So after 20 hours of gameplay, with sidequest on difficult hard, im through i got a galaxy readiness of 100% through multiplayer and i got approximately 6000 points of war assets...and im through
Warning possible spoilaz!!
ME 1 and 2 were great games because they were great from the start until the end. ME3 lacks a lot of that quality.
ME3 starts of weak (who the hell is james vega...) gets better and has its great moments like tuchanka, thresher maw eating reaper, Legions Geth lvl in Tron design. but the end... god.. really? thats like copy pasting BSGalacticas plot and motives behind all that. after beating the game i had to review the last 3 episodes of BSG and yeah.. they just copied that... and there it was, the dissapointement was too big, had to uninstal it.
I hoped to have 1 Squadmember of every species, instead i get a really unnecessary Ash william with a plastic face that cant hold up to mirandas lvl. and james vega, tali and liara where ok, although there was too much emotional chit chat.....
Pro: good midgame content, nice battles
Contra: bad copied ending from a TV series, bad start, James Vega, no Krogan Squadmember, no Salarian,
i thought wtf at the end, after playing 3 games! seeing hours of cutscenes,,i anticipated too much maybe.. the final cutscene was like 30 seconds,
and after credits "Daddy? did they really ruin the whole ME series with a crap ending? "yes son they did" "can i stop buying EA products from now on?" yes son , you should do that......"
Have you looked at the ME3 forums and youtube? There's a lot of talk about the whole final scene being an indoctrination attempt by Harbinger, that it's all going on in Shepards head as he lies in the rubble of London. This is why the only choice where he takes a breath at the end is when you choose the destroy option. The Reapers are trying to get you to give in, to accept either Control or Synthesis, presenting them as the better options over Destruction. If you choose Destruction then you hold on to your humanity and take that breath, coming back to the real world and...
Depending on your last choice in ME2, and if you have a pitiful amound of EMS (<2000), the only option you may get is to destroy.
Have you looked at the ME3 forums and youtube? There's a lot of talk about the whole final scene being an indoctrination attempt by Harbinger, that it's all going on in Shepards head as he lies in the rubble of London. This is why the only choice where he takes a breath at the end is when you choose the destroy option. The Reapers are trying to get you to give in, to accept either Control or Synthesis, presenting them as the better options over Destruction. If you choose Destruction then you hold on to your humanity and take that breath, coming back to the real world and...
Depending on your last choice in ME2, and if you have a pitiful amound of EMS (<2000), the only option you may get is to destroy.
That punches a big hole in that theory.
Maybe....
And yes, we are stretching, but could always be viewed that since the score wasn't high enough, you died in your attempt to break free.
Personally, I don't think Bioware knew what their ending was supposed to signify. It really feels incredibly rushed. after the final confrontation with the Illusive man and Andersen, I found it immensly satisfying. While my guy was mainly a paragon, getting a chance to put a bullet in the Illusive Man's head was just way too satisfying to pass up. When Shep starts collapsing, I'm rooting for him to get the f**k back up. I'm absolutely invested in what is going on. I can't wait to see what happens next...
Or maybe I should've. They introduce a deus ex machina that completely contradicts the entire series (if the Catalyst was really there and the Reapers were his creation, the entire purpose of the keepers and the plot line of ME1 make no sense), completely contradicts Shep (why on earth would he accept without question the Cataylst's description that a universe with the Reapers is neccessary? And no matter what you do, you basically committ galacticide, damning the galaxy to a new dark age.
And yes, we are stretching, but could always be viewed that since the score wasn't high enough, you died in your attempt to break free.
Personally, I don't think Bioware knew what their ending was supposed to signify. It really feels incredibly rushed. after the final confrontation with the Illusive man and Andersen, I found it immensly satisfying. While my guy was mainly a paragon, getting a chance to put a bullet in the Illusive Man's head was just way too satisfying to pass up. When Shep starts collapsing, I'm rooting for him to get the f**k back up. I'm absolutely invested in what is going on. I can't wait to see what happens next...
Or maybe I should've. They introduce a deus ex machina that completely contradicts the entire series (if the Catalyst was really there and the Reapers were his creation, the entire purpose of the keepers and the plot line of ME1 make no sense), completely contradicts Shep (why on earth would he accept without question the Cataylst's description that a universe with the Reapers is neccessary? And no matter what you do, you basically committ galacticide, damning the galaxy to a new dark age.
