🔥 Start your Wanted: Dead adventure with 50% off - act NOW: bit.ly/WD-pikmonwolf Funny enough, the original script I wrote up had me going over a bunch of things I liked about the game, and I had to cut it down for being too long. I actually really enjoyed my time with this game and 110 has been great to work with.
Alright, I can't expect everyone to agree with me on which DLCs are the best/worst. But come on, Arrival was bad, but not that bad. Overlord is probably the one where we disagree the most, it should've been in A tier. Extended Cut should've been C tier. Also did you say Javik is good for a squad mate because we mostly have paragon squad mates? The only paragon squad mates are Liara and Tali, and we don't get Tali until far into the game. EDI can't be categorized as either cause shes an AI. Everybody else is renegade, Garrus, Ashley, James, Javik. I also can't say its fair to rip on ME1 and ME2 for having not-as-smooth squad mate interactions as ME3, this is clearly something that got better with each game. Anyway, I'm hoping for a successful Mass Effect TV adaptation, we'll see how that plays out.
@@GageeeeeI’m late but yeah the game is trash and unoriginal. And it was the first game ever to make me quit playing because of SOUND DESIGN…. The sound design is somehow worse than the VA and awful writing
My only complaint with Citadel is that Mordin and Thane get their tributes but Legion and the dead Virmire squadmate don’t. Other than that, it’s a masterpiece and a great last hurrah for the characters who have practically become family to us all
I think it makes sense not to do a tribute to Ash or Kaidan, since they would've died years ago at that point. Better to put those resources into their living scenes. As for Legion, I've got a lot of complicated feelings on them in Mass Effect 3 so I'm kind of happy they weren't messed with further lol.
@@NostalgicGamerRickOShayand they replaced her fish feeding role, what she's probably most known for in the community, with a VI. that's gotta be a low blow 😭
Whole mass effect 2 had this problem where your squad rarely interacted with each other outside the missions and in DLCs. I noticed this after playing mass effect 3 since that game made your ship feel more alive as the squad actually moved around the ship and interacted with each other after missions. And then came the Andromeda and they overdid the squad interaction thing.
Yeah, I might be mistaken but it feels like there were more squad interaction in Mass Effect 1 when in the Citadel elevators than in the entirety of Mass Effect 2. I assume this is because of the relatively quick turn around between ME1 and ME2 plus Bioware not knowing how to handle such a large voice cast....
I actually quite like how involved crew was in andromeda and the rec board and jaal giving lessons on his language. Idk it all just made sense to me we aren't playing soldiers in that game and the stakes aren't literally amextermination of all life so I did appreciate the fact our companions did generally seem like friends. This is the one and only feature I hope mass effect 4 carries over.
When garrus said "best years of my life were on that ship." I felt like that was a true send off to the franchise, your best friend and possible love interest saying what we all thought was an amazing and heart breaking moment especially when shepard said. "The best." It was the perfect goodbye.
Throughout the entire trilogy, I have always stanned for Female shepard due to voice acting. Femshep simply was better voiced as both paragon and renegade I found..... Except for that last line where Mark Meer simply NAILED. The little "hmph" he makes and the wistful/somewhat melancholic "The best" actually has me tearing up ever so many years later.
my first ever bioware game was jade empire from when i was like, 5 so seeing the decline really hurts and i know they'll mess up the upcoming ME game so the citadel is in a really special place of : it's over, now it's just the sadness of shep dying and the fond memories alongside "man, i love bioware...oh look, anthem!"
"Loyalty mission for Shepard" is a fantastic way to describe the Citadel DLC. I like to also refer to it as "The anime Beach day episode" for how silly it can turn into
Gonna be real, I'd put Firewalker at 16. Not that I'm over-inclined to defend Arrival, but I do kinda like the vibe of Shepard having to wriggle out of a situation that they've gotten into on their own, and I do kinda like flipping the bird to Harbinger, even if the writing isn't fantastic. I loathe every time I have to get into that stupid hovercraft. Admittedly, I'm also one of the five people in existence who really genuinely liked the Mako. Admittedly, I also play games like Snowrunner where the only gameplay is navigating terrain.
Ah the Mako was a lot of fun, way better than the Hammerhead. Arrival is definitely less tedious to play through, but I hate it for how the bad writing drags everything down.
@@pikmonwolfwhat's hilarious about that game fail cutscene it just had TIM hanging out with the Normandy crew when the reapers show up which is just hilarious to think about.
I really enjoyed Arrival, was surprised when Shepard had to lose a fight, and the terror he feels when he sees the object, knowing they are corrupted. Lot of fun action too.
I liked it too, especially because you are alone most of the time. There are no squad members to help you. It's only you and your skills. I hardly consider it the worst DLC. Pinnacle Station is the worst DLC for me.
It also has some of the best music in the series. That haunting synthline that plays in the background as you fight your way out of the final complex has a downright apocalyptic feel to it.
To me I feel like that one part where you fight a horde of guards as they attempt to take you down in Arrival really sets how much of a monster Commander Shepard is canonically, not to mention the pistol section of Citadel
Something I appreciate about Overlord is that you can help David for the paragon ending, and you get to pistol whip the doctor without any renegade points. Plus, David winds up being a war asset, so it’s a neat touch.
I’m autistic and so are my kiddos and Overloard always makes me sob uncontrollably when I’m finished. It makes me sick to my stomach and hurts my heart in ways I could never begin to explain… and yet when I do my yearly playthrough I ALWAYS have to save David. It’s important.
@@crystalf1608It's amazing, and sometimes terrifying, what seeing something you deal with daily being represented in a video game. I have schizophrenia and I felt like that when playing Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Overlord made me feel similar. People with mental health issues have always been looked down on and sometimes brutally experimented on. Getting to save someone like that in a game was magnificent. Even when Joker talks about biotic humans being considered as "handicapped" while he has brittle bone disease is a cool little interaction. He says maybe now people will stop looking at biotics as a disability. He says if I sneeze hard I can break a rib, being able to move stuff with your mind is not a handicap. These games actually do a great job in representing disparities that exist in real life. Racism compared to Xenophonbia, disabilities, even being "designed to be perfect" fits in there because there is so much pressure for women to be "perfect." And Jack being how she was because of what was done to her. She has a great arc too. She goes from pissed off and angry to very vulnerable in her romance option. I always romance Jack now.
im autistic and only recently finally got to play the dlc myself but i already knew the whole story, so i was shocked by how much it affected me, i hear the music and i start crying, glad i could pistol whip the brother, but i really wish it had let you talk to people on your crew about it i think it is objectively so upsetting it was a bit irresponsible to just leave you with that as how it ends. it is good that it doesnt end with david okay, dont want the normies to miss the message by being like “oh see hes okay right away just like that! it wasnt THAT bad” and i am glad hes okay in 3, but there needed to be something at the time to discuss what happened, have shepard be a proxy for us being noticeably bothered and when you go to your crew members theyll have thing to say about it but idk it just really hit home, ive been so heavily dehumanized all my life in response to my autism, its just sad that while it has a powerful message this is the only place an explicitly autistic character was in the series, and i cant really think of any that are good headcannons as autistic, maybe liara??? kaiden actually come to think of it, but yea only explicit autism is just such a sad and upsetting story
The sound definitely seems like a corrupted WAV file. So EA is rereleasing good games after breaking their data files and calling it an "upgrade". Pretty par for the course, I'd say.@@pikmonwolf
I guess the nice thing is if there's bugs in the LE it has the potential to be patched, while any bugs in the OG are there for life at this point...@@pikmonwolf
Dude Citadel DLC was the best DLC. It was like the main writer ran into a fanfic writer and they got their notes mixed up and made an absolute memey yet beautiful story.
Im genuinely glad I heard your explanation of why you like leviathan because Ive always liked it but couldnt really put it into words. The theory that "domination" is the end-point of the evolutionary process makes sense since its not only a power in-game, but it also relates back to the main conflicts of the game (the genophage, the creation and control of synthetic or organic life). Maybe the ardat-yakshi fit into this somehow
Zaeed’s DLC is worse than being weird that the new kids on the block created the Blue Suns. It’s a straight up retcon. The first book, Revelation, established the Blue Suns as a very long standing gang in the galaxy. A Batarian has inner monologue about being pissed about humans suddenly making up such a large percentage of the gang even though they’ve barely been on the galactic scene.
Yeah that's a dumb retcon. Still doesn't bug me too much since it's relatively minor. Retcons only really piss me off when they're a bad change to something big.
@@3AHolesI'm pretty sure that was the implication each franchise seems to have its own leader or founder like I could see the blue suns operating in the terminus being different than the ones on the citadel who are also different than the ones on illium.
Another thing about Bring Down the Sky: the choice you have to make. You either kill Balak and sacrifice the hostages or save them and let Balak go. Something that Arrival doesn't have. Making a choice.
Citadel DLC in ME3 is by far the best in the trilogy. That DLC was dedicated to nothing more than just having a damn good time. It really felt like you were spending time with people you’ve known for years and are proud to call your friends.
I love the ending, when Shep is leaning against the rail, staring at the Normandy, as the surviving crew members (I always lose a few in ME2) rejoin them. Shepard knows it was their last hurrah.
@@docproc144 honestly, I hope they don't. To me, they had their one last ride and it ended the way it should. Shepard's sacrifice would be meaningless if he / she comes back from the dead yet again. I hope it's set far into the future, as was hinted at since Liara looks much older in the trailer, with a new protagonist. Let the legends rest and a new generation take the helm. 🙂
@@legionarybooks13 I see where you’re coming from. But, as you know, a lot of people had a problem with Mass Effect 3, more specifically the entire ending of it. I just feel like if the characters returned and BioWare gave them another run they maybe they could give them some proper closure. Liara being heavily featured in the game wouldn’t feel right to me without Shepard by her side, in fact it’d make me more depressed than anything, especially considering she was my love interest throughout my main head canon playthrough. And judging from how the games play out and certain dialogues, it almost seems like that’s the direction BioWare wanted players to go romantically anyway was with Liara. So I consider her romance to be canon. And the new game seems to be canonizing the Destroy ending, which is fine cause that’s what I chose anyway, because that’s the only ending in which Shepard survives(if war assets are high enough). So if the Destroy ending where Shepard lives is canon, and they’re bringing Liara back, and she wiped off a piece of Shepard’s armor and smiled in the trailer, it leads me to believe that Shepard may be coming back as well in this one. The potential for a game set during a post Reaper War galactic reconstruction era is huge.
