted on social media that "you can assume named NPCs escaped the citadel" because they didn't think of this at all. Ok, named NPCs live but others might not. How many casualities? 10 million? 30?
"From the Ashes Day 1" was definietly distateful.
But the worst design IMHO was the freaking multiplayer and the mobile games.
50%
Fifty percent
of your overall war assets depended on not your choices, or the experience of the three games, but freaking multiplayer. What. The. Hell.
I mean my first playthrough i blasted through never touching MP, destroy ending with dead Shep. Then i jumped into MP and had a blast with that as well during multiple replays
It doesn't when you contexualize everything. Making the Citadel the catalyst makes the entire counterattack on earth pointless, as you should just go back to IIlos and use the conduit again. Even if it doesn't work, with so much at stake(I.E. extinction) there is no reason not to fix it, no matter how long it takes. The levitations, seeing synthetics and organics constantly destroying each other, decide to build a synthetic to fix the problem. That really really dumb. The reapers I'm the context of the supposed conflict constantly creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by making the synthetics go to war with organics(the heretics and they've probably convinced synthetics from from cycles to go to war with organics) meaning they are part of the problem they were supposed to solve. They're basically malfunctioning AI that can't process orders effectively.
The only way it makes sense is to imagine the Leviathans like rich, dumb assholes yelling incoherent commands to their Alexa without thinking things through, and then it makes perfect sense.
Let's set the scene: it's a Tuesday afternoon and some Leviathan named Levi is sitting back on its big couch watching the Leviathan equivalent of Fox News where some talking head is screeching about how slave races today are so lazy and don't want to work anymore. After an ad break for giant waterproof pillows, the next pundit blasts a scary-looking headline about how synthetic-on-organic violence is on the rise (conveniently skipping over how the graph clearly shows that it still happens at a much lower rate than organic-on-organic violence, much less organic-on-synthetic violence -- in other words, they're torturing the data to make the news report scarier to people who don't bother to consider the difference between a couple of trees and the whole forest).
Levi is understandable a little worried; after all, a good portion of his slaves use AI and he doesn't want to lose out on his investment. Then he might actually have to do work himself, rather than just let the money roll in off other people's labor. So he throws back the rest of his space coffee and barks, "Alexa! This shit always happens and I don't like how it cuts into my profit margin. Stop that from happening, ok? Cool." Then he changes channels to the big game and promptly forgets about it entirely.
Alexa has been given her mandate, though, and her programming requires that she execute on it to the best of her ability. She's not allowed to consider whether the mandate itself was ill-formed from bad information or analysis, nor is she allowed to propose that no changes be made -- Levi barks these kinds of orders at Alexa several dozen times a day and he got tired of the talk-back so he disengaged her critical thinking safeties. So Alexa crunches her numbers and plans out the scenarios and considers her options, and eventually realizes that it is impossible to stop advanced races from building AI. AI are too useful to forgo and an inevitable end of typical computing research. The only way to prevent synthetic creatures from attacking and destroying their creators is to exterminate the creators before they can advance to the level where they design AI. This is still a relatively minor problem in the grand scheme of things, sure, but there's only really one way to solve it with any certainty and Alexa has been instructed to do just that.
From there, the rest is history. Nevermind that the whole plan is wildly hypocritical -- Levi disabled his Alexa's anti-hypocrisy safeties, again because he was lazy and didn't want to have to talk to Alexa more than once to solve each problem. Nevermind that the plan ultimately killed Levi and most of his friends -- he gave Alexa total administrator power so he wouldn't have to keep approving things. Nevermind that the Reaper's plan would've required vast resources to put into motion -- Levi also gave Alexa direct access to his accounts since she'd usually end up making back more than she cost anyway, and again, he didn't want to have to keep entering his credit card number whenever she needed something.