Oh no worries. I understand. And I know the endings are drowning in plotholes the second Shep gets back up back in London. So far BioWare has been happy with the endings, or they haven't said otherwise.
By the way, you have to shoot TIM if you fail that persuasion check. You have to.
I've heard around the net that they scrapped their original ending and general plotline. But I'm not sure if that's true or not. It would explain why it's so halfassed, though.
Has anyone considered the possibility that EA put a hard deadline on Bioware to get the game done by a certain date and they came up with this hella lame 'dream' ending to buy them more time to work on a proper ending? I'm not trying to defend Bioware in any way here but EA is notorious for doing this and also making their dev houses work 18 hour days to get a game out on time. This is what the whole 'EASpouse' fiasco was about.
Again I'm not trying to make excuses for Bioware as what they did is pretty much unexcuseable. Making the last ten minutes of a series that spans almost 8 years unravel the whole experience and make all the decisions made not mean squat was a horribly bad design decision but the EA connection does kinda put it into perspective as to possibly why they did it.
Here, in the briefest form possible, is the reason the ending(s) fail so spectacularly: Comparitive footage of them.
Here, in a much longer article is the best list of reasons why it failed on multiple levels: Gamefront article.
I posted a review on Amazon that hasn't been added yet, but I've just read so many posts on so many forums (especially the BioWare forum) that I'm not even sure there's anything beyond those two links that needs saying. On the off-chance the ending(s) we've seen actually is some sort of April Fool's joke (which is just around the corner), and the actual ending is yet to be released, it's a pretty sick joke that clearly isn't going to help them financially in the short term. The average user review at Amazon (of 374 reviews) is 2.5 stars right now, and the vast majority say something akin to "amazing game, right up until the ending destroys the series." When people use words like "betrayal" in their reviews, it's unlikely they're just going to laugh it off if the whole thing was a joke played at their expense, let alone a cash grab for the add-on "real ending."
It's all just so..depressing. Sure, there should have been more interactive conversations, the conversations that were in the game could've been longer, they could've (and should've) had neutral responses, sure, scanning is still a pain, sure forcing multiplayer on people in order to get the "best" ending is utterly stupid (especially for me, since I play on an Xbox and don't have ethernet or wi-fi), but I really did love the darned thing right up until the end. There was drama and action, great pacing, building tension, intriguing revelations. Now I can't even find the motivation to play Mass Effect 1 or 2 anymore. What would be the point when I know it all ends like that? Just sad. Potentially the greatest game that never was, at least for me.
It seems that Bioware does not give a crap. "Those who hated the ending are a minority." I hope no one gets their hopes up for them to work on the ending. Despite having polls with sample sizes 3-4 times larger than those used in politics. They seem to believe it's the minority acting up in this case.
Syrellaris
"Thank you! I am glad you are not listening to them. To me the endings make perfect sense and I do not wish to see them changed! Thankfully bioware knows it is only the minority acting up."
Bioware: Stanley Woo:
"I didn't say we weren't listening to them, nor did I imply it. Even if they are "only the minority," they are still part of our fanbase (and our community) and they have still provided feedback."
I stopped playing my game about 3 or 4 missions from the end. I am waiting to see if Bioware was going to do anything with the endings in the near future. Than I saw that gem.
Somebody used a model viewer on the game files and there's actually some hard proof that the Indoctrination theory might be true, or at least might have been true sometime in development.
I just beat the game the other day and I'm satisfied. For me. the entire segment after harbinger landing is pretty much the ending + cutscene. Not every story requires a exposition for all of the events to happen after the story comes to a conclusion.
What made the entire experience enjoyable was how the long term choices were truly unknowns and you will never know. Such as the choices on Tuchanka, or the choices on how to stop the reapers. It's all an illusion of choice, but with out knowing the final outcome it makes me second guess myself if I made the right decision. Those were some of the most defining moments in the game for myself.
Sure... they will claim it was only a dream, etc... but it was a real slap in the face of all the customers.
Don't forget folks... You're a Legend.... oh and BUY MORE DLC!!!!!
There was a "dream" ending?
I just finished the game and there was no dream in the ending I got. I just posted a thread with spoilers as to how the game ended for me, and I thought it ended perfectly. Couldn't do much better than the ending I got.