@@legionarybooks13 I purposely save them so it's a full crew hang out. Everyone but the ones who get killed no matter what in ME3 spending some time together before the final fight.
*Thoughts* - If Bioware was going to remain wedded to the war assets, completing challenge missions on pinnacle station should have actually counted for something. You have assets you can acquire from other DLC, even a Conrad Verner arc, so why not that one? The Locust is amazing. Kasumi’s loyalty mission is a must-do first thing if you’re an engineer or adept. Omega is based. Great combat. Good characters. Solid writing. Fun to wreck. And a REALLY immersive look at Omega.
@@pikmonwolf okay, I need to play through Omega again. I always skip it because Aria is such an arrogant bitch who I've never liked. I suppose I should give her credit where it's due, and just f*ck with her the entire time (lol).
@@pikmonwolf I like Omega a lot because of the specific resolution for the engineer class, I would have loved it if they had thought of this for the other games and classes.
@@emylikula9159absolutely should have had more individuality based on character class etc. (Vega kicking the Rannoch AA gun in ME3 and Edi’s glitch are also an excellent touch)
The way I play mass effect made leviathan feel sooooo good. I tend to chip away at missions and jump between them so slowly building up the revelations of leviathan felt so satisfying
I gotta say the best thing about citadel to me is that it truly shows that your crew at this point arent just squad mates or friends, but family. The family of the normandy!
I absolutely love the mod that changes the Citadel DLC to be the epilogue. I absolutely get the story relevance of Shepard's sacrifice, but the whole idea of Citadel being the after-party of the Reaper war and Shepard and their crew *finally* getting the chance to relax, only to be hit with the clone? It lends itself well to the comedy of the DLC.
Problem with that interpretation is that at least 2 of the endings end in Shepard's death. The other 2 are, continuing the war without the crucible doing anything and Shep's death being debatable. Citadel being a last hurrah before the end makes more sense to me.
One small defense of Arrival. The final moment of it is one of my favorite scenes in the series. Hacket steps onto a Cerberus ship, an enemy vessel, and meets Sheppard himself. He doesnt even glance at the report and tells Sheppard that he trusts our judgment without hesitation. It made me respect him a hell of a lot more than I did before.
I think (just my opinion) a lot of people didn't like Omega because they simply didn't like Aria. Even though she's voiced by Carrie Anne Moss, Trinity in the Matrix series. She's the crime boss of the Trilogy, even moreso than the Shadow Broker, and Shepard is this icon of virtue. In addition, they kill off the only female Turian we've seen so far, Omega isn't a hub world after you take it back (A lot of people wanted this) and there were a number of pretty bad glitches.
Aria was fine in 2 in small doses but a whole dlc with her must felt awful. Plus Nyreen freaking out over the adjutants while they are inferior and squisher versions of banshees. Srsly they drop faster than cannibals.
Speaking of Genesis, G1 even butchers ME2 intro with Miranda and the Illusive Man. Originally, if you transferred ME1 save, it reflected your decision regarding Counsil's fate, but, since with Genesis those lines are replaced with generic "Commander Shepard uncovered the truth" and "We're at war…" lines. The latter line is even reused from later dialogue with TIM. Anyway, Genesis Intro Dialogue Undo Mod is essential. Speaking of mods, Pinnacle Station was actually ported into LE by the community.
Oh my god you're right! I could've sworn I remember that dialogue being different, but chalked it up to misremembering. Funny enough if I realized that it might've taken last place from Arrival lol.
Well, when you first get to the final battle and don't know what will happen next (basically nothing out of the scripted scenario) and just grind on... It's so enraging... I mean you set difficulty to insanety, you play adept or sniper and there is literally no one to actually back you up.. 😅
Arrival be like: Dr. Kenson: Shepard, please, touch the Object Rho Shepard: *touches the Object Rho* Dr. Kenson: I'm sorry, but I cannot allow you to begin the Project Shepard: *confused face* Why? You literally three seconds ago asked me to help you, didn't you?
Emmm... Object Rho disables Shephard actually by this touch. That was plan to capture him. Just remember that main Collector (which contolled by reapers)in combat says that Shepard needs alive. The game does not explain why, but from guesswork - to replace (or rather for DNA crossing) the main collector.
20:03 I think it makes sense, the Normandy is staring down harbinger and joker and edi for sure had every single weapon primed, just waiting for harbinger to open his laser eye thingy to try shoot them down. Harbinger knows this and so doesn't fire, knowing a single cruiser and a few soldiers is far less dangerous to the reapers than letting troops board the citadel
Normandy: DO IT FIRE!!!! Harbinger: No. You'll lose anyway. Normandy: Not if I shoot you in the face a couple times. Open the eye or are you scared? Harbinger: You are nothing but a piece of scrap. Not worth my time. Normandy: Scared you'll end up like the Collectors? Harbinger: Get off my hill. Normandy: Fine. I got what I came for anyway. I'll go back up into space and kill some more off your troops. Shepard can handle you themself. *flies off* Harbinger: Shepard! You will die here! *fires lazor* Later- Shepard: Hey Harbinger. Harbinger: What!? How.... Shepard: See you in hell. *Destroy ending*
I completely hated Overlord. I understand why it can be important to see the inherent cruelty of Dr. Archer to his brother, but I still think its unacceptable to make Dr. Archer that bad and face no real consequence. The closest thing to consequence is what happens in ME3 (I didn't tell him that David was ok), but seriously, Shepard kills people for much less than the abuse that Dr. Archer put David through. And while the over-gratuitous violence might make someone seek a new perspective if they are ableist, I am autistic and I got SO uncomfortable when I realized what they were setting up. Though David is arguably the core of the DLC, he's barely even a character. His writing perpetuates tropes that makes autistic people seem alien or robotic or completely not understandable to non-autistic people.
As a neurodivergant person myself, I always interpreted it as a direct deconstruction of the savant trope. Showing how reducing autistic people to 'human computers' leads to cruelty. And they make up for Archer's fate in 3 because you can make him kill himself which is brutal.
@@pikmonwolf I can definitely see how David is a deconstruction of the savant trope, but for me it would have stuck and felt better to see if they explicitly let David talk to Shepard, or made David's abstract communication with Shepard a bit more blatant. Maybe let Shepard try to talk directly to David? Because he's communicating what happened through the video footage that he plays when you're in the mainframe or whatever happens. Maybe allow that to be more of a dialogue than a series of exposition. Overall, I can recognize that Overlord is pretty groundbreaking for its time, and maybe its unfair of me to ask for better when the conversation on neurodiversity has improved so much since Overlord was released.
I disagree; maybe the DLC hit me so hard because of my nephew, and I would have preferred to get more David 'screen time's if even just in the form of video clips where we see him having a life outside of Gavin, but coming back in ME3 is one of the best parts of ME3 to me and the only reason to do the DLC.
Nice list, but I *completely* disagree with your take on Leviathan and the Reapers. It's true that nearly everything in the Mass Effect universe has an explanation. It's harder sci-fi than almost any mainstream space opera. But that's precisely why the Reapers' mystique should have been preserved. Reapers were the only thing in the Mass Effect universe that escaped any scientific explanation. That was terrifying. It's been said that any sufficiently advanced alien is indistiguishable from a god, and the Reapers leaned into that very effectively. A semi-realistic setting turning into cosmic horror as the true antagonist is revealed is such a brilliant twist, I'm surprised it hasn't been done since. Leviathan ruined that (though ME2 and 3 had already shifted away from this aspect of the Reapers). Not only was it a mistake to explain the Reapers' motives and origins, but said explanation was frankly not good at all. It confirmed the Reapers were really just killer robots, and retroactively made Sovereign, an otherwise excellent and genuinely threatening villain, look like a complete idiot. Still better than Arrival, I guess.
I know you commented like 7 months ago, but I gotta say something, cause i completely disagree with you. Not explaining a major plot point in ANY story, not just Mass Effect, is extremely lazy and a sentiment that you as a creator of said plot had no Plan from the start and seem really incompetent. I dont think its mysterious at all, it just seems lazy and unfinished to not explain such a major plotpoint. Now weather you like the explanation or not is obviously subjective and completely up to anyone, I for my part really liked it, but I was def super glad they explained the Reaper origin
@@assetix1778 Hard, hard disagree. Do we still fear the monster in a horror movie after having seen it? Does the lack of a rational explanation for the supernatural ruin the fantasy genre? Mystery is an invaluable tool in storytelling, not a lazy shortcut. In his speech, Sovereign implied he was more god than machine. He gave us no reason to doubt that. In the self-contained story of Mass Effect 1, we never learned where he came from, what he wanted, or how his creepy will-breaking power worked. We were well into cosmic horror territory, where the threat is so immense and extraordinary that it is inherently unknowable. And yet, it worked perfectly! Unfortunately, Mass Effect 3 and Leviathan saw fit to reduce the Reapers to an engineering problem. As for the explanation itself, I don't think I could make it worse if I tried. It involves massive retcons, deus ex machinas galore, insufficient build-up, outside-context actors, a downscaling of the main threat, and absolutely ridiculous logic. Seriously, robots created to kill people to stop them from creating robots that kill people...does it really all come down to a bad for-loop in the Reapers' code? Your opinion is your own and I respect it, but I just can't understand it. In fact, I'd say that if there is such a thing as objectively bad writing, Mass Effect 3 and Leviathan's handling of the Reapers is an outstanding example.
Glad someone else gets it. The Leviathan DLC is the worst by far to me. It absolutely ruined the Reapers, along with the ending of 3, turning them into every bad AI logic cliche. Some mysteries work best when they stay a mystery, no answer could be truly satisfying. Having the Reapers as these mysterious cosmic horror beings beyond human understanding worked great.