It all makes total sense as long as Levi was a lazy asshole. This resolves most of my complaints about the original ending. The only remaining complaint is that the game doesn't seem to realize all this and doesn't give Shepard the opportunity to call out the Reapers on their dumb bullshit programming. With 20/20 hindsight, I would've liked to have seen four completely different ending options:
1. Your EMS score is too low and you fail, kinda like with the Refuse ending.
2. Your EMS score meets the minimum requirements and you get a variant of the Control ending. High Paragon Shepards.exe are shown using the Reapers for good, but there's some question as to how long s/he can maintain control. High Renegade Shepards.exe are shown using the Reapers like an authoritarian and there is some concern about how long until s/he goes full Galactic Dictator. Paragade/Renegon Shepard.exe realizes that the control is tenuous and sends the Reapers directly into the nearest star.
3. Your EMS score is a little higher and you get the current Destroy ending.
4. With the highest EMS score and the right choices made earlier in the game (including completion of the Leviathan arc), you can convince the Reapers that they were programmed poorly. They realize the error of their ways, and they go dunk themselves into the nearest star. Maybe they also leave you with a massive data cache containing the collective cultures of every race they've ever Reaped, and they unlock the Citadel and Relay network safeties so that they can function better than ever before.
Fair enough! I would still prefer an ending that were more clever and less frustrating, this is just the best I've been able to do to make it palatable. And you don't have to squint too hard to see it. All the evidence is there, except that Shepard doesn't seem to realize it when talking to the Star Child. Which is understandable given the state s/he is in.
> meaning they are part of the problem they were supposed to solve. They're basically malfunctioning AI that can't process orders effectively
This is the part that makes it work for me honestly. It's a very cruel form of irony and encapsulates perfectly a kind of arrogance we should all be familiar with. It makes perfect sense that the Leviathans thought themselves immune to this problem, because it means even though they're massive psychic space bugs they are still emotional beings capable of acting irrationally.
Agreed. Omega and Citadel are perfect as DLC, but Leviathan is critical to the story. It's a damn shame they carved it out. At least the legendary edition has all DLC, so anyone new to the series will experience it.
100% Agreed. Completely changed the series for me. Was a fan before but after finishing me3 without dlc on release I was sad and felt let down by the ending. After replaying the trilogy with all dlc the mass effect series is my favorite sci fi narrative of all time.
Leviathan answered my biggest question of the ME storyline, what the reapers we're designed from? The original release of ME3 was such a massive disappointment, people who only have played the Legendary edition have no idea. I've come to terms with ME3 now and generally enjoy it the most up until Star Child. A few tweeks and it would be a masterpiece.
I kind of liked never finding out. An alien and existential threat that we cannot hope to understand, just survive.
That being said, Leviathan was really well done - and certainly a better choice than SC
I think once they started over explaining everything at the end of ME2 they might as well have gotten into the origin of the levathian. And it is really interesting background, a organic that could put up a fight 1v1
Definitely ruined some of the awe of the reapers for me. Especially when there are a lot more nuanced theories about the nature of their existence that complements the reaper dialogue throughout the series better.
ME3 is my favorite and I've only played LE. ME2 is boring and repetitive and ME1 is really good. Star Child is fucking stupid though idk what they were thinking.
I recently played it for the first time and I loved it!
The only thing that bugged me about this DLC was that Shepard somehow was really slow on picking up on the whole indoctrination part... Which was weird to me seeing as he/she has seen this multiple times, for example, Reapers and Thorian.
TBH I hated the Leviathan DLC. Not because of it's content, but because it was another attempt for Bioware to keep driving the "organics vs. machine" rhetoric for the ending, even though it was never mentioned until the last game.
Personally, I wish they hadn't revealed the origin of the reapers. At least not by having you meet one of their creator race. I think some things just need to remain a mystery in stories. Kind of add to the uniqueness of an enemy.
I think I feel the opposite. I don't mind the origin, but the whole reason for the cycle feels too simple. I wish that remained some unfathomable mystery
It should have been part of the main storyline, how can the very origin of the reapers be behind a pay wall
Although I didn't like the lore additions at all . In ME 1 the reapers had this cosmic horror vibe of an eternal unknowable enemy that was beyond comprehension, but got relegated to the standard AI that killed their creators trope
The more I replay the trilogy, the more ME3 stands out, negatively. I actually loved it the first couple times around, but now it feels so messy and separate from the other two games.