This game was amazing from the start to finish, though a little boring at times when finding assets and passing them in on The Citadel... mostly just because every time I had to go to another area, there was a 30 second+ loading screen. :P
The multiplayer is very addictive, as well. Though I hope they add more content for it.
Sure... they will claim it was only a dream, etc... but it was a real slap in the face of all the customers.
Don't forget folks... You're a Legend.... oh and BUY MORE DLC!!!!!
There was a "dream" ending?
I just finished the game and there was no dream in the ending I got. I just posted a thread with spoilers as to how the game ended for me, and I thought it ended perfectly. Couldn't do much better than the ending I got.
This game was amazing from the start to finish, though a little boring at times when finding assets and passing them in on The Citadel... mostly just because every time I had to go to another area, there was a 30 second+ loading screen. :P
The multiplayer is very addictive, as well. Though I hope they add more content for it.
The "dream ending", we aren't really sure if it is or isn't a dream. It is implied. When you choose to destroy the Reapers, right after the jungle ending, it pans out to what looks like rubble. You then see a badly beat up man (or woman depending on Shep's gender) in N7 armor obviously very wounded letting out a huge gasp and breath, and then it fades to black. The rubble doesn't look like the Citadel, it is clearly still London. The impression given is that everything beyond Harbinger's blast was a dream.
It is from this you get the "indoctrination theory" so rampant on the bioware boards. In short, after the blast, Shepard became indoctinrated by Harbinger. The "synthesis" and "control" options are what Harbinger would've wanted all along, Shepard would've succumbed to the Reapers will. The "destroy" option would've been Shepard fighting back, and his "waking up" in London after the blast would be him officially resisting indoctrination. Since right at the end of the game, Bioware encourages you to get DLC, it is assumed that Bioware will release a either a retconned ending via DLC, or "additional" endings via DLC.
The theory has some flaws, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than what Bioware calls the "official" ending.
ESPECIALLY BECAUSE THEY ENDED WITH LIKE A STUPID SEQUENCE OF SOME KID WHO LITERALLY ASKED 'WHEN AM I GOING TO THE STARS DADDY' AFTER HIS 'DADDY' EXPLAINS THAT THE WHOLE SERIES WAS SOME BULLSHIT LEGEND HE WAS TELLNG HIS KID.
I'm incredibly late to the party... and this point has probably been made before... but I seriously hope that's not the reason why everyone is upset.
Massive spoilers as usual, don't read below if you don't want anything spoiled.
I took that part of the ending as a look into humanity's future. I've only been through one ending, and I basically destroyed the Reapers, which destroys the mass relays and probably a whole bunch of other tech. This pretty much means that the species are planet-bound once again. So the cycle did happen in a way... but people got to keep their lives. In every cycle, they start planet-bound and have to figure out space travel all over again... and normally they'd find the mass relays and etc etc etc. Now with all of that gone and a lot of living people to tell the tale of how Shepard saved galactic life, Shepard has become a legend in the history books.
It's not clear if that part of the ending was very far into the future or not, the 'daddy' could've been alive during the invasion, but I took it as humanity essentially starting over in terms of space travel in a world with no Reapers and no cycles. Because the legend talks about space travel and probably how it was so common back then, the kid asks when he can go to the stars just like the people in the legend. The cherry on top for me was Buzz Aldrin playing the voice of the daddy, the second human being to step foot on the moon after his commander Neil Armstrong. I thought that was very creative on their end.
Now Playing: Mission Against Terror, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Dark Souls, League of Legends, Minecraft, and the piano. =3
ESPECIALLY BECAUSE THEY ENDED WITH LIKE A STUPID SEQUENCE OF SOME KID WHO LITERALLY ASKED 'WHEN AM I GOING TO THE STARS DADDY' AFTER HIS 'DADDY' EXPLAINS THAT THE WHOLE SERIES WAS SOME BULLSHIT LEGEND HE WAS TELLNG HIS KID.
I'm incredibly late to the party... and this point has probably been made before... but I seriously hope that's not the reason why everyone is upset.
Massive spoilers as usual, don't read below if you don't want anything spoiled.
I took that part of the ending as a look into humanity's future. I've only been through one ending, and I basically destroyed the Reapers, which destroys the mass relays and probably a whole bunch of other tech. This pretty much means that the species are planet-bound once again. So the cycle did happen in a way... but people got to keep their lives. In every cycle, they start planet-bound and have to figure out space travel all over again... and normally they'd find the mass relays and etc etc etc. Now with all of that gone and a lot of living people to tell the tale of how Shepard saved galactic life, Shepard has become a legend in the history books.
