Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC Review

I talk about the recently released Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC whilst riding on the bubble chair lift at Sun Peaks. Minor spoilers.

Mass Effect 3 Ending Deemed Accurately Advertised

Metal Gear Solid has its political intrigue, Assassin's Creed its immense attention to detail and awesome what the fuck moments, and even Final Fantasy has its moments as an effective world based story. But none of them compare to the grandeur of the Mass Effect franchise. Well, at least not yet.

Mass Effect 3 must have been the most riveting and intense game I have played to date. Every single piece of this game was masterfully done. Any of us who are fans of the series know this already, so I won't go into detail on just how awesome it was, in that respect. But everyone has their own feelings on the ending. I still haven't bothered to play it again because I want to replay Mass Effect 2 (and subsequently make my choices for the first one in that silly interactive comic) as a Paragon Female, and a Renegade Male. All I know is that if you just play it from the basic character they give you at the beginning of 3, the game can be pretty lack luster, and I'll leave it at that.

One thing I do know that the ending to the game was severely polarizing. I personally liked it. Granted, it initially kind of pissed me off when I thought of the final cut scene as the big ending scene that other big titles have, but then I realized that almost half of Mass Effect 3 is an ending leading up to the climax that is the battle in London, and everything after that is the denouement. What I didn't like was that you couldn't see the aftermath of the individual characters' stories. I know it's from Shepard's perspective, but it's the same reason why the ending to The Hunger Games trilogy was so dissatisfying. We had no closure. Maybe that's because they plan on continuing the story of one of the main characters who don't have to die, like Liara or Garrus, but that would mean a pretty loose connection to this trilogy.

Anyways, some people were so pissed off by the ending that they filed complaints. Plenty of the internet reviewers I like to watch were seething with hatred for the ending. And to be honest, I can see where they were coming from. The ending, the way it is now before the DLC comes out to extend it, feels like a limb has been cut off. And us, as the player, still feel that ghost limb, like we can move it, but when we look it's not there. It just ended, a stump of a story, so to speak.

Basically there's a point right at the end of the game where you can make one of three choices, and they effect the universe as a whole. These choices are posited to you by a God-like being, who in my opinion both needed to be elaborated on more for us who were playing the game, but also made sense how little he was seen from Shepard's point of view. To be fair though, from a writing point of view, the player character couldn't associate any weight to any of those decisions unless they played through the whole game and felt what was the right choice, for them.

In any case, many of those who played the game felt the need to protest the ending, and how it was advertised. The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)claimed that player decisions "completely shape your experience and outcome," and "drive powerful outcomes, including relationships with key characters, the fate of entire civilizations, and even radically different ending scenarios." What I read here pretty much coincides with how I took the writing in the game. It seems that the ASA agrees. The Better Business Bureau, however, actually did state that the ending was falsely advertised, but, like I've pretty much said before, the 'ending' is all up for interpretation.

In any case the Extended Cut DLC will be coming out soon, and fans will have something to either cheer for or gripe about all over again.

Original story posted by Gamespot.

Recently Uploaded Art

Some of it's new, some of it's old and recently tweaked.  The Game of Thrones Season 2 Episode 1 review will be up within the day!

This is the poster for my webshow.  The background is one of the shirts I've tie-dyed laid out flat.  I like how you can see the wrinkles.

This is one of my old characters that I recently redid in graphite because I hadn't done a portrait in a while.

This was a class project where I had to draw a scene where two men were sword fighting. So what better scene than when Jet attacks Zuko in Season 2 of Avatar the Last Airbender? This is a point in the fight when they both are using only one sword. It is done with water color paints and then inked over. I don't think I'll use water color paints again. 

And last but not least my Mass Effect Paragon/ Renegade toque.  The idea behind it is that you can change which symbol you wear on the front.  These were the first patterns I did with knitting, but I think they turned out well.  The next one I want to do is the mushroom from Super Mario Bros.

Weekly Recap V-Log 03/12/12

In this v-log I talk about Mass Effect 3 (without spoilers) and how I don't mind admitting my newbage at certain videogames, The Lorax, Breakout Kings, and The Walking Dead.  I also show off my new knitting projects, cuz I'm a dork.