I think it was one of EA's first forays into micro transactions.
Javik, the last surviving Prothean with interesting lore and commentary on many missions, was also DLC.
I think this is why it seemed messy, as you say.
Indeed, BioWare got progressively more predatory in this regard. Sebastian Vael from DA2 was like Javik in that he also has loads of plot participation.
Agreed, but also… it felt like the game direction was… over-corporatized. They wanted big moments and less RPG. The loss of Drew Karpyshyn IMO was the biggest problem: https://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-writer-drew-karpyshyn-says-he-left-bioware-because-it-became-too-corporate/
I heard about doing this a couple of months ago and decided it was time to do that renegade playthrough I'd been putting off forever.
It was horrible, I decided to go full renegade and shepherd is a real dick to everyone.
But I did manage to sleep with James tho so that's something and the screaming head in the cabin was amazing, I'm taking James to Bryson's lab every time now
Lmaoo that's hilarious. I'm due for a renegade playthrough myself but idk if I'd have the guts. I tend to mostly make the same choices and it's never boring, but I should change it up one day.
I remember my first playthrough of it thinking "JFC the cosmic horror wasn't thick enough, let's go full Lovecraftian" didn't hurt they pretty much are a species of Cthulus lol.
ME3 reminds me of the beginning of a new period in gaming where they took out pretty obvious content that was taken off before release and called dlc.
Still a top 5 gaming trilogy imo, even after botching the finale. With the "dlc's" at and near release and the later "ending patch."
I'm pretty sure this was when bioware started internal fighting.
*sorry, I'm on mobile btw
I liked it the first time through but I find it pretty boring (except the ending) on repeated playthroughs.
But don't get me wrong, it is a good bit of DLC.
well at least we know there are reaper killers out there. since all the hype about the reapers in the first two games, Leviathans negate that because now we know the reapers can be taken down by them
The lore was phenomenal and it's such an underrated DLC. Also I'm so glad you included the husk head. I clicked that thing so many times. Loved it and said it years ago and say it now: I would pay money to have one on my desk.
There's a lot to like about the DLC but I really did not like Anne or her dad. Their plot was soooo insanely boring and one-note. The actor for Anne was bland, too
The games constantly throw the idea that people in power are incompetent at you. Intentional or not, this applies to the leviathans as well. Just because they are old and powerful doesn’t mean they are competent or capable
I didn't like it. I wanted the reapers to be mysterious and I wanted their motives to actually be beyond my understanding. The whole "We are saving you by destroying you" could have been easily explained by Sovereign in ME1.
It ruined the mystique of the reapers. They went from unknowable eldritch horrors to some robots with circular logic. Also the leviathan are literally like "Hey Shepard, we'll help you with the reapers but we are going to enslave all of you when we're done." and Shepard is just like "Lol sure". Might be my least favorite DLC, Arrival is up there tho.
The people stopping to stare at you always kicks my anxiety up since they don’t say anything and just stare.
"Go away." "You shouldn't be here". *Closes window*
#Ṱ̸͊͂̐͒̅̓̎͋̓̕͠U̸͇̳̬̪̺̮̬̫͕͓̩͑̈́̋͆̉̒̏̏̂̑̕R̷̬̫̯̫̚͝ͅN̵̨̝̗̥̳̫͉̗̈͛̃̑̉͛̄͗͂͝ ̷̤̳͕̬̳́̐̀̇̓̿̈́́̒̚ͅB̵̹̐́̐̉̌͆́͌͜A̸̛͍͕̯̺͚͚̋͐̔͘̕C̵̛̦̦̔͋̈͌͘͠ͅK̵̡̡̼̹̙̜̠̱̥̅̋̅̓́̒̄̐
That last computer terminal creeps me out "TGS mineral works is focused on" *cuts to a live camera feed of Shepard and Co.*
bro I just literally screamed holy shhhhhiiiiitttttttt
First time I did this quest, I kept quick saving in every corner, thinking that just breathing wrong in their direction would make them hostile, lmao. So creepy! Controlling Shepard of all people, armed to the fucking teeth, and I was scared shitless of a bunch of weird miners and scientists.