It's not clear if that part of the ending was very far into the future or not, the 'daddy' could've been alive during the invasion, but I took it as humanity essentially starting over in terms of space travel in a world with no Reapers and no cycles. Because the legend talks about space travel and probably how it was so common back then, the kid asks when he can go to the stars just like the people in the legend. The cherry on top for me was Buzz Aldrin playing the voice of the daddy, the second human being to step foot on the moon after his commander Neil Armstrong. I thought that was very creative on their end.
AND... some smart ass civilization just makes another set of mass relays and reapers and the whole shabang starts over again before the "new" humanity is space worthy. THEN some other dude named Shepard ends up doing all the same shit we just did and... wtf is this, battlestar galactica? If we wanna stop a cycle we gotta blow everything up!
What might have been really creative is if they wrote a better ending. I'm on a 50 / 50 here whether or not I'd trade Buzz, Niel and the whole god damn apollo mission crews lives for a better ME3 ending. So for sure I know I'd trade his voice acting salary for a better writer with a better script. Shit, I'm not even sure I believe they landed on the moon, Van Allen Belt getting nuked and all. Another time, another thread I guess.
Google is friendly today -> so Mac Walters is the lead writer of the Mass effect series and jade empire. Well then, that DOESNT EXPLAIN ANYTHING lol. I was thinking I'd find different writers for each game which would explain the horrible inconsistency or in some cases, down right plot fail holes.
Not so sure humanity will have a fresh start with the Normandy's wreckage laying around for at least 10,000 years. Basically if they fast forwarded the timeline enough for the past to be a myth (even though the Normandy is around) that means it's so far in the future that I don't give a FU3! and EA / Bioware took a shit on all my game choices. I'm sure someone has said all this already, just being redundant
Comments
So after 20 hours of gameplay, with sidequest on difficult hard, im through i got a galaxy readiness of 100% through multiplayer and i got approximately 6000 points of war assets...and im through
Warning possible spoilaz!!
ME 1 and 2 were great games because they were great from the start until the end. ME3 lacks a lot of that quality.
ME3 starts of weak (who the hell is james vega...) gets better and has its great moments like tuchanka, thresher maw eating reaper, Legions Geth lvl in Tron design. but the end... god.. really? thats like copy pasting BSGalacticas plot and motives behind all that. after beating the game i had to review the last 3 episodes of BSG and yeah.. they just copied that... and there it was, the dissapointement was too big, had to uninstal it.
I hoped to have 1 Squadmember of every species, instead i get a really unnecessary Ash william with a plastic face that cant hold up to mirandas lvl. and james vega, tali and liara where ok, although there was too much emotional chit chat.....
Pro: good midgame content, nice battles
Contra: bad copied ending from a TV series, bad start, James Vega, no Krogan Squadmember, no Salarian,
i thought wtf at the end, after playing 3 games! seeing hours of cutscenes,,i anticipated too much maybe.. the final cutscene was like 30 seconds,
and after credits "Daddy? did they really ruin the whole ME series with a crap ending? "yes son they did" "can i stop buying EA products from now on?" yes son , you should do that......"
Depending on your last choice in ME2, and if you have a pitiful amound of EMS (<2000), the only option you may get is to destroy.
That punches a big hole in that theory.
Maybe....
And yes, we are stretching, but could always be viewed that since the score wasn't high enough, you died in your attempt to break free.
Personally, I don't think Bioware knew what their ending was supposed to signify. It really feels incredibly rushed. after the final confrontation with the Illusive man and Andersen, I found it immensly satisfying. While my guy was mainly a paragon, getting a chance to put a bullet in the Illusive Man's head was just way too satisfying to pass up. When Shep starts collapsing, I'm rooting for him to get the f**k back up. I'm absolutely invested in what is going on. I can't wait to see what happens next...
Or maybe I should've. They introduce a deus ex machina that completely contradicts the entire series (if the Catalyst was really there and the Reapers were his creation, the entire purpose of the keepers and the plot line of ME1 make no sense), completely contradicts Shep (why on earth would he accept without question the Cataylst's description that a universe with the Reapers is neccessary? And no matter what you do, you basically committ galacticide, damning the galaxy to a new dark age.
