Mass Effect 3: Loyalty Quests and the Suicide Mission, Yea or Nay?

Categories:

January 12, 2012

January 12, 2012

Let’s face it, you love Mass Effect. Maybe not the original, but the sequel most likely blew your mind. We are nearly ready to get the third in the Mass Effect trilogy in a scant few weeks, but something concerns me.

In 2011, a whole mess of trilogies and long awaited sequels released into a collective sigh of boredom from gamers. Sure, Uncharted 3 was amazing, but it wasn’t as good as Uncharted 2’s leap from the original Uncharted. Same with Batman: Arkham City vs. Batman: Arkham Asylum. Asylum blew the doors off of everyone, showing the world super hero video games didn’t have to suck. City released and found itself struggling to make it on many sites Top 10 Game of the Year lists.

Here we are at the precipice of what will most likely be the grand finale (minus a whole ton of downloadable content, of course) to Bioware’s epic space saga, and I can see gamers spinning themselves up into a frenzy only to mercilessly let down.

One of the major game changing milestones from Mass Effect 2 came in the form of the “loyalty quest/final suicide mission” dynamic. If you’re not familiar, it involved you gaining the trust of your crew through a series of side missions. The more of these loyalty quests you completed, the higher the chance your crew survived the final suicide mission. A brilliant stroke of genius for the title, where gaming forums and podcasts all asked one burning question: “Did all your crew survive?”.

The big question now is will the game fall back on the now-tried-and-true “loyalty quest/final suicide mission” mechanic again for Mass Effect 3? I can imagine Commander Shepard (or FemShep) and their ragtag crew of misfits flying to rescue Earth from the Reapers in one final climactic battle that looks similar to your ship flying to the Omega 4 Relay at the end of Mass Effect 2, but will it have the same impact? What special blend of herbs and spices has Bioware come up with to spice up this wonderful dynamic so it’s not just a carbon copy of the suicide mission from Mass Effect 2?

So, keep it the same, change it up a little bit, but I seriously doubt they are going the third route and scrapping the final suicide mission. That being said, if anyone could pull it off, Bioware has the brains that came up with the idea in the first place. If anyone could make a compelling final sequence without just lifting the same format off the last one, I imagine Bioware could.

The problem is that either way you go, that angry swarm of gamers on the internet will be mad. Take it out, and Mass Effect fans will go up in arms complaining that whatever they replace it with will never be as good. Leave it in, and the Mass Effect fans will complain that they’re paying $60 for another 40+ hours of Mass Effect 2 (not that this is a bad thing in my opinion).

It’s a tough call. Should they leave loyalty quests and the suicide mission in, or try something new for the finale?

Be Sociable, Share!

Other sites you might also enjoy:

Be Sociable, Share!

Anonymous

I have yet to play ME 2 or ME1 and I don’t plan on play ME 3.
http://twitter.com/ITLoo Loren Nikkel

I think there needs to be a suicide mission where either you make it out, or your crew does. I know it has been done, but I would be torn.
jaw

No…

The entire loyalty mission concept was good but born of bad, disconnected dossier missions forced on you by someone you would not listen too (TIM) (if you played the first game) for more than a few minutes before seeking him out and spectering his ass with prejudice and heading back to the Citadel – I should have had a choice and it would have simply meant dialogue from Anderson (or even Liara (info queen) instead of Hoaky TIM. It would have made more sense for you to have 2 missions – one discovery (the Cerberus lab jack was in); total vacant and ruined as jack would have escaped 5 years or so before, then go on a hunt to another rouge and take it out, run into some missing science teams/ships/stations and suspect it’s Cerberus again, but then be contacted by TIM (god, why couldn’t they just freakin call him Banes and lend more credibility for him running the show), and have him thank you for taking out his rouges, tell you he’s not the one taking people and introducing you to the collectors – then suddenly; collector ship appears, original game beginning starts. The rest of the game plot could almost be forgiven if it began like that! However…

The dossier missions were not tied into the main plot in even slight ways. This also would have been better and lend to the immersion, not snap you out of your roll and make you protag collector. Not one of these people; sans Garrus and Tali (and maybe Jack with my beginning), would have given you the time of day, let alone offer to help on what was very early on considered a lost cause (foreshadow fail) suicide mission. Given the fact that the entire cast was a throwaway, so pretty much was the plot; which of course is why there was almost no plot at all.

A simple fix would have been to go investigate something: Okeer bought Collector tech – go find out why. Get Grunt… loyalty mission required due to nature of Krogan but cool because of Wrex.

Someone is going to kill Nassana – if you want her first you better go. Thane’s illness would just be enough on it’s own to push him to help after you meet him.

Banes/Anderson/Liara Name Drops Aria

Aria name drops Mordin. Mordin takes interest after paragon/renegade int Cerberus guess or reveal – and says he wants to help because of collector/plague submissions, after you cure plague of course – name drops Blue Suns on illium – another eugenics ploy – tainted red sand/collector link.

Archangel keeps coming up… after you hear it from at least one NPC and on the news, or finding the datapad in that side mission, you can ask Aria; and after some damn dialogue with the mercs I should be able to tell my team I think I know who it is… even if I don’t say his name! and tell Garrus “dammit! I knew it was you! Nobody else in the galaxy could stir up so much merc ire in so little time”

Samara – run into her while looking into blue suns based on the tainted red sand that is rumored to be coming from collectors… needs your help and will join in return; loyalty mission completely optional and not required (even with it a renegade would likely have to kill her after anyway, given the option)

All these little things could have made an incredibly immersive sub/main plot tie in not to mention add plenty of full comm room team meetings discussing which lead to follow that would get you more plot and possibly your next team member.

After the vision from the pyramid (could be a lead followed after Illium blue suns). Run to Liara and get her to meld and just give you some WTF moment – this message is 2K years post Prothian extinction and there is a Collector in it… How old are they?! Where did they come from. Why did the Prothians make this Beacon warning of them? It had to be the Scientists from Ilos – could they sill be alive!!! A Holy S moment. Then later on the Collector ship do the reveal as they did – another HFS moment – that was originally ho-hum because there was no secret – it was too obvious.

I wonder if they’ll let me write the remake in 10 years?

Combat; even with the cover system issues, was at a level of awesome, but it does not make up for the loss of RPG elements nor disjointed/disconnected story or sudden lack of quads Shep had in 1.