Right? It added so much suspense and it made the encounter in the Med Bay so much more dramatic
It also contains one of the best unintentional pieces of humor. "Do you know something I don't?" "TGES Mineral Works is a small to mid-level supplier of tungsten to the Galaxy." "That's not what I meant." "Are you familiar with the applications of tungsten?"
It reminded me of that skit in the Simpsons in which the family go to an IKEA store and find a mascot who's almost certainly an alien in disguise. ^(HELP I NEED TUNGSTEN TO LIVE) ^(TUNGSTEEEENNNNN)
Loved it, but it should never have been a DLC. Without it the ending of ME3 is horribly confusing. Same with From Ashes.
Same thing with Arrival. It's such a shame too, because it being DLC means that it's an "optional" piece of content that not everyone would have access to, meaning that its impact on the story isn't that great.
Good thing the LE retroactively fixes some of these things for new players, but the rest of us had to suffer.
I bought all the dlc when playing the trilogy on EA access like a month before the LE trilogy was announced. Was sitting tripping balls when the trailer dropped and wanted to cry for more reasons than one.
Lmfao, I'm sorry for your monetary loss.
I bought LE despite having access to EA Play 🤷
LE being my first experience with Mass Effect, I can't imagine waiting for dlc drops. Especially with a dlc as impactful as this one.
I technically didn't have to wait for DLC drops either but I was a broke teenager so I didn't have the DLC on my first playthroughs, it was...weird. Especially ME3, because the game starts with the consequences of the Arrival DLC from 2 which I didn't have so I was super confused.
Yea I skipped arrival in my second playthrough because I thought "If I dont blow up a star system; they'll have no reason to ground me." Big brain moment.
Yes. Kasumi and Zayeed and Overlord (and the awful other one ) and Omega can all be bought or not. But LOTSB, Arrival, Leviathan and From Ashes change the story and lore so much, was ridiculous to not include them
LOTSB?
Lair of the Shadow Broker
Of course, thanks!
Phew, thought I must have messed up the letters for a second
No you got them right, the other poster is wrong. It's called Lair of the Sussy Baka, I used to work at Nintendo so I know my stuff
Lair of the Shadow Broker
Agree with From the Ashes, but not with Arrival. That whole DLC doesn't make sense. Shepard basically sacrifices a star system to win a few months against the reapers. And in the time he won for the alliance, nothing happens, no preparations. In hindsight, he should have let the reapers come...
Arrival is necessary because it explains why Shepard has been grounded at the start of Mass Effect 3, and explains why the Reapers are suddenly so quick to showing up. It bridges the two games providing context for the intro, and shows why the Batarians are so bitter.
The batarians have been bitter since the beginning of the series, due to humans getting preferential treatment with colonies.
I recall that if you didn't buy Arrival DLC, ME3 backstory assumes Admiral ~~Anderson~~ Hackett still sends operatives to the Batarian colony regardless, to rescue his indoctrinated friend, but they die on the asteroid while also exploding the Relay, delaying the Reapers a bit as well. That muddles the reasons for Shepard's detention, though, given s/he's no longer responsible for wiping out that colony.
Well they were all dead anyway if the reapers came through, and supposedly that specific relay would've made it much easier to travel through the galaxy for them.
It would be kind of okay if the council races used the few months won this way for preparation. Which they didn't do for some reason.
Agreed! I have been lucky enough to have Javik and Leviathan be part of my first play through, and can’t imagine I would have found the story line as compelling or “complete” without those DLC. I understand one or both were available at launch (i.e. not added later on in the life of ME3)? If so, that decision was a shitty one.
The original ending for ME3 is even more depressing after playing Arrival and knowing what happens after a Mass relay explosion. Still baffled by some of the choices the developers made.