Oh no worries. I understand. And I know the endings are drowning in plotholes the second Shep gets back up back in London. So far BioWare has been happy with the endings, or they haven't said otherwise.
By the way, you have to shoot TIM if you fail that persuasion check. You have to.
I've heard around the net that they scrapped their original ending and general plotline. But I'm not sure if that's true or not. It would explain why it's so halfassed, though.
Has anyone considered the possibility that EA put a hard deadline on Bioware to get the game done by a certain date and they came up with this hella lame 'dream' ending to buy them more time to work on a proper ending? I'm not trying to defend Bioware in any way here but EA is notorious for doing this and also making their dev houses work 18 hour days to get a game out on time. This is what the whole 'EASpouse' fiasco was about.
Again I'm not trying to make excuses for Bioware as what they did is pretty much unexcuseable. Making the last ten minutes of a series that spans almost 8 years unravel the whole experience and make all the decisions made not mean squat was a horribly bad design decision but the EA connection does kinda put it into perspective as to possibly why they did it.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
Here, in the briefest form possible, is the reason the ending(s) fail so spectacularly: Comparitive footage of them.
Here, in a much longer article is the best list of reasons why it failed on multiple levels: Gamefront article.
I posted a review on Amazon that hasn't been added yet, but I've just read so many posts on so many forums (especially the BioWare forum) that I'm not even sure there's anything beyond those two links that needs saying. On the off-chance the ending(s) we've seen actually is some sort of April Fool's joke (which is just around the corner), and the actual ending is yet to be released, it's a pretty sick joke that clearly isn't going to help them financially in the short term. The average user review at Amazon (of 374 reviews) is 2.5 stars right now, and the vast majority say something akin to "amazing game, right up until the ending destroys the series." When people use words like "betrayal" in their reviews, it's unlikely they're just going to laugh it off if the whole thing was a joke played at their expense, let alone a cash grab for the add-on "real ending."
It's all just so..depressing. Sure, there should have been more interactive conversations, the conversations that were in the game could've been longer, they could've (and should've) had neutral responses, sure, scanning is still a pain, sure forcing multiplayer on people in order to get the "best" ending is utterly stupid (especially for me, since I play on an Xbox and don't have ethernet or wi-fi), but I really did love the darned thing right up until the end. There was drama and action, great pacing, building tension, intriguing revelations. Now I can't even find the motivation to play Mass Effect 1 or 2 anymore. What would be the point when I know it all ends like that? Just sad. Potentially the greatest game that never was, at least for me.
It seems that Bioware does not give a crap. "Those who hated the ending are a minority." I hope no one gets their hopes up for them to work on the ending. Despite having polls with sample sizes 3-4 times larger than those used in politics. They seem to believe it's the minority acting up in this case.
Syrellaris
"Thank you! I am glad you are not listening to them. To me the endings make perfect sense and I do not wish to see them changed! Thankfully bioware knows it is only the minority acting up."
Bioware: Stanley Woo:
"I didn't say we weren't listening to them, nor did I imply it. Even if they are "only the minority," they are still part of our fanbase (and our community) and they have still provided feedback."
I stopped playing my game about 3 or 4 missions from the end. I am waiting to see if Bioware was going to do anything with the endings in the near future. Than I saw that gem.
Edit: I forgot the link: http://social.bioware.com/forums/forum/1/topic/323/index/9960839/7
Near the bottom. He made a few posts before that. I haven't read all of this thread yet, it's blowing up much like the others have and are, however.
Edit 2: Here is the poll that is being talked about.
http://social.bioware.com/633606/polls/
Somebody used a model viewer on the game files and there's actually some hard proof that the Indoctrination theory might be true, or at least might have been true sometime in development.
Spoiler!: http://i.imgur.com/TywdI.png
I just beat the game the other day and I'm satisfied. For me. the entire segment after harbinger landing is pretty much the ending + cutscene. Not every story requires a exposition for all of the events to happen after the story comes to a conclusion.
What made the entire experience enjoyable was how the long term choices were truly unknowns and you will never know. Such as the choices on Tuchanka, or the choices on how to stop the reapers. It's all an illusion of choice, but with out knowing the final outcome it makes me second guess myself if I made the right decision. Those were some of the most defining moments in the game for myself.
I thought the ending was really bad.
Sure... they will claim it was only a dream, etc... but it was a real slap in the face of all the customers.
Don't forget folks... You're a Legend.... oh and BUY MORE DLC!!!!!
(just delete me, I don't want to get back in this argument)
Finished the game today. Definitely one of the most epic and fun RPGs of all time
There was a "dream" ending?
I just finished the game and there was no dream in the ending I got. I just posted a thread with spoilers as to how the game ended for me, and I thought it ended perfectly. Couldn't do much better than the ending I got.
This game was amazing from the start to finish, though a little boring at times when finding assets and passing them in on The Citadel... mostly just because every time I had to go to another area, there was a 30 second+ loading screen. :P
The multiplayer is very addictive, as well. Though I hope they add more content for it.
The "dream ending", we aren't really sure if it is or isn't a dream. It is implied. When you choose to destroy the Reapers, right after the jungle ending, it pans out to what looks like rubble. You then see a badly beat up man (or woman depending on Shep's gender) in N7 armor obviously very wounded letting out a huge gasp and breath, and then it fades to black. The rubble doesn't look like the Citadel, it is clearly still London. The impression given is that everything beyond Harbinger's blast was a dream.
It is from this you get the "indoctrination theory" so rampant on the bioware boards. In short, after the blast, Shepard became indoctinrated by Harbinger. The "synthesis" and "control" options are what Harbinger would've wanted all along, Shepard would've succumbed to the Reapers will. The "destroy" option would've been Shepard fighting back, and his "waking up" in London after the blast would be him officially resisting indoctrination. Since right at the end of the game, Bioware encourages you to get DLC, it is assumed that Bioware will release a either a retconned ending via DLC, or "additional" endings via DLC.
The theory has some flaws, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than what Bioware calls the "official" ending.
I'm incredibly late to the party... and this point has probably been made before... but I seriously hope that's not the reason why everyone is upset.
Massive spoilers as usual, don't read below if you don't want anything spoiled.
I took that part of the ending as a look into humanity's future. I've only been through one ending, and I basically destroyed the Reapers, which destroys the mass relays and probably a whole bunch of other tech. This pretty much means that the species are planet-bound once again. So the cycle did happen in a way... but people got to keep their lives. In every cycle, they start planet-bound and have to figure out space travel all over again... and normally they'd find the mass relays and etc etc etc. Now with all of that gone and a lot of living people to tell the tale of how Shepard saved galactic life, Shepard has become a legend in the history books.
It's not clear if that part of the ending was very far into the future or not, the 'daddy' could've been alive during the invasion, but I took it as humanity essentially starting over in terms of space travel in a world with no Reapers and no cycles. Because the legend talks about space travel and probably how it was so common back then, the kid asks when he can go to the stars just like the people in the legend. The cherry on top for me was Buzz Aldrin playing the voice of the daddy, the second human being to step foot on the moon after his commander Neil Armstrong. I thought that was very creative on their end.
Now Playing: Mission Against Terror, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Dark Souls, League of Legends, Minecraft, and the piano. =3
Visit my fail Youtube channel(don't leave me nasty messages!): http://www.youtube.com/user/Mirii471
AND... some smart ass civilization just makes another set of mass relays and reapers and the whole shabang starts over again before the "new" humanity is space worthy. THEN some other dude named Shepard ends up doing all the same shit we just did and... wtf is this, battlestar galactica? If we wanna stop a cycle we gotta blow everything up!
What might have been really creative is if they wrote a better ending. I'm on a 50 / 50 here whether or not I'd trade Buzz, Niel and the whole god damn apollo mission crews lives for a better ME3 ending. So for sure I know I'd trade his voice acting salary for a better writer with a better script. Shit, I'm not even sure I believe they landed on the moon, Van Allen Belt getting nuked and all. Another time, another thread I guess.
Google is friendly today -> so Mac Walters is the lead writer of the Mass effect series and jade empire. Well then, that DOESNT EXPLAIN ANYTHING lol. I was thinking I'd find different writers for each game which would explain the horrible inconsistency or in some cases, down right plot fail holes.
Not so sure humanity will have a fresh start with the Normandy's wreckage laying around for at least 10,000 years. Basically if they fast forwarded the timeline enough for the past to be a myth (even though the Normandy is around) that means it's so far in the future that I don't give a FU3! and EA / Bioware took a shit on all my game choices. I'm sure someone has said all this already, just being redundant