I feel like every Bethesda game ever has burned me out, I think its just the combination of how big they make them and how I tend to play them. Its just a bad combination.

I haven't felt like I've missed anything by skipping Skyrim. I just think the BioWare model is much more "me". The storytelling is the thing that interests me the most.

Skyrim was leaps and bounds better than Oblivion and I enjoyed it greatly. But holy shit, once TOR came out, it was game over, man. Game over.

Sure it burned me out - after 323 hours. That's over 13 days of playing time.

I loved it and got my money's worth out of it. That's what matters.

Launch Trailer posted in the OP.

Bioware's released a re-cut of the original blur-style trailer but using the female shepard model. It's pretty cool: http://popwatch.ew.com/2012/03/05/ma...mshep-trailer/

In unrelated news, last night I sorted through my old ME2 saves to figure out which one I was going to use for my first run through ME3. I assumed it would be my Sentinel, and that turned out to be the case as that's the only one I have that played all the way through ME1, then all the way through ME2 and then through all of ME2s dlc...

What I'd forgotten is that this was my Nightmare mode character, and that I'd forgotten to get the med-bay upgrade before the suicide mission, and hence Mordin is dead. LMAO

So I guess my initial run through ME3 will be missing one of my favorite characters.

Apparently there is a bunch of nerdrage on the Bioware forums about the ending, I haven't really looked at it but its there. (****ing 530 page thread of it) I'm going to assume that means that there is no rainbows and unicorns ending.

I was just talking to a friend about that. It's ridiculous. I guess for me it was the last straw on the camel's back so to speak, after years in the community (going back to the original baldur's gate) I've finally gotten rid of my links to the bioware social network. It's been getting progressively worse for years, starting with Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, then completely going nuts with Dragon Age 2. The SWTOR community, while not part of the network, is horrendous and now this junk with Mass Effect 3. It's like there's a segment of the community out to just trash everything about BioWare, so everything on every one of their forums these days is basically just post after post after post about how terrible they are and how awful the games are, and it's impossible to have any kind of conversation there anymore.

The thing on the endings is that the they were apparently datamined out of the game files, so people know you get such-and-such ending if you do events x, y, and z, and so on, and shockingly for a bioware game (read: sarcasm) there's some tragedy involved. So, yes, it does seem to be a rainbows and unicorn kind of thing, and you can't ride off into the sunset with your love interest for an intergalactic parade declaiming your awesomeness.

As I told my friend, it brought to mind a number of questions. First, are these people all new to the series? Because BioWare has said since the original game back in 2007 that the series was a trilogy and that Shepard's role in the ME universe would have a definite ending. Two, have they played any of the previous Mass Effect games? Because, you know, people die in these games. Like all over the place. Including, potentially, main characters. And, finally, how can there be any kind of non-tragic conclusion to this story, with the Reapers being what they are, both in terms of synthetic and numerous? I mean, I'm sure there's a Chekov's Gun of some kind, but come on, this has been building up to something of Epic scale, and I have always assumed that even the happiest Paragon ending (which is the way I tend to play) was going to come at a price.

But maybe the biggest point to me is how in the world you can judge the ending by the datamined info? Naked data? So no experiencing the events of the game up to that point, none of the action, graphics, voice acting or music of the game's ending itself, just the stark data, read in a vacuum.

I don't know. How do you judge the quality of the ending based on that? The ending may well be bad. But assuming that based on datamining? Come on.

And there's also the question of what you're looking for in the ending. Well, for me, it's emotional reaction. That's why I play, and why I love, BioWare games. Even in their worst games (which for me is DA2) they tell their stories better than anyone else, and they evoke feelings while I play (or while I watch - because I think of these games as more interactive novels or movies than choose your own adventure books), while the story unfolds. So if I get that out of the ending, something epic and something emotional, I'll be thrilled. That's what I'm looking for.

(I didn't read much of the actual spoiler details, I don't want to know...)

I did come across one troubling thing involving a child voice actor that I think probably is part of the game but really hope isn't because I'll hate it, but even if that turns out to be part of the equation, it won't ruin the ending.

Hell, with bad endings, fighting the giant human reaper fetus at the end of ME2 was so bad it made me laugh the first time it played, but it's still my favorite game of the last 5 years, and likely to be the middle chapter of my favorite game trilogy of all time.

Reviews so far are all great, by the way. Although that doesn't mean much.

Or it could mean that the ending is slapped together and rushed like KOTOR2. ****, I hope that's not the case. :grr:

BioWare has never failed. Don't think ME3 is going to be their first.

Garrus almost sounds like Ted Kennedy there for a moment....and on to the Bioware hate....

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This never gets old....

I'm somewhat excited for ME3, just not as much as the 1st two.

KOTOR 2 was Obsidian. I enjoy the **** out of logging into BioWare's KOTOR world on a nightly basis. :)

I think it's safe to say that's not the case. ME3 was delayed, rather than rushed, and it's (according to reviews) the longest game in the series.

What people are having a problem with (as I understand) is what actually happens in the end. A matter of taste thing.

I haven't seen any complaints about it with reviews yet. It's getting scores comparable to the first two games (@9 or higher). I've seen a couple actually laud the ending.

The problem with KOTOR2 wasn't obsidian, it was lucasarts forcing them to publish before the game was done. I thought it was actually in some ways a better game than KOTOR. But it ultimately fell apart in the final act.

So maybe that is a good demonstration of how an ending could hurt a game. But I think if they'd been given time to actually get everything in, it would have been fine.

And if you think that was bad well you must not have played Obsidian's next game for Bioware, NWN 2's ending was literally "rocks fall, everyone dies." And NWN2 wasn't rushed out the door thanks to LA like KOTOR2 was.