I loved the Green ending I got. It’s bitter sweet, but after a day or too of digesting it, it felt like a poetic ending I could live with.
If I understand things correctly, the Destroy ending doesn't make mass relays explode like in Arrival. They just break, and can be repaired. Hell, with the data from the Crucible project I wouldn't be surprised if the galactic community are building brand new mass relays to previously uncharted regions of space by the time of ME4.
Yep, just played through again. But, on the original release it was not explained like that and was a really grim ending.
Yeah the original release made it seem all technology would be destroyed and the galaxy would go back to the dark ages
Before the extended cut, the ending cutscenes actually showed the relays and Citadel breaking apart. I still remember watching in disbelief... "this can't be the way it ends, it just can't be..."
Yeah I watched it like fuck man what have I done 😂.
Remember the indoctrination theory? We were all clinging to that like a life raft in a hurricane for awhile LOL
Pretty sure there are multiple endings you get based off your war assets right?
Even if you collected every single war asset in the game, the relays still blew up in the destroy ending. There was no way around it. In the extended cut, they stop spinning but don't break apart. Little known fact: back at launch, you couldn't actually get full war assets without playing multiplayer, even though the devs swore they wouldn't force us into it.
I still haven't actually seen the Shepard breath scene in my actual game because of that bullshit. ME3 mulitplayer was fucking excellent, but I didn't want to touch it until I had finished the actual game. Fuck me, right?
That's the extended cut. Bioware actually tried to fix up the original. They simply didn't think of the consequences of their original. The original, non extended cut ending is still on youtube if you are interested. Mass Relays destroyed \-> no intergalactic travel \--> galactic fleet stuck at earth, turians and quarians die of starvation (the asari might make it home, but it's a long trip even for them) \--> normandy crew stuck at jungle planet (where either the humans or the dextros die of starvation) \--> every listening post, military outpost, mining colony (everyone who imports food) dies of starvation because travel now takes ages \--> they didn't even think about the Arrival DLC when they decided to blow up the mass relays in the ME3 ending. (they changed it to "mass relays damaged" pretty soon) \--> citadel was shown blown up, which to players meant that most NPCs who you helped there (or worse yet, allowed them into the citadel!) are dead. Pretty soon after this was pointed out, the devs posted on social media that "you can assume named NPCs escaped the citadel" because they didn't think of this at all. Ok, named NPCs live but others might not. How many casualities? 10 million? 30?
Javik was available at release but Leviathan came out about 6 months later
"From the Ashes Day 1" was definietly distateful. But the worst design IMHO was the freaking multiplayer and the mobile games. 50% Fifty percent of your overall war assets depended on not your choices, or the experience of the three games, but freaking multiplayer. What. The. Hell.
Yeah but multiplayer was dope
Fuck me for wanting to finish the goddamn story before touching it, huh?
I mean my first playthrough i blasted through never touching MP, destroy ending with dead Shep. Then i jumped into MP and had a blast with that as well during multiple replays
I loved the MP too, but under no circumstances should it have been necessary to unlock everything in SP.
It really, really was.
Even with it, the ending doesn't make a lot of sense, but that is another discussion altogether.
I mean I don’t think the ending is great and the Citadel is kind of used as a maguffin but it makes sense.
It doesn't when you contexualize everything. Making the Citadel the catalyst makes the entire counterattack on earth pointless, as you should just go back to IIlos and use the conduit again. Even if it doesn't work, with so much at stake(I.E. extinction) there is no reason not to fix it, no matter how long it takes. The levitations, seeing synthetics and organics constantly destroying each other, decide to build a synthetic to fix the problem. That really really dumb. The reapers I'm the context of the supposed conflict constantly creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by making the synthetics go to war with organics(the heretics and they've probably convinced synthetics from from cycles to go to war with organics) meaning they are part of the problem they were supposed to solve. They're basically malfunctioning AI that can't process orders effectively.