If they really want to include the leviathans only hint on them through murals, some (audio)logs etc. This would have actually improved the series, because it left way more room for speculation. Like: are the Reapers the husk form of Leviathans? Are Reapers created by or after the Leviathans? In addition they should have been placed into ME2, because in ME3 they really don't fit into the urgency of the scenario. And if you want the leviathans more tangible: Make the collector main base a dead leviathan. Again: this would have asked & answered so many new & old questions, that genuinely would have improved the setting/story.
33:40 When I first got this scene it was with Maleshep and Tali, I don't mind saying I legitimately cried when Shepard said "the best" as we look on at the Normandy, knowing he'll die. And man the version with the Thane romance was amazing, it basically implies that Shepard could feel that this would be their last fight before their demise.
Doing the DLC with Jack as your LI, and her genuine love for Shepard and terror that he’ll die is absolutely heartbreaking. It keeps trying to tempt me into survival even though doing so goes against my morals. I cannot abide killing the Geth and EDI just to kill the Reapers and survive. And regardless on how people think of Harper (I think he’s a racist arrogant asshole personally) Control was the only ending I could stomach. Destroy I’ve already talked about and Synthesis is just too ambiguous. Is the rest of the galaxy now a race of Husks? What happens to the Reaper’s Husks if that isn’t the case? I can’t see why it wouldn’t be since for some reason people are suddenly fine with like, the Cannibals and Brutes and Banshees, who must be living horrifically tortured “lives” and were trying to melt people down a couple seconds ago.
@@reaperofthings I prefer Destroy. Control just feels like i'm being indoctrinated like the Illusive man was and Synthisis forcing everyone to change no more evolution, no more differences, everyone being equal while on paper sounds good. The reapers win all normal life is gone never to reappear. Destroy is the only option, resist the Reapers and kill them all! Edi and the Geth's sacrifice won't in vain they give their lives for us to survive and end the cycle of destruction.
@@willhornsby206 if it weren’t for the developers confirming that Shepard is not indoctrinated at any point, maybe I’d agree. But I cannot agree on the sacrifice part. EDI and the Geth are not even given a choice here, they don’t even know it’s on the table. They’re out there one minute shooting Reapers and Husks and then the next, they’re all just dead. Because you killed them all. Any future AI race will see that even Shepard, someone who brokered peace between Synthetic and Organic life, was more than willing to destroy their predecessors to save Organic life and have no reason to believe that their lives are considered in any way equal to Organics. And in a way, that’s spitting on Legion’s sacrifice. You rendered it completely pointless by just killing them all off anyway, you might as well have just let the Quarian’s kill the Geth back on Rannoch.
Killing Zaeed should of been the paragon option. he should of been a test for paragon characters not to work with clearly evil people just for a minor benefit. especially when the team already has multiple characters who do the exact same thing as him
I always felt like Overlord could’ve been so much better if companions had voice lines for certain events/actions. Miranda, Jack, Tali, and Legion in particular really should’ve had some kind of commentary, since the plot of Overlord is somewhat connected to their characters.
Citadel was such a great dlc. I absolutely loved it. It's always the last dlc I do just before I rush off to the Cerberus base. One last golden moment with your crew before the final push
Just the shot of David in that contraption in Overlord makes my eyes glisten. It's just so wrong... Does the same for me for different reasons when I see him in Grissom in ME3. Personally, I'd put "Sky" to C, Overlord up to B, Omega up to A. Otherwise I think you pretty much nailed it.
Agree on number 1 with one major exception…… the dumbing down of the entire squad in falling for Brooks’s somewhat feeble deception. You have the most acclaimed group of people in the galaxy falling for the “ooh silly me” routine and no one thinks to run a background check on this woman who’s appeared out of nowhere just at the same time hundreds of mercs are trying to kill you. So, the plausibility of Shepard and co’s sudden absence of cerebral capacity aside…….. it’s a fantastic DLC.
As an ex Cerberus operative, she probably created a fake profile within the Alliance database. The comics expand on this, she’s apparently a master infiltrator who had already adopted different identities in the past. It’s not beyond the realm of possibilities that she had the resources to create a whole fake identity for herself that could deceive most people. Of course, Liara should have known better because, y’know, Shadow Broker powers and whatnot, although it’s implied that the War with the Reapers has severely impaired her resources and reach.
Good overview, I just think putting Arrival as the worst DLC doesn't make sense because of its story impact alone. The writing isn't great, but it doesnt warrant calling it the worst. It just should have been something that triggers much later. Firewalker should definitely take the worst spot here. I also dont think Leviathan deserves to be in the S tier, ahead of LotSB at that. It's B tier for me, A if I wanted to be generous, it feels shoehorned in and it's never mentioned again except by the Catalyst.
Also just read the bit in the description and I completely agree. Look at the Borg in Star Trek: you can outright walk around their ships and you are so unthreatening to them, so beneath them, that they don't even bother to fight you. That arrogance is absolutely something the Reapers would have too
@@pikmonwolf I'm one of the people who think that their origins shouldn't have been explained at all. You do raise a good point for why that's a good thing but I'd like to counter that: Everything being explained and detailed except for The Reapers makes them a lot more unique and adds tremendously to their horror aspect. Them never having a proper backstory is what made them so terrifying to begin with, it was never about how powerful they are (from the players' perspective). This is Lovecraftian Horror 101, after all. As it stands now, their origins is basically Geth but genocidal. I just wish they at least used the Dark Energy idea that Drew Karpyshyn had.
I'll never get past the Xzibit meme: "Yo dawg; I hear you don't want synthetics to kill organics, so I made synthetics to kill organics so that synthetics don't kill organics."
@@GalahadTheSeekerAfter playing Halo I have to agree 100%. The Flood is the same, you have no idea where they come from and what they want besides killing all life, until 343 takes over and starts retconning everything. The way it's explained also sucks, as someone else already said. But I do love the idea of Leviathans themselves, mythical beings that have had billions of years of evolution from an already complex and dominant base
@@gatzmajortz5033 i think the point is that the reapers kill only advanced organics, so that less advanced ones can survive and start the new cycle, as opposed to synthetics who would destroy all organics forever. Still, i agree it is a bit silly.
27:20 The problem with explaining the reapers is that it would inevitably require a long, complicated, and kind of far-fetched explanation in order to make any sense. Also, the simple fact that they were explained poorly, and the catalyst just comes out of thin air to explain what the point was with questionable logic, also didn't help. Also, more importantly, it would take away time from what the actual end of the game should have been, that being the suicide mission on steroids. Your goal was to never understand them. It was to destroy them, and the end of the game should have reflected that instead of pulling an explanation out of their ass. ME3 didn't need to explain the reapers in order to be satisfying. We can dance around it all we want, but we all know what the Leviathans were made for, to further justify the ending.
There's a reason for Shepard to be grounded without it though. You worked with an organization that has started full on attacking and slaughtering Alliance personnel.
@@pikmonwolfBut they were seemingly fine with you doing that in the main game of ME2, and you can even have the backing of the council in doing it. There's littearly no reason for them to arrest you without arrival.
For the extended cut, the Normandy pick up scene. Harbinger is an AI and has sensors not eyes. The Normandy is a stealth ship and was silent running. So Harbinger couldn't see the ship.
The hammerhead could've been great if they let you dodge projectiles like in the mako. I could see a version of 1 where you can pick between the two for each mission as a mobility vs tankyness tradeoff. Also nothing can compare in the series to how warm and fuzzy the Citadel makes you feel. I wish there was even more slice of life. Especially an epilogue for the perfect destroy ending with Shepard recovering and hanging out with their romance and friends. We may get that in 4 or whatever they decide to do tho.
I cannot believe you put Normandy Crash Site and Firewalker above Arrival! It may have awkward dialogue and a weird plot twist with Kenson’s motivations, but it’s the only part of the story of ME2 that actually advances the main reaper plot line. Arrival should have been the main story of ME2, instead of a pointless heist to take down the Collectors we should have been gathering a team to rescue an alliance scientist (Maybe from the Collectors instead of the Batarians), the game should end with the way Arrival ended. I also think Leviathan is better than citadel, and agin it’s what the main story should have been.
My problem with Leviathan is that it really dumbs down the squadmates and Shepard, because every time they see something that its cleary not right they just brush it aside
@@lightsinadarkworld2013But they do suspect things? They even say that what happened with Garneu’s assistant is reminiscent of indoctrination. When they go to TGS Mineral Works they can tell things aren’t right so they start breaking into places to figure it out themselves.
As my name implies, one game (Freelancer from 2003) is closer to my heart than any other, but even that game couldn't evoke so many emotions from me like Mass Effect did. I heard how good the Citadel DLC was, but on my first true trilogy run, I just simply didn't realize where it even started.. went in blindly, and by sheer chance and dare I say luck, I somehow managed to hold Citadel until the very end of my trilogy run.. precisely 100 hours invested, hundreds of choices and decisions later, after getting to know my crew and friends, the scene of "best days of my life" followed by Shepard's final sentence of "The Best" broke my godam heart so much that I just sobbed for almost an hour straight with no exaggeration.. in that moment, I felt solemn peace with life as a whole and tried to make the most of this sudden outburst of emotions and just really immerse myself into this feeling, knowing nothing else will even come close to it. Despite what I've read and heard about the ending of the trilogy, I still thoroughly enjoyed it and made all three of them just so I can put that run to rest properly. Despite the absolute lows the series has seen, it managed to culminate in probably the best experiences gaming as a whole can offer us during those times. It really showed that it went above and beyond displaying how it transcends art forms where the player themselves are the catalyst in creating the art itself. I have nothing less than eternal gratitude for everyone who worked on these games, allowing me a peak into their creativity and fantasies. We really just lived "The Best days" while taking it for granted huh?