Breakout Kings Season Premiere, and Other Stuff

I'm saving my next vlog outing for the Mass Effect 3 launch tomorrow night.  But this night I watched the newest episodes of The Walking Dead, Once Upon a Time, and the season 2 premiere of Breakout Kings.  As per usual, spoiler alert, but, then again, with most big shows nowadays, you just turn the channel on an hour late and the commercials for the next episode will be a spoiler.  Also, I didn't want to film because I moved my room all around, put up posters, threw out like 3 garbage bags worth of stuff, the whole nine yards, and only now just sat down to chill out and enjoy me some Firefly.  Did I mention I'm going to be Kaylee for the next two comicons coming up soon?

Anyways, tonight I'm going to shake things up and start with Breakout Kings.  I only just started watching this show little over a week ago, but I'm in love with it.  Granted, some of these feelings are coming from my love of Prison Break, for which Breakout Kings is sort of a sequel.  What makes Breakout Kings so much better than the run of the mill detective or cop shows is its cast of characters.  Each and every person brings something important to the team, and the show wouldn't be the same without them. Shea with his street smarts, Charlie being a hardass, Erica being so kickass, Ray being the big strong brooklyn guy, and Lloyd being, well, Lloyd (if you've seen the show you know what I'm talking about, and if not, WATCH IT!).  And that's why the loss of Charlie at the end of the episode was so shocking and heart breaking.  Because he, like everyone else in the show, was compelling and empathetic, his loss really hits us, and all of the other characters, hard.  I'm very interested in seeing how this is going to affect the rest of the season, and all of the characters.  This show is very emotive, compounded by the fact that Lloyd is a behavioral psychologist and his main character focus is looking at such parts of the human psyche.  This season also introduces a main antagonist, Damien, who is a recently escaped serial killer.  Lloyd gave council at his trial so his main focus is revenge against our cute, goofy doctor.  He killed Charlie, stole his badge, and was the first con to evade arrest after they found him.  All I can say is I will be watching this season with apt interest.

Once Upon a Time wasn't on last week due to the Oscars.  Thing is with this show the most interesting parts of it are those that either involve Rumplestiltskin or Emma directly.  When they don't, it's very boring, and that's what this week's episode was like.  Regarding those characters, all we learned was that Mr. Gold (aka Rumplestiltskin) doesn't like the nuns (aka the faeries).  I'm sure that will be important in the future.  And that's all I have to say about this episode.

The Walking Dead is just getting better and better.  A lot of people were saying how it was too slow and boring, but finally we're getting the pay off.  Let me just say, even though I was not expecting Dale to die (which was half the reason it was so shocking, the other half him being such an integral character) I was glad to see him go.  If we're going by survival logic, he was the best one to go.  He was old, a shit-stirrer, and he just didn't live within reality.  I do agree that they shouldn't become savages, but the way I look at it that means they don't rape or kill for pleasure, like the other men that are encountered within the series do.  I'm basing this mostly on the comic, but it looks like that's the way the show is heading too.  Killing a guy who shot at them because he was a liability seems logical to me.  He hasn't shown any signs of capitulating to their domination and following their lead, actually he seems like a strong flight risk.  Rick should have shot him in the head when he fell on that spike, but this show just loves to play with the characters' hindsight.  What I really liked about this episode was people were FINALLY talking in a group.  I wish they had done that a lot earlier, it would have made a lot more sense.  But, now that Dale's gone, and Rick and Shane are agreeing on something (at least for the most part) the group should be gathering some more cohesion.  Daryl also had some cool scenes this episode.  In the preview for the next episode it looks like Laurie tries to reconcile with Shane, which i'm looking forward to.  Only two more episodes left!  Then we'll have to wait until Halloween for season 3.  At least we'll have the comics to tide us over.

And Game of Thrones too!  The new season looks wicked!  I'm going to do an in depth review of each episode.  Speaking of reviews, I do have the scripts written for a few, but I just have to play Mass Effect 3, so until my first play-through is done, I won't be doing much else.  At least my room is clean!