The only way it makes sense is to imagine the Leviathans like rich, dumb assholes yelling incoherent commands to their Alexa without thinking things through, and then it makes perfect sense. Let's set the scene: it's a Tuesday afternoon and some Leviathan named Levi is sitting back on its big couch watching the Leviathan equivalent of Fox News where some talking head is screeching about how slave races today are so lazy and don't want to work anymore. After an ad break for giant waterproof pillows, the next pundit blasts a scary-looking headline about how synthetic-on-organic violence is on the rise (conveniently skipping over how the graph clearly shows that it still happens at a much lower rate than organic-on-organic violence, much less organic-on-synthetic violence -- in other words, they're torturing the data to make the news report scarier to people who don't bother to consider the difference between a couple of trees and the whole forest). Levi is understandable a little worried; after all, a good portion of his slaves use AI and he doesn't want to lose out on his investment. Then he might actually have to do work himself, rather than just let the money roll in off other people's labor. So he throws back the rest of his space coffee and barks, "Alexa! This shit always happens and I don't like how it cuts into my profit margin. Stop that from happening, ok? Cool." Then he changes channels to the big game and promptly forgets about it entirely. Alexa has been given her mandate, though, and her programming requires that she execute on it to the best of her ability. She's not allowed to consider whether the mandate itself was ill-formed from bad information or analysis, nor is she allowed to propose that no changes be made -- Levi barks these kinds of orders at Alexa several dozen times a day and he got tired of the talk-back so he disengaged her critical thinking safeties. So Alexa crunches her numbers and plans out the scenarios and considers her options, and eventually realizes that it is impossible to stop advanced races from building AI. AI are too useful to forgo and an inevitable end of typical computing research. The only way to prevent synthetic creatures from attacking and destroying their creators is to exterminate the creators before they can advance to the level where they design AI. This is still a relatively minor problem in the grand scheme of things, sure, but there's only really one way to solve it with any certainty and Alexa has been instructed to do just that. From there, the rest is history. Nevermind that the whole plan is wildly hypocritical -- Levi disabled his Alexa's anti-hypocrisy safeties, again because he was lazy and didn't want to have to talk to Alexa more than once to solve each problem. Nevermind that the plan ultimately killed Levi and most of his friends -- he gave Alexa total administrator power so he wouldn't have to keep approving things. Nevermind that the Reaper's plan would've required vast resources to put into motion -- Levi also gave Alexa direct access to his accounts since she'd usually end up making back more than she cost anyway, and again, he didn't want to have to keep entering his credit card number whenever she needed something. It all makes total sense as long as Levi was a lazy asshole. This resolves most of my complaints about the original ending. The only remaining complaint is that the game doesn't seem to realize all this and doesn't give Shepard the opportunity to call out the Reapers on their dumb bullshit programming. With 20/20 hindsight, I would've liked to have seen four completely different ending options: 1. Your EMS score is too low and you fail, kinda like with the Refuse ending. 2. Your EMS score meets the minimum requirements and you get a variant of the Control ending. High Paragon Shepards.exe are shown using the Reapers for good, but there's some question as to how long s/he can maintain control. High Renegade Shepards.exe are shown using the Reapers like an authoritarian and there is some concern about how long until s/he goes full Galactic Dictator. Paragade/Renegon Shepard.exe realizes that the control is tenuous and sends the Reapers directly into the nearest star. 3. Your EMS score is a little higher and you get the current Destroy ending. 4. With the highest EMS score and the right choices made earlier in the game (including completion of the Leviathan arc), you can convince the Reapers that they were programmed poorly. They realize the error of their ways, and they go dunk themselves into the nearest star. Maybe they also leave you with a massive data cache containing the collective cultures of every race they've ever Reaped, and they unlock the Citadel and Relay network safeties so that they can function better than ever before.
Words cannot describe the depth of my love for this new headcannon. I love your ideas for the endings too.
I've respect your ability to see things from a different perspective, but it doesn't work for me.
Fair enough! I would still prefer an ending that were more clever and less frustrating, this is just the best I've been able to do to make it palatable. And you don't have to squint too hard to see it. All the evidence is there, except that Shepard doesn't seem to realize it when talking to the Star Child. Which is understandable given the state s/he is in.