Arrival was important because it gave a better explanation for why Shepard was grounded on Earth at the beginning of ME3 than simply "you worked for Cerberus to save humanity when we couldn't be bothered; thanks for the Normandy 2; but we don't trust you so you are permanently grounded.". Zaeed's inclusion was because you do not get a good "Soldier" type until you get Grunt. If you are playing a Tech or Biotic; you don't have a tank to hold the line for a long time. Garus can't do it; he's too fragile; even if you insist he use an assault rifle instead of his favorite sniper he's just too fragile. I agree that Firewalker and Overlord suck; I've never really even attempted to complete either one after seven or eight play-thru's. I just cannot get the hang of the frigging useless Hammerhead. It is in absolutely no way superior to the Mako except it jumps better. It can't even cross lava any better than the Mako even though heat-convection should push it higher up over the lava to help mitigate the heat. It's a hover-tank that feels like it'd get tripped up by a poorly mowed lawn. The ME3 end-game. I don't hate it; but the original BS of having to do something like 200 hours of Multiplayer to get a slightly better crappy ending sequence was frustrating. I actually never minded the final choices or the three colors of light thing; it was that ending scene with the kid and Grandpa in the snow that made absolutely no sense to me. They should have just gone with the original planned ending even after it was publicly leaked - that would have been better imho. The mission in ME where you get trapped in the mine with the bomb; the bad guy who planned it was supposed to be a Batarian; but they hadn't figured out what they looked like yet; maybe they didn't have the assets to build them; so they wimped out. Liara deciding to avoid getting caught in inescapable traps and excavate for dirty laundry instead of old bones kind of makes sense; especially if you remember that all the ancient relics you find in ME are nearly all Reaper Traps. IMHO citadel seemed so pointless. The other DLCs contributed something to the story; finding out that Cerburus cloned you in case they lost control of you really contributes nothing. How did the clone even escape being indoctrinated like the entire rest of Cerberus? I didn't realize that Traynor actually suits up to help out though, a saw the scenes of her in armor, that was cool. It would be kind of fun to watch the techie who was obsessed with her toothbrush that got left behind become a bad-ass. :D
I still think that arresting you for being Cerberus makes more sense than anything that happens in Arrival. Also you can get Grunt immediately so Zaeed really isn't changing anything there. You can get Grunt before you even go to Omega.
@@pikmonwolf Certainly you can go to get Grunt right away; it will suck hard if you don't have a soldier to keep all those tubie-Krogan's out of your face and you are doing it as a biotic or tech; with one of each for a backup. Not even to mention the boss fight with the Ymir at the end. You can get grunt; but you'll probably double the amount of time it takes to complete the game trying.
Zaeed Massani should be higher as he takes rejection in the citadel party like an absolute legend, dont wanma hook up? Thats your call now wheres more booze an other angry shoot things people?
Played the trilogy for the first time, and i fully agree with Citadel being the top pick. It adds so much to the game in my opinion. It also feels like a final celebration before going into the end game moment, gives a much needed light hearted break in between the trauma simulator that is ME3. This specially got me to finish the game after i messed up The Quarians cause of my ME2 decisions ( but hey, just more fuel to replay it perfectly). I honestly just dropped the game for a few days after realising that even after choosing the Geth, i couldn't save Legion, and the scene with Tali, i just needed a breat (I had made the decision that i wouldn't reload for the first playthrough, and just see how things play out.) Overally, huge fan of this dlc.
It’s nice that your love interest in Leviathan(at least if they’re a squad mate) has some unique lines. Especially when Shep comes from their meeting with Leviathan
My problem with Shadow Broker is if you don't romance Liara, the game kinda throws her in your face as like "You fool! You should've romanced Liara! Now watch Shapard reflexively save Liara over the love of his/her life!! How do you like that?" I found that really irksome and made me unfairly dislike Liara when I was neutral towards her previously.
19:19 - I don't think it should be appreciated. The Extended Cut was made on horrible crunch (so bad a third of the development team quit), and under the intense and sustained harassment and death threats of the developers from some of the worst of the worst of the fanbase, with the women on the team getting the worst of it. The amount of abuse on both the executive and customer level that made the Extended Cut happen should be a scar against it for the rest of time. And no ending can be so bad that it warrants that kind of abuse.
To that I fully agree, but my takeaway is that it is because of that that we should be grateful for its existence. The developers deserved better and delivered something quite good when a large portion of the audience behaved so poorly that they didn't really 'deserve' it. If it had cost money, it would be somewhat of a different story. Bioware executives squeezing the workers hard to make extra cash, which was an issue with the trilogy as a whole. Instead it was a fix that was desperately needed. And I think that the state of the ending in the original release was genuinely unacceptable, but again as you said it didn't warrant the abuse from a certain chunk of the playerbase. But many people raised reasonable responsible critiques. A large amount of people did respond properly. In the end the blame falls to the management who delivered the subpar product in the first place which they then had to overwork their employees to fix.
Amanda Kenson is a 1:1 with that female scientist in Doom 2016 who wants to open a portal to hell for "reasons". I think they both might have british accents too
male shep's tone when he says "the best" says 1000 words, that moment is how I'll remember mass effect and provides an excellent ending :) the time I've spent with these characters truly was the best
i think the reason why people don't like leviathan nowadays is because it doubles down on the ai overthrown organics thing and just completely drops the dark energy plot point. That's why I don't entirely enjoy it. I like the lore and stuff. I just wish it kind of implied it
The thing is, AI vs Organics has been a theme way more than Dark Energy. Dark Energy was referenced like 3 times in ME2 and that's it. It was just throwaway lines, no real theme. Organics vs Synthetics ties into the Geth, Saren, and a few side quests as well like the gambling AI and haywire robot factory.
@@graye2799 I mean it literally was tho? Saren was having two whole speeches about how the synthetics are better than organics and how we should submit. Sure he was doing it under Indoctrination but even then. Hannibal AI which becomes Self-Aware and sends out help if you kill it. The Geth v. Quarian Conflict The money stealer AI that became self-aware. Sovereign itself. There were a lot of Synthetic vs. Organics themes in the first game. ME1 was indeed more concerned with establishing a lot of the game first but they were always core part of the games. More so in ME2 if you talk to Legion and obviously most in ME3 Rannoch.
@@reksraven aside from the Geth and sovereign, the rest are ultimately minor and dont take up time to establish a theme. ME in its entirely was never about AI vs. organics until ME3s ending made it so.
26:57. Bro, Liara IS my love interest. You're damn well right she's getting Shepard's save over the squad-mate. (And romancing/staying faithful to her in LOTSB gives you the most cinematic smooch in the whole game.) ♥
Puts Leviathan at top and uses the cringey Harbinger of ME2 as justification for why "it's all good." As if people that dislike the Leviathan DLC are all just A-Okay with ME2 absolutely ruining all the mystique ME1 worked so hard to create around the reapers. It's among many other things I deeply disliked about ME2. Edit... To be fair, not explaining the reapers at all would be unsatisfying, that's why it's such a shame that ME1 had such an incredible picture of them started for us and then ME2 decides, "let's forget about the reapers a bit and focus on sqaud mates, Cerberus, and Collectors."
I saw that you made videos about Mordin, Legion and Jacob and I was wondering if you're thinking on making one for Tali, Wrex or Miranda (they're my favorites along with Mordin).
One thing I noticed on a Legendary Edition ME2 playthrough is that point about the mute squad members in Lair of the Shadow Broker. Liara's not the only one who has ample motivation to go after that guy. Know who else has a history with him? Thane. And he tells us this. Thane was hired to eliminate the ring-leaders of a Batarian slave operation. The slave ring then had Thane's wife killed in retaliation. Thane thought his family was safe, as he'd taken steps to hide their identities and connection to him. But the Batarians got the info they needed *from the Shadow Broker.* The Broker was directly involved in the murder of Thane's wife, causing the schism with his son and everything thereafter. But Thane doesn't get a single word to say about it when brought along, and gets sidelined during the confrontation.
7:35 you forgot to mention that it is IMPOSSIBLE to complete it on the Xbox 360, look it up. If you want to complete it on Insanity difficulty, you have to basically leave it up to RNG spawns to get lucky to get through it.
@@pikmonwolf I remember being scammed by this back in the day, having completed Insanity runs multiple times but being unable to finish this at all. I think it was only ever developed with PC in mind or was only playtested on PC, it's obvious looking at guides to complete the DLC being only on PC. The release date of 2009 is weird also, the game comes out on 360 in 07, 6 months later is PC release then it just randomly release almost 2 years after the original 360 release. Great content though brah, keep it coming
I think the reasoning for this list is pretty much spot on, so great job on the sorting! You've actually helped me appreciate Leviathan a bit more, which, for some reason, didn't connect with me at all when I played it except that last incredibly atmospheric bit. If it were up to me, and all of this is completely subjective and therefore probably objectively a bad take, I'd definitely swap Overlord and Zaeed, and rank Javik lower. Zaeed is a very nothing character to me. He's entertaining enough but hardly complex and ultimately what I'm trying to do is emotionally connect with and analyze the companions and story and, well, neither him nor his mission offer much in the way of that. Overlord is mechanically flawed but the story justifies a lot of it. It stands as the only time a story has ever gotten me to rage at my screen in a good way, throwing insults at Gavin Archer to be precise. David's portrayal is... controversial but as an autistic person myself, he meant a lot to me and I wanted nothing more than to make it stop for him. To make it quiet. It's telling amd appropriate that the Paragon interrupt is to hit Gavin, that absolute piece of shit, directly in his very fucking deserving face. Javik has the opposite problem as Zaeed. Very unique but completely insufferable. I know that a lot of players love him and I'm a sucker for assholes with good arcs, love both Jack and Miranda very much, but Javik doesn't have anything that would redeem him for me. I can take him shitting on me/Shep for all eternity but constantly belittling everyone and everything I've grown to care about I can only take so much of before I stop caring about his issues. No squadmate is optional to me on principle but if I had to pick one for the airlock, he'd easily be in contention. Thanks for the video, hoping to see more Mass Effect because I truly find all your takes on it interesting!
What's interesting about Javik is he can pretty much 'fail' his character arc. If you convince him to look at the shard, he gets immovably entrenched in the past and it's made clear that he is the worst fate Shepard could have, losing everything and never moving on. If he doesn't look at the shard you see his arc approach its conclusion on Earth. Writing a book with Laira or going to live among Hanar are him finally letting the past go and embracing the future he finds himself in.
I don’t particularly like Leviathan largely because it is emblematic of the dumbing down of the Reapers in ME2 a d especially 3. Sovereign is full on cosmic horror - a force you can neither understand nor bargain with. He reveals that everything is a lie, there is no ingenuity, no great breakthrough, no benevolent precursor race, just the cycle of expansion and harvest, and the reason why is not something it feels obligated to explain. By the time Leviathan came out, there were no mysteries left to the Reapers, and it stripped them of everything that made them compelling and terrifying in the first game. They essentially become little more than an alien force with a bigger navy and propensity to turn captured foes into shock troops. That said, this is ME3’s fault more than Leviathan’s
Mass effect in general fumbled the main story pretty hard after me1. I personally feel like we never should have seen the reapers invasion,it ruins the whole point of "If they get here, it's over" and like you said makes them look like just another generic alien invader trope.
33:34 when I first played ME3 as a kid, I didn’t have the DLC. The game kinda remained just… depressing all the way through. One gut punch after another, taking every tiny victory like it could very easily be the last. Then in the final mission, I had the War Assets for Tali and Garrus to survive, even get Synthesis if I’d wanted. Those two were the squad mates I’d brought with me everywhere throughout the series, but then there was no Normandy cutscene. I was left thinking I’d dragged Tali and Garrus to their deaths, not knowing whether they’d survived like Shepard did when Harbingers beam struck or had become ash. It felt like a betrayal to two great friends. Without the Citadel DLC, my Shepard died having gone through tragedy after tragedy with nothing to help him. When I got LE, every time I go through it, I have a smile on my face and tears in my eyes. It is the peak of Mass Effect, and gave my Shepard’s the best damn night of their lives.
How is ME2 squad mostly renegades? There are only 3 renegades: Zayeed, Grunt and Jack. The rest are either neutral or more paragon than not. With the exception of Samara, of course, who is completely fucked up being purely paragon in her devotion to justice and uncompromisingly renegade in her methods.
Garrus and Mordin are definitely renegade. Miranda supports Cerberus which is renegade. Thane and Samara are neutral-renegade due to their callous disregard for life. Jacob and Legion are neutral.
@@pikmonwolf Well, if we are talking morality in the context of ME, if Shepard works for Cerberus and kills HUNDREDS of people to achieve their goals, and still can end up being pure/almost pure paragon, then your assumptions about Garrus and Mordin, and probably many other characters, are wrong 🙂 By the way, Jacob is more paragon than neutral, several NPCs remark on that, even Jack who hates Cerberus.
@@pikmonwolf I think it is weird to place renegade/paragon on the squadies. There is no way to see their alignment. They don't approve or disapprove of anything. Most characters can push for a certain outcome, but their need will change depending on who they are with. For example Wrex will always be against freeing the Rachni Queen, but almost any other Squadmate can push against that even though they would usually be on Wrex' side if any non-Wrex Squadmate is in the party. Similar to how Ashley will always push to let the council die because she has the anti-alien streak. You could say that Liara usually presents the Paragon side but she is really the only one who is consistently taking Paragon Priority. Every other Squadmate can switch depending on party comp. I had Wrex argue for and against saving the Council, same with Garrus, Tali and Kaidan. Same for every other decision in the game. In ME2 it is even worse because there aren't many decisions were both Squadmates chime in. Often times they actually push for the Paragon option or agree with Shepard regardless. The Paragon Renegade System is ultimately only for Shepard. No other character really falls fully into either of the two categories as they mostly present extremes.
15:30 Your points on why the Omega DLC is good are very valid, I completely agree with you on this. 23:10, Wow, I didn't know each building in bring down the sky was part of a design competition between different BioWare designers!?!
Good list overall but I’d place Normandy Crash Site in F tier on account of how laughably short it is and the fact it’s basically a walking sim collectathon. Presley’s journals are nice but it’s a waste of time imo. I love the Citadel DLC, and I think the Citadel Epilogue Mod, which only lets you play it after the main story has wrapped up, makes it feel less weird tonally. It’s like the celebration at the end of Return of the Jedi that way.
For me F tier is the stuff where I think the best experience is not even installing it. So it would be D tier at worst. I feel like overall a play through where you do Normandy crash site feels more whole than one where you don't do it.
@@pikmonwolf That’s a fair point. I’ve recently finished the trilogy for the first time and couldn’t believe how bad Arrival was lmao. Got to the point where I was doing a Mystery Science Theater 3000 bit in my head as I was going along to make it tolerable.
For me, the best part of playing the shadow broker dlc, was when Shepard told the Asari Spectre why a hostage does jack shit against someone who readily sacrificed thousands of people, council included, and annihilated a batarian colony. Afterwards I followed that up during the fight when I piled one more warcrime: I pulled out the M-920 Cain and glassed the area just to kill her.
They did a patch recently, bug fixes, made it a bit more stable, so don't be so pessimistic. And yeah, great game. Played more of it even after the ad was all made and approved lol.
I think the comedy of the citadel dlc is actually what makes it sad. Usually I do all the story stuff before the very final mission. So the party is the last thing that you and your squad do together before Shepard “dies” and that’s what makes it sad. I absolutely think it’s the best DLC for that reason alone. Knowing that this will be the last time you hang out with everyone you’ve become friends with. That’s the best part.
I mean they could've kept Sachs, but he wouldn't have sounded like any other batarian in the game who all had a distinct voice style. They could add a filter, but then it'd sound odd.
@pikmonwolf But none of the squad mates are voiced by the generic species VA? All of them have a different VAs lol I agree fully with the rest of the video tho, great breakdown of the DLCs!
15:00 As for why some people dislike Omega, I can think of a few reasons. 1. It's yet another mission involving Cerberus, a faction that even in the base game overshadows the Reapers given that you spend more time fighting them then anyone else. People were probably getting tired of this self indulgent writer's pet of a faction. 2. It makes Cerberus even more absurdly, impossibly and unjustifiably powerful than they already are. Not only have they managed to in mere months build a fleet and mechanized army capable of waging war on multiple fronts against multiple superpowers despite having no colonies, not only can they stage an invasion of the Citadel (something that took a fleet of Geth ships, a Reaper, and a back door in the form of the Conduit last time) in the middle of a war when everyone would be on high alert, not only are they somehow able to know what everyone is up to because they’re somehow even better at spying than the Salarians, now we're told they also have the manpower and firepower to seize control of a space station with a population of 7.8 million (almost twice that of L.A.). A space station full of criminal and mercenary gangs. 3. It involves Aria, who is also a self indulgent writer's pet. Shamus Young said it best in his written retrospective: "Aria is a strutting diva who gets flashy camera angles and gets to proclaim, “I AM Omega!” She has no reason to star in the nightclub scenes, except the writer liked the design and wanted to play Aria and they wanted you to participate by watching and playing the part of the dumb mook she’s got wrapped around her finger. That would be fine as a sort of “flavor text” kind of character, except that your paragon / renegade responses have been re-mapped to “moron” and “bootlick”. You’re not allowed to decide how you feel about Aria, because the writer says you think she’s awesome.... These people don’t actually have clever things to say, and in fact a lot of their dialog is shallow and dumb when it isn’t just clichés copied from better stories. But when they’re on stage the world revolves around them, because they have character designs that overshadow everyone else and the cinematographer is on their side to give them all the dramatic cuts and close-ups they need. When these characters are around the storyteller treats them like the protagonist and relegates Shepard to the role of their impotent sidekick / whipping dog. It would be bad enough if the writer simply made Shepard an inert observer of this show, but then they co-opt your dialog wheel and force you to participate." And ME3 continues this by showing that she has Councilor Tevos at her beck and call. As if the writer hadn't already heaped enough favors on this annoying character.
Yeah, a lot of different choices than I would have made in this list. All of my choices would be how much narrative content the DLC added and Firewalker is dead last. I agree with the lobotomy suggestion. Still unsure why you hate on Arrival so hard, given it's at least an _end_ to ME2. Also, rescuing David is the only reason to do Overlord. But to me (and the Geth lore) makes it higher than where you put it, despite the fact that they tied it to the hovercraft. At least you gave Leviathan some love. And Zaeed. I wrote that scene into my massive fanfic just because of how much Zaeed rocks.
I respect why you put Arrival so low but I just cannot agree that it's a whole tier worse than Firewalker. Firewalker is boring in every conceivable way but, as silly as it sounds, at least Arrival is a fun little spectacle if you don't think about the plot. Fighting without your squadmates sucks but it's better than the Hammerhead.
Arrival can be fun in parts. But overall I think the game is just straight up better without it. Firewalker you can just play the main missions and it can have fun moments. It doesn't drag everything down though, specifically because it's forgettable.
14:04 As an autistic person I felt that. There's a specific one of Gavin Archer's lines that really accentuates it for me: "His autistic mind can interpret the geth language at its most basic form and mimic their phonetics." Now, I'm not going to be generous and act like it's an intentional characterization decision, because it's probably not - Mass Effect 2 is just a product of its time. It's a line I cringe at every single time. It reflects the weird, uncomfortable way that autistic people are spoken about like aliens or robots, too socially disconnected to have a conversation with people in the same room as them, while in the same breath being praised as genius savants. Rather than just being a person _with_ autism, it's all about his 'autistic mind'. Here though, whether intentional or not, it's a fitting thematic element. By our modern understanding of neurodivergence, David isn't some living supercomputer; he obviously just has a special interest in mathematics and programming logic and a fascination with the geth that made him an ideal candidate for interfacing with the Overlord project. But to Gavin, that's who David is. He speaks about his own brother like he's some kind of freak of nature, like he's analyzing a specimen in a lab, making no effort to empathize with him on a human level. The fact that David is autistic made him sub-human in Gavin's eyes right down to the way the dialogue _talks_ about him.
I honestly always interpreted as an intentional decision. If it was said by anybody else I'd think it was just a rough line, but it's the dehumanizing villain who says it. At the very least, they knew it was something that kind of person would say. And yeah, it hurts to hear. Gavin is such a POS
Another weird thing about the Genesis comic for Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 3 is that it doesn't seem to be able to compute the fact you can complete all the Loyalty Missions BEFORE the Joker mission and thus if using it for Mass Effect 3 then you need to choose having a fully loyal squad OR having crew characters that have very little impact on Mass Effect 3 like Kelly Chambers..
I love the Hammerhead. My biggest complaint about 3's gameplay was the lack of the Hammerhead. Edit: My understanding is Javik's mission as always planned as the first DLC for 3. They just managed to get it done after the base game went gold but before the game released. Would it have been nice if they incleded the DLC for free? Sure but IMO them not doing so got more backlash then it deserved.
Well hey, everyone's allowed their own opinion lmao. And he was originally going to be an important part of the main plot, so he was definitely originally designed as base game content.
@@pikmonwolf One of the things you mentioned about the Hammerhead is the hitscan enemies. And that mistake in the enemy design is IMO its biggest flaw. The Hammehead was designed like something meant to evade hits not soak them so the hitscan enemies make it seem much worse then it should I
@@roguerifter9724 Yea, the two vehicles are definitely exact opposites. One is slow and tanky, the other is fast and nimble, but weakly armored due to weight constraints.
@@TwinPeaksIndustries Yeah and I definitely prefer the agility. there's a reason in most vehicle focused games involving Mech or fighter piloting, or driving Tanks with one or two exceptions I rarely take something from the heaviest weight class if I have a choice and usually when making custom designs favor mobility. I'm the kind of player who when they start a new Armored Core game the first thing I do is go looking for Hover Legs
The backlash was not deserved however the issue with Javik was that he was actually on Disc DLC. Meaning that if you own an original Mass Effect 3 Disc for the 360 you technically have his DLC. That was the controversy. It was pretty common practice back in the day from greedy publishers (I point out publishers bc 90% of the time the Devs aren't at fault for those decisions).
I wholeheartedly agree with the placements, especially Omega. I see so many people hating on it but the main issue is where it sits in the chronology of the reaper war, it always feels as though its sidetracking you even if you are getting resources for the main conflict. The story on its own though is good, the set pieces and gameplay remain engaging throughout.
18:22. Well, tbf, Zaeed and Kasumi were originally meant to ship with ME2 but got cut from the game and later added as DLC. They weren’t always planned to be DLC squad mates.
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Funny enough, the original script I wrote up had me going over a bunch of things I liked about the game, and I had to cut it down for being too long. I actually really enjoyed my time with this game and 110 has been great to work with.
Alright, I can't expect everyone to agree with me on which DLCs are the best/worst. But come on, Arrival was bad, but not that bad. Overlord is probably the one where we disagree the most, it should've been in A tier. Extended Cut should've been C tier.
Also did you say Javik is good for a squad mate because we mostly have paragon squad mates? The only paragon squad mates are Liara and Tali, and we don't get Tali until far into the game. EDI can't be categorized as either cause shes an AI. Everybody else is renegade, Garrus, Ashley, James, Javik.
I also can't say its fair to rip on ME1 and ME2 for having not-as-smooth squad mate interactions as ME3, this is clearly something that got better with each game. Anyway, I'm hoping for a successful Mass Effect TV adaptation, we'll see how that plays out.
From what i saw it looks like all of the minigames were just ripped from yakuza
I hate Bring down the Sky. Jumping over landmines is beneath me.
@@GageeeeeI’m late but yeah the game is trash and unoriginal. And it was the first game ever to make me quit playing because of SOUND DESIGN…. The sound design is somehow worse than the VA and awful writing
It will always make me sad how Dr. Chakwas' VA was unavailable for the Citadel DLC. So many potential interactions we'll never see.
Agreed. She was always so isolated, seeing her interact with everyone would've been awesome.
I think Dr Chakwas is so underutilised across the series. She has very little dialogue outside of a couple of cutscenes, which is really too bad.
Dr. Chocolates. A very respectable position.
mommy chakwas
I think it might have to do something with the fact that Carolyn Seymour, Chakwas' voice actress, also voiced Queen Myrrah.
My only complaint with Citadel is that Mordin and Thane get their tributes but Legion and the dead Virmire squadmate don’t. Other than that, it’s a masterpiece and a great last hurrah for the characters who have practically become family to us all
I think it makes sense not to do a tribute to Ash or Kaidan, since they would've died years ago at that point. Better to put those resources into their living scenes. As for Legion, I've got a lot of complicated feelings on them in Mass Effect 3 so I'm kind of happy they weren't messed with further lol.
Not to mention Kelly if you romance her is treated like she never existed. 😡
@@NostalgicGamerRickOShay THIS. Pisses me off so much
@@NostalgicGamerRickOShayand they replaced her fish feeding role, what she's probably most known for in the community, with a VI. that's gotta be a low blow 😭
I think having a photo and like doing a drink shot of the "absent friends" would have been good citadel dlc tribute
Whole mass effect 2 had this problem where your squad rarely interacted with each other outside the missions and in DLCs. I noticed this after playing mass effect 3 since that game made your ship feel more alive as the squad actually moved around the ship and interacted with each other after missions. And then came the Andromeda and they overdid the squad interaction thing.
Yeah that's my biggest complaint about 2, really hurts replayability as well
I hate to defend that trash game, but Mass Effect 3 and especially the citadel DLC, did a great job of that. even Andromeda was better
Yeah, I might be mistaken but it feels like there were more squad interaction in Mass Effect 1 when in the Citadel elevators than in the entirety of Mass Effect 2.
I assume this is because of the relatively quick turn around between ME1 and ME2 plus Bioware not knowing how to handle such a large voice cast....
I actually quite like how involved crew was in andromeda and the rec board and jaal giving lessons on his language. Idk it all just made sense to me we aren't playing soldiers in that game and the stakes aren't literally amextermination of all life so I did appreciate the fact our companions did generally seem like friends. This is the one and only feature I hope mass effect 4 carries over.
@@editorrbr2107honestly 3 was a pretty good game after all the kinks were ironed out
When garrus said "best years of my life were on that ship." I felt like that was a true send off to the franchise, your best friend and possible love interest saying what we all thought was an amazing and heart breaking moment especially when shepard said. "The best." It was the perfect goodbye.
Yep, especially considering it was the last scene of the final DLC.
Throughout the entire trilogy, I have always stanned for Female shepard due to voice acting. Femshep simply was better voiced as both paragon and renegade I found.....
Except for that last line where Mark Meer simply NAILED. The little "hmph" he makes and the wistful/somewhat melancholic "The best" actually has me tearing up ever so many years later.
@@Allisterhuggins Femshep for the W. Gotta love that Jennifer Hale voice acting.
my first ever bioware game was jade empire from when i was like, 5 so seeing the decline really hurts and i know they'll mess up the upcoming ME game so the citadel is in a really special place of : it's over, now it's just the sadness of shep dying and the fond memories alongside "man, i love bioware...oh look, anthem!"
@@AllisterhugginsI think Meer is better than Hale in 3. Her renegade lines especially feel forced
"Loyalty mission for Shepard" is a fantastic way to describe the Citadel DLC. I like to also refer to it as "The anime Beach day episode" for how silly it can turn into
Gonna be real, I'd put Firewalker at 16. Not that I'm over-inclined to defend Arrival, but I do kinda like the vibe of Shepard having to wriggle out of a situation that they've gotten into on their own, and I do kinda like flipping the bird to Harbinger, even if the writing isn't fantastic. I loathe every time I have to get into that stupid hovercraft. Admittedly, I'm also one of the five people in existence who really genuinely liked the Mako. Admittedly, I also play games like Snowrunner where the only gameplay is navigating terrain.
Ah the Mako was a lot of fun, way better than the Hammerhead. Arrival is definitely less tedious to play through, but I hate it for how the bad writing drags everything down.
I really liked running around with the hammerhead...
I actually liked the hammerhead, i just wish it wasn't made of tissue paper and shot nerf darts.
The mako didn't deserve the hate it got tbh
It's the weirdest meme in the series as a new player and mostly just stems from how shit me1 planets are
@@slamjam7676 The Mako is actually very overpowered. Turns a Geth Armature into slag in 4.5 seconds flat.
The funny part of Arrival is that if you let the countdown clocks expire, you do lose the game. Nice of the devs to account for that possibility!
Arguably more entertaining than the actual dlc.
I actually showed that off in my video about it, giving it credit where it's due.
@@pikmonwolfwhat's hilarious about that game fail cutscene it just had TIM hanging out with the Normandy crew when the reapers show up which is just hilarious to think about.
@@collincaperton6718yeah it looks like someone just fucking around in g mod lol
I really enjoyed Arrival, was surprised when Shepard had to lose a fight, and the terror he feels when he sees the object, knowing they are corrupted. Lot of fun action too.
it helps the transition of ME2to ME3 as well, any polish is good polish
I liked it too, especially because you are alone most of the time. There are no squad members to help you. It's only you and your skills. I hardly consider it the worst DLC. Pinnacle Station is the worst DLC for me.
It also has some of the best music in the series. That haunting synthline that plays in the background as you fight your way out of the final complex has a downright apocalyptic feel to it.
To me I feel like that one part where you fight a horde of guards as they attempt to take you down in Arrival really sets how much of a monster Commander Shepard is canonically, not to mention the pistol section of Citadel
the Genesis 1 comic has one saving grace and that is the glorious image of Garrus doing some matrix leap nonsense while dual wielding guns
Something I appreciate about Overlord is that you can help David for the paragon ending, and you get to pistol whip the doctor without any renegade points. Plus, David winds up being a war asset, so it’s a neat touch.
I do find myself wishing I could just shoot him as a renegade action lol
I’m autistic and so are my kiddos and Overloard always makes me sob uncontrollably when I’m finished. It makes me sick to my stomach and hurts my heart in ways I could never begin to explain… and yet when I do my yearly playthrough I ALWAYS have to save David. It’s important.
@@crystalf1608 I have a relative that is autistic and can't find myself to ever do the option to give David over to Cerberus.
@@crystalf1608It's amazing, and sometimes terrifying, what seeing something you deal with daily being represented in a video game. I have schizophrenia and I felt like that when playing Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Overlord made me feel similar. People with mental health issues have always been looked down on and sometimes brutally experimented on. Getting to save someone like that in a game was magnificent. Even when Joker talks about biotic humans being considered as "handicapped" while he has brittle bone disease is a cool little interaction. He says maybe now people will stop looking at biotics as a disability. He says if I sneeze hard I can break a rib, being able to move stuff with your mind is not a handicap. These games actually do a great job in representing disparities that exist in real life. Racism compared to Xenophonbia, disabilities, even being "designed to be perfect" fits in there because there is so much pressure for women to be "perfect." And Jack being how she was because of what was done to her. She has a great arc too. She goes from pissed off and angry to very vulnerable in her romance option. I always romance Jack now.
im autistic and only recently finally got to play the dlc myself but i already knew the whole story, so i was shocked by how much it affected me, i hear the music and i start crying, glad i could pistol whip the brother, but i really wish it had let you talk to people on your crew about it i think it is objectively so upsetting it was a bit irresponsible to just leave you with that as how it ends.
it is good that it doesnt end with david okay, dont want the normies to miss the message by being like “oh see hes okay right away just like that! it wasnt THAT bad” and i am glad hes okay in 3, but there needed to be something at the time to discuss what happened, have shepard be a proxy for us being noticeably bothered and when you go to your crew members theyll have thing to say about it
but idk it just really hit home, ive been so heavily dehumanized all my life in response to my autism, its just sad that while it has a powerful message this is the only place an explicitly autistic character was in the series, and i cant really think of any that are good headcannons as autistic, maybe liara???
kaiden actually come to think of it, but yea only explicit autism is just such a sad and upsetting story
The first time I heard that pickup sound in firewalker in Legendary edition I legit thought the game had broke
I've heard that it's actually a glitch lol
The sound definitely seems like a corrupted WAV file. So EA is rereleasing good games after breaking their data files and calling it an "upgrade". Pretty par for the course, I'd say.@@pikmonwolf
@@compmanio36 I quite like Legendary Edition overall, but there's definitely new issues and plenty of missed opportunities.
I guess the nice thing is if there's bugs in the LE it has the potential to be patched, while any bugs in the OG are there for life at this point...@@pikmonwolf
Maybe a mod will fix it.
How can you put a DLC into F tier that allows you to blow up over 300k Battarians?!
- Colonist Shep, probably
Yet I picked a "paragon" (hero if you played it in Russian) answers. A.k.a tried to alert batarians
This was one of my favourites lol and I hated leviathan
-Ruthless Shep, definitely
Screw batarians except for the preacher in me2 he's the only cool batarian.
Repent the end is nigh
Huge missed opportunity not using the "I should go" bit to end the video. Otherwise excellent and based as always.
When you make videos, you really relate to the "do I sound like that?" aspect of that conversation lmao
If you ever watch big dan gaming this is how he always signs off a video about mass effect
That would've made him come off as a pathetic ass-kisser. I'm glad when people show they have enough of a life not to do that!
Dude Citadel DLC was the best DLC. It was like the main writer ran into a fanfic writer and they got their notes mixed up and made an absolute memey yet beautiful story.
Im genuinely glad I heard your explanation of why you like leviathan because Ive always liked it but couldnt really put it into words. The theory that "domination" is the end-point of the evolutionary process makes sense since its not only a power in-game, but it also relates back to the main conflicts of the game (the genophage, the creation and control of synthetic or organic life). Maybe the ardat-yakshi fit into this somehow
"I am the genetic destiny of the Asari."
Being sterile is a rather lowsy destiny for a species
That’s a little depressing tbh. That every species is fated to be like leviathan someday.
Leviathan genuinely pushed me to the destroy ending. I can never trust the Reapers after that DLC
Zaeed’s DLC is worse than being weird that the new kids on the block created the Blue Suns. It’s a straight up retcon. The first book, Revelation, established the Blue Suns as a very long standing gang in the galaxy. A Batarian has inner monologue about being pissed about humans suddenly making up such a large percentage of the gang even though they’ve barely been on the galactic scene.
Yeah that's a dumb retcon. Still doesn't bug me too much since it's relatively minor. Retcons only really piss me off when they're a bad change to something big.
Taking Mass Effect's EU seriously was your first mistake
Yea it made no sense. I had taken it as Zaaed founded that specific faction of the Blue Suns. Like a franchise.
@@3AHolesI'm pretty sure that was the implication each franchise seems to have its own leader or founder like I could see the blue suns operating in the terminus being different than the ones on the citadel who are also different than the ones on illium.
cerberus invade omega and citadel much more stupid than this
Another thing about Bring Down the Sky: the choice you have to make. You either kill Balak and sacrifice the hostages or save them and let Balak go. Something that Arrival doesn't have. Making a choice.
Even if you kill Balek he lives. 😂
@sourdeez5558 No, he doesn't!
@@sourdeez5558 If he's wounded and left there, he shows up in 3...somehow.
If you let him go, you end up having a pretty descent moment in ME3.
@@Bionickpunk i was really surprised by that moment, a solid argument towards why forgiveness is a good thing after all
Citadel DLC in ME3 is by far the best in the trilogy. That DLC was dedicated to nothing more than just having a damn good time. It really felt like you were spending time with people you’ve known for years and are proud to call your friends.
I love the ending, when Shep is leaning against the rail, staring at the Normandy, as the surviving crew members (I always lose a few in ME2) rejoin them. Shepard knows it was their last hurrah.
@@legionarybooks13 I hope Shep and crew come back in the next game for one last ride.
@@docproc144 honestly, I hope they don't. To me, they had their one last ride and it ended the way it should. Shepard's sacrifice would be meaningless if he / she comes back from the dead yet again. I hope it's set far into the future, as was hinted at since Liara looks much older in the trailer, with a new protagonist. Let the legends rest and a new generation take the helm. 🙂
@@legionarybooks13 I see where you’re coming from. But, as you know, a lot of people had a problem with Mass Effect 3, more specifically the entire ending of it. I just feel like if the characters returned and BioWare gave them another run they maybe they could give them some proper closure. Liara being heavily featured in the game wouldn’t feel right to me without Shepard by her side, in fact it’d make me more depressed than anything, especially considering she was my love interest throughout my main head canon playthrough. And judging from how the games play out and certain dialogues, it almost seems like that’s the direction BioWare wanted players to go romantically anyway was with Liara. So I consider her romance to be canon. And the new game seems to be canonizing the Destroy ending, which is fine cause that’s what I chose anyway, because that’s the only ending in which Shepard survives(if war assets are high enough). So if the Destroy ending where Shepard lives is canon, and they’re bringing Liara back, and she wiped off a piece of Shepard’s armor and smiled in the trailer, it leads me to believe that Shepard may be coming back as well in this one. The potential for a game set during a post Reaper War galactic reconstruction era is huge.
@@legionarybooks13 I purposely save them so it's a full crew hang out. Everyone but the ones who get killed no matter what in ME3 spending some time together before the final fight.
*Thoughts* - If Bioware was going to remain wedded to the war assets, completing challenge missions on pinnacle station should have actually counted for something. You have assets you can acquire from other DLC, even a Conrad Verner arc, so why not that one?
The Locust is amazing. Kasumi’s loyalty mission is a must-do first thing if you’re an engineer or adept.
Omega is based. Great combat. Good characters. Solid writing. Fun to wreck. And a REALLY immersive look at Omega.
Would've been fun to have an email Ahern at the very least. And yeah Omega is underrated.
@@pikmonwolfespecially because Omega DLC offers an ability that has massive troll potential for the Kai Leng boss fights...
@@pikmonwolf okay, I need to play through Omega again. I always skip it because Aria is such an arrogant bitch who I've never liked. I suppose I should give her credit where it's due, and just f*ck with her the entire time (lol).
@@pikmonwolf I like Omega a lot because of the specific resolution for the engineer class, I would have loved it if they had thought of this for the other games and classes.
@@emylikula9159absolutely should have had more individuality based on character class etc. (Vega kicking the Rannoch AA gun in ME3 and Edi’s glitch are also an excellent touch)
The way I play mass effect made leviathan feel sooooo good. I tend to chip away at missions and jump between them so slowly building up the revelations of leviathan felt so satisfying
I've done that in a playthrough before. I prefer doing it all in one chunk, but there's a definite charm to the gradual progression.
I gotta say the best thing about citadel to me is that it truly shows that your crew at this point arent just squad mates or friends, but family. The family of the normandy!
It's super well executed!
I absolutely love the mod that changes the Citadel DLC to be the epilogue. I absolutely get the story relevance of Shepard's sacrifice, but the whole idea of Citadel being the after-party of the Reaper war and Shepard and their crew *finally* getting the chance to relax, only to be hit with the clone? It lends itself well to the comedy of the DLC.
Oh I like this a lot. One day I’ll finally have a pc and be able to do a modded playthrough of the trilogy.
@@alarictheredboi276yearsago4 it's well worth it, the mods can change the 3rd game like crazy. Adds so many cool features
That mod’s the canon ending to the series; no doubt
How does that even work with the endings??
Problem with that interpretation is that at least 2 of the endings end in Shepard's death. The other 2 are, continuing the war without the crucible doing anything and Shep's death being debatable. Citadel being a last hurrah before the end makes more sense to me.
Arrival is S tier because you get to wipe out an entire Batarian colony.
300000 batarian genocide is putting Arrival on SS+ tier.
S tier is a travesty for such a masterpiece
It deserves god tier
@@omnicrete7470 only if it let us wipe out their home system and not just a colony.
Four eyed fucking scum.
One small defense of Arrival. The final moment of it is one of my favorite scenes in the series. Hacket steps onto a Cerberus ship, an enemy vessel, and meets Sheppard himself. He doesnt even glance at the report and tells Sheppard that he trusts our judgment without hesitation. It made me respect him a hell of a lot more than I did before.
I think (just my opinion) a lot of people didn't like Omega because they simply didn't like Aria. Even though she's voiced by Carrie Anne Moss, Trinity in the Matrix series. She's the crime boss of the Trilogy, even moreso than the Shadow Broker, and Shepard is this icon of virtue. In addition, they kill off the only female Turian we've seen so far, Omega isn't a hub world after you take it back (A lot of people wanted this) and there were a number of pretty bad glitches.
Oh yeah Omega 100% shoulda been a hub, especially for its price.
Ngl I kinda just enjoyed doing a die hard
Wait WHAT??? Trinity voiced Aria? I never knew that! Its insane!
Aria was fine in 2 in small doses but a whole dlc with her must felt awful. Plus Nyreen freaking out over the adjutants while they are inferior and squisher versions of banshees. Srsly they drop faster than cannibals.
Speaking of Genesis, G1 even butchers ME2 intro with Miranda and the Illusive Man. Originally, if you transferred ME1 save, it reflected your decision regarding Counsil's fate, but, since with Genesis those lines are replaced with generic "Commander Shepard uncovered the truth" and "We're at war…" lines. The latter line is even reused from later dialogue with TIM.
Anyway, Genesis Intro Dialogue Undo Mod is essential.
Speaking of mods, Pinnacle Station was actually ported into LE by the community.
Oh my god you're right! I could've sworn I remember that dialogue being different, but chalked it up to misremembering. Funny enough if I realized that it might've taken last place from Arrival lol.
Yeah. It removes 'he's a hero, a BLOODY icon'. Which is a shake because its probably the best thing she says
Arrival may be the worst DLC, but it's easily got one of the best soundtracks imo
Can't argue there
Well, when you first get to the final battle and don't know what will happen next (basically nothing out of the scripted scenario) and just grind on... It's so enraging... I mean you set difficulty to insanety, you play adept or sniper and there is literally no one to actually back you up.. 😅
It also has the best easter egg when you wait out the two day countdown
Oh?@@BlueGamingRage
Yeah the writing is not great but if you turn off your brain and just enjoy the scenery and music It's really fun. I actually enjoyed it a lot.
Arrival be like:
Dr. Kenson: Shepard, please, touch the Object Rho
Shepard: *touches the Object Rho*
Dr. Kenson: I'm sorry, but I cannot allow you to begin the Project
Shepard: *confused face* Why? You literally three seconds ago asked me to help you, didn't you?
"I can't let you do the thing I just told you how to do!"
Emmm... Object Rho disables Shephard actually by this touch. That was plan to capture him. Just remember that main Collector (which contolled by reapers)in combat says that Shepard needs alive. The game does not explain why, but from guesswork - to replace (or rather for DNA crossing) the main collector.
@@pikmonwolf Logically the game explains this by saying that under indoctrination victim loses mental abilities
Well if Object Rho is reaper material then it's indoctrinated and getting close to it made her go mad
He doesn't touch anything it just activates on its own.
20:03 I think it makes sense, the Normandy is staring down harbinger and joker and edi for sure had every single weapon primed, just waiting for harbinger to open his laser eye thingy to try shoot them down. Harbinger knows this and so doesn't fire, knowing a single cruiser and a few soldiers is far less dangerous to the reapers than letting troops board the citadel
Good point. Harbinger would certainly win the fight, but it can't risk even a scratch with the soldiers rushing the beam.
Normandy: DO IT FIRE!!!!
Harbinger: No. You'll lose anyway.
Normandy: Not if I shoot you in the face a couple times. Open the eye or are you scared?
Harbinger: You are nothing but a piece of scrap. Not worth my time.
Normandy: Scared you'll end up like the Collectors?
Harbinger: Get off my hill.
Normandy: Fine. I got what I came for anyway. I'll go back up into space and kill some more off your troops. Shepard can handle you themself. *flies off*
Harbinger: Shepard! You will die here! *fires lazor*
Later-
Shepard: Hey Harbinger.
Harbinger: What!? How....
Shepard: See you in hell. *Destroy ending*
And that's honestly not even the most logical argument for why Harbinger didn't shoot down the Normandy.
I completely hated Overlord. I understand why it can be important to see the inherent cruelty of Dr. Archer to his brother, but I still think its unacceptable to make Dr. Archer that bad and face no real consequence. The closest thing to consequence is what happens in ME3 (I didn't tell him that David was ok), but seriously, Shepard kills people for much less than the abuse that Dr. Archer put David through. And while the over-gratuitous violence might make someone seek a new perspective if they are ableist, I am autistic and I got SO uncomfortable when I realized what they were setting up. Though David is arguably the core of the DLC, he's barely even a character. His writing perpetuates tropes that makes autistic people seem alien or robotic or completely not understandable to non-autistic people.
As a neurodivergant person myself, I always interpreted it as a direct deconstruction of the savant trope. Showing how reducing autistic people to 'human computers' leads to cruelty.
And they make up for Archer's fate in 3 because you can make him kill himself which is brutal.
@@pikmonwolf I can definitely see how David is a deconstruction of the savant trope, but for me it would have stuck and felt better to see if they explicitly let David talk to Shepard, or made David's abstract communication with Shepard a bit more blatant. Maybe let Shepard try to talk directly to David? Because he's communicating what happened through the video footage that he plays when you're in the mainframe or whatever happens. Maybe allow that to be more of a dialogue than a series of exposition.
Overall, I can recognize that Overlord is pretty groundbreaking for its time, and maybe its unfair of me to ask for better when the conversation on neurodiversity has improved so much since Overlord was released.
I disagree; maybe the DLC hit me so hard because of my nephew, and I would have preferred to get more David 'screen time's if even just in the form of video clips where we see him having a life outside of Gavin, but coming back in ME3 is one of the best parts of ME3 to me and the only reason to do the DLC.
Nice list, but I *completely* disagree with your take on Leviathan and the Reapers. It's true that nearly everything in the Mass Effect universe has an explanation. It's harder sci-fi than almost any mainstream space opera. But that's precisely why the Reapers' mystique should have been preserved.
Reapers were the only thing in the Mass Effect universe that escaped any scientific explanation. That was terrifying. It's been said that any sufficiently advanced alien is indistiguishable from a god, and the Reapers leaned into that very effectively. A semi-realistic setting turning into cosmic horror as the true antagonist is revealed is such a brilliant twist, I'm surprised it hasn't been done since.
Leviathan ruined that (though ME2 and 3 had already shifted away from this aspect of the Reapers). Not only was it a mistake to explain the Reapers' motives and origins, but said explanation was frankly not good at all. It confirmed the Reapers were really just killer robots, and retroactively made Sovereign, an otherwise excellent and genuinely threatening villain, look like a complete idiot.
Still better than Arrival, I guess.
I know you commented like 7 months ago, but I gotta say something, cause i completely disagree with you. Not explaining a major plot point in ANY story, not just Mass Effect, is extremely lazy and a sentiment that you as a creator of said plot had no Plan from the start and seem really incompetent. I dont think its mysterious at all, it just seems lazy and unfinished to not explain such a major plotpoint.
Now weather you like the explanation or not is obviously subjective and completely up to anyone, I for my part really liked it, but I was def super glad they explained the Reaper origin
@@assetix1778 Hard, hard disagree. Do we still fear the monster in a horror movie after having seen it? Does the lack of a rational explanation for the supernatural ruin the fantasy genre? Mystery is an invaluable tool in storytelling, not a lazy shortcut.
In his speech, Sovereign implied he was more god than machine. He gave us no reason to doubt that. In the self-contained story of Mass Effect 1, we never learned where he came from, what he wanted, or how his creepy will-breaking power worked. We were well into cosmic horror territory, where the threat is so immense and extraordinary that it is inherently unknowable. And yet, it worked perfectly! Unfortunately, Mass Effect 3 and Leviathan saw fit to reduce the Reapers to an engineering problem.
As for the explanation itself, I don't think I could make it worse if I tried. It involves massive retcons, deus ex machinas galore, insufficient build-up, outside-context actors, a downscaling of the main threat, and absolutely ridiculous logic. Seriously, robots created to kill people to stop them from creating robots that kill people...does it really all come down to a bad for-loop in the Reapers' code?
Your opinion is your own and I respect it, but I just can't understand it. In fact, I'd say that if there is such a thing as objectively bad writing, Mass Effect 3 and Leviathan's handling of the Reapers is an outstanding example.
Glad someone else gets it. The Leviathan DLC is the worst by far to me. It absolutely ruined the Reapers, along with the ending of 3, turning them into every bad AI logic cliche. Some mysteries work best when they stay a mystery, no answer could be truly satisfying. Having the Reapers as these mysterious cosmic horror beings beyond human understanding worked great.
I hate Leviathan because it double downs on ME3 ending.
If they really want to include the leviathans only hint on them through murals, some (audio)logs etc. This would have actually improved the series, because it left way more room for speculation. Like: are the Reapers the husk form of Leviathans? Are Reapers created by or after the Leviathans?
In addition they should have been placed into ME2, because in ME3 they really don't fit into the urgency of the scenario.
And if you want the leviathans more tangible: Make the collector main base a dead leviathan. Again: this would have asked & answered so many new & old questions, that genuinely would have improved the setting/story.
33:40 When I first got this scene it was with Maleshep and Tali, I don't mind saying I legitimately cried when Shepard said "the best" as we look on at the Normandy, knowing he'll die. And man the version with the Thane romance was amazing, it basically implies that Shepard could feel that this would be their last fight before their demise.
That's a grrat scene. And yeah the DLC gave a lot of love to Thane romancers.
Doing the DLC with Jack as your LI, and her genuine love for Shepard and terror that he’ll die is absolutely heartbreaking. It keeps trying to tempt me into survival even though doing so goes against my morals. I cannot abide killing the Geth and EDI just to kill the Reapers and survive. And regardless on how people think of Harper (I think he’s a racist arrogant asshole personally) Control was the only ending I could stomach. Destroy I’ve already talked about and Synthesis is just too ambiguous. Is the rest of the galaxy now a race of Husks? What happens to the Reaper’s Husks if that isn’t the case? I can’t see why it wouldn’t be since for some reason people are suddenly fine with like, the Cannibals and Brutes and Banshees, who must be living horrifically tortured “lives” and were trying to melt people down a couple seconds ago.
@@reaperofthings I prefer Destroy. Control just feels like i'm being indoctrinated like the Illusive man was and Synthisis forcing everyone to change no more evolution, no more differences, