I didn't even know about GiantBomb until reading the tweets and whatnot on here, Gerstmann has a website?! So long GS, I'd rather visit the site of a reviewer who's, y'know, respectable.
@pipeline3104 Without mass relays, the Krogan would be unable to raise hell across the galaxy, at least not for a long time. Urdnot Wrex wouldn't even be able to get back to Tuchanka from Earth after the battle, unless he just magically appears there like your squadmates appear on the Normandy at the end. There is most likely no galactic council after the Reapers got through with the Citadel. So the answer to your questions is no, because the galaxy was left in an incredibly boring state without the relays, and an even more boring one if you chose to wipe out synthetics.
@Zero_X02 SPOILERS: Completely agree, not to mention blowing up the mass relays ruins the ME universe even if the surrounding star clusters survive because it is mentioned that none of the current races know how to construct a relay and will therefore be confined to whatever star cluster they were in when the relays exploded. Instead of preserving the memory of a milky way galaxy filled with interesting galactic politics and conflicts, we're left with the memory of: A)Everyone is a bunch of hippie beatniks without technology and Mass Effect becomes Tarzan. B)Everyone is a bunch of synthetic/organic hybrids, but they look exactly the same as they did before except they're covered in glowing green lines (genius story writing Bioware!) and they are confined to whatever star cluster they were in when the relays blew up. C) Shepard goes to take control of the Reapers, preserving the threat under a new banner. And he picks one of these things trusting that the leader of the Reapers isn't just lying to him and trying to get him to kill himself. Have to love the Catalyst's flawless logic as well: organics will inevitably create synthetics, which will inevitably lead to conflict between the two. I don't like conflict between organics and synthetics, so I'll end it... with a conflict between organics and my own synthetics. I won't kill the younger species though, they need to be kept alive so they can perpetuate this cycle that I don't like and be killed later on!
@Charlie_1979 A lot of the outrage on GS has to do more with the fact the editors' tweets are insulting to their user base and don't present a very compelling argument for not changing the ending. They can disagree if they want, but their tweets are mocking and childish in tone.
Wait... I don't know why I even humor you by pointing out the difference, because the difference is irrelevant, I think AceofDiamonds29 said it best "Even if you believe that video games are 'art' (and I do!), I'm not sure how that dismisses the feasibility of changing a terrible ending. Art can still be objectively terrible, and the best artists concede their mistakes and learn from them. If you commission a great artist to draw you a portrait and they forget to include an ear or an eye, that artist has even more integrity, not less, if he or she acknowledges the error and corrects it. A story without denouement, without closure, and pockmarked with massive plot holes is akin to a botched painting. The right authors should be **eager** to correct those mistakes."
@TomMcShea So we should just accept any ending we get? Even if it's a bad ending? That's some very backwards logic. Everything one likes should be held up to a standard, otherwise we're just pissing away our money. Bioware offered its fans a handful of endings that are all almost identical, and offer a completely ridiculous reason for the Reapers' existence (if you can't see how it's ridiculous I really can't help you), not to mention all the choices that a player would have made over the series are thrown out the window. Developers don't always have good ideas, and game development needs to be a balance between dev ambitions and consumer wants, the gamespot editors propose a system where the fans should "take what they can get".
Wholeheartedly agree, but you could have provided a whole list of games that got a ridiculous amount of preorders way before launch (preferably ones that have come out by now) rather than use AC3 as the banner for the article. It's not that it offends me as a fan of the AC franchise, I didn't even buy revelations because it looks like a steaming pile of crap. It's just that whether you meant to or not, you just gave AC3 negative press long before any version of the game has even dropped. Just a tad disrespectful to the developers.
Vega and other things I didn't know the origin of really didn't bother me when I started. When things like that happen, I assume time passed in the universe and new people came in to the picture, it happens in movies and video games all the time, and I hardly see how it's a big deal. When you started Mass Effect 1, these aliens and this protagonist were all foreign to you anyways, so why does it really matter? If they can make you feel as if there really is some bond between Vega and Shepard, then it isn't all that important that you witness the beginning of that friendship first hand. James Vega isn't a terrible character because you didn't get to see the beginning of his friendship with Shepard, James Vega is a terrible character because he's a cliche and a nuisance.
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