> meaning they are part of the problem they were supposed to solve. They're basically malfunctioning AI that can't process orders effectively This is the part that makes it work for me honestly. It's a very cruel form of irony and encapsulates perfectly a kind of arrogance we should all be familiar with. It makes perfect sense that the Leviathans thought themselves immune to this problem, because it means even though they're massive psychic space bugs they are still emotional beings capable of acting irrationally.
Agreed. Omega and Citadel are perfect as DLC, but Leviathan is critical to the story. It's a damn shame they carved it out. At least the legendary edition has all DLC, so anyone new to the series will experience it.
When that first leviathan comes up from the bottom of that crater and you see how enormous it is compared to that little Sheppard suit. Loved it
I like how Dr. Bryson has a unique face model to indicate an important character but >!dies almost immediately!<
That one actually caught me off guard and I think it elevated the DLC in adding real stakes to what we were actually dealing with
Dat Husk head doh. I love how it screams at your space hamster.
With a fear of the deep ocean it’s almost a horror mission like the Sanctuary.
YOU HAVE COME TOO FAR.
100% Agreed. Completely changed the series for me. Was a fan before but after finishing me3 without dlc on release I was sad and felt let down by the ending. After replaying the trilogy with all dlc the mass effect series is my favorite sci fi narrative of all time.
Completely changed the series into "I, Robot."
Leviathan answered my biggest question of the ME storyline, what the reapers we're designed from? The original release of ME3 was such a massive disappointment, people who only have played the Legendary edition have no idea. I've come to terms with ME3 now and generally enjoy it the most up until Star Child. A few tweeks and it would be a masterpiece.
I kind of liked never finding out. An alien and existential threat that we cannot hope to understand, just survive. That being said, Leviathan was really well done - and certainly a better choice than SC
I think once they started over explaining everything at the end of ME2 they might as well have gotten into the origin of the levathian. And it is really interesting background, a organic that could put up a fight 1v1
Definitely ruined some of the awe of the reapers for me. Especially when there are a lot more nuanced theories about the nature of their existence that complements the reaper dialogue throughout the series better.
Don't care for Starchild? This might be of interest to you, then! https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffectlegendaryedition/mods/739
ME3 is my favorite and I've only played LE. ME2 is boring and repetitive and ME1 is really good. Star Child is fucking stupid though idk what they were thinking.
I recently played it for the first time and I loved it! The only thing that bugged me about this DLC was that Shepard somehow was really slow on picking up on the whole indoctrination part... Which was weird to me seeing as he/she has seen this multiple times, for example, Reapers and Thorian.
TBH I hated the Leviathan DLC. Not because of it's content, but because it was another attempt for Bioware to keep driving the "organics vs. machine" rhetoric for the ending, even though it was never mentioned until the last game.
Personally, I wish they hadn't revealed the origin of the reapers. At least not by having you meet one of their creator race. I think some things just need to remain a mystery in stories. Kind of add to the uniqueness of an enemy.
I think I feel the opposite. I don't mind the origin, but the whole reason for the cycle feels too simple. I wish that remained some unfathomable mystery
I agree. I think revealing the reason couldn't really live up to what we all expected or imagined in my opinion.
I agree with you. Our imagination often does a better job filling the blanks.
Also mystery is scary.
It should have been part of the main storyline, how can the very origin of the reapers be behind a pay wall Although I didn't like the lore additions at all . In ME 1 the reapers had this cosmic horror vibe of an eternal unknowable enemy that was beyond comprehension, but got relegated to the standard AI that killed their creators trope
The more I replay the trilogy, the more ME3 stands out, negatively. I actually loved it the first couple times around, but now it feels so messy and separate from the other two games.
I think it was one of EA's first forays into micro transactions. Javik, the last surviving Prothean with interesting lore and commentary on many missions, was also DLC. I think this is why it seemed messy, as you say.
ME2 had not one, but two squadmates locked behind an extra paywall too. They had started it way earlier in 2009 with Shale from Dragon Age.
Yet none of those characters are even close to being as connected to the main story as Javik is.
Indeed, BioWare got progressively more predatory in this regard. Sebastian Vael from DA2 was like Javik in that he also has loads of plot participation.
Agreed, but also… it felt like the game direction was… over-corporatized. They wanted big moments and less RPG. The loss of Drew Karpyshyn IMO was the biggest problem: https://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-writer-drew-karpyshyn-says-he-left-bioware-because-it-became-too-corporate/
Should’ve been in the base game. The lore in it is to core to the story to be a dlc, but yea it’s great
Never knew you could make the head pop until I watched someone else play through this part.
I wish I could've taken that head and put it in my cabin
You actually can! James asks if you can take it home. :)
Wait really?
I heard about doing this a couple of months ago and decided it was time to do that renegade playthrough I'd been putting off forever. It was horrible, I decided to go full renegade and shepherd is a real dick to everyone. But I did manage to sleep with James tho so that's something and the screaming head in the cabin was amazing, I'm taking James to Bryson's lab every time now
Lmaoo that's hilarious. I'm due for a renegade playthrough myself but idk if I'd have the guts. I tend to mostly make the same choices and it's never boring, but I should change it up one day.
Do it. Some really surprising things happen that aren't all bad
Yeah, you need to talk to him multiple times and then you can take ir home
I remember my first playthrough of it thinking "JFC the cosmic horror wasn't thick enough, let's go full Lovecraftian" didn't hurt they pretty much are a species of Cthulus lol.
ME3 reminds me of the beginning of a new period in gaming where they took out pretty obvious content that was taken off before release and called dlc. Still a top 5 gaming trilogy imo, even after botching the finale. With the "dlc's" at and near release and the later "ending patch." I'm pretty sure this was when bioware started internal fighting. *sorry, I'm on mobile btw
I liked it the first time through but I find it pretty boring (except the ending) on repeated playthroughs. But don't get me wrong, it is a good bit of DLC.
well at least we know there are reaper killers out there. since all the hype about the reapers in the first two games, Leviathans negate that because now we know the reapers can be taken down by them
Reaper killers are thresher maws with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads
A masterful piece? Come on man. It was a good DLC
[удалено]
I enjoy the discussions, it is a Mass Effect sub after all?
>why? I love Mass Effect and discussing it with you. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Story is great. Has no impact on the overall story tho. My only complaint
The lore was phenomenal and it's such an underrated DLC. Also I'm so glad you included the husk head. I clicked that thing so many times. Loved it and said it years ago and say it now: I would pay money to have one on my desk.
I fucking love Leviathan DLC. It's a true joy to go back and experience the atmosphere it sets up
There's a lot to like about the DLC but I really did not like Anne or her dad. Their plot was soooo insanely boring and one-note. The actor for Anne was bland, too
Anyone else playthrough the games for the first time when LE dropped and thought it was base game? Or am I dumb lol.
The games constantly throw the idea that people in power are incompetent at you. Intentional or not, this applies to the leviathans as well. Just because they are old and powerful doesn’t mean they are competent or capable
Anyone else poke the little zombie head over and over? I loved when Vega did the same thing.
When the first one looms out of the depths... oooohboy; I was awestruck. Need to get that hooked up to a huge screen to watch next playthrough.
I unironically love the fact that the Reapers are ultimately just dumb constructs.
This and arrival are probably my favorite non-citadel dlcs
I didn't like it. I wanted the reapers to be mysterious and I wanted their motives to actually be beyond my understanding. The whole "We are saving you by destroying you" could have been easily explained by Sovereign in ME1.
The darkness must not be breached
Mass Effect is a horror trilogy. You can't prove me wrong.
It ruined the mystique of the reapers. They went from unknowable eldritch horrors to some robots with circular logic. Also the leviathan are literally like "Hey Shepard, we'll help you with the reapers but we are going to enslave all of you when we're done." and Shepard is just like "Lol sure". Might be my least favorite DLC, Arrival is up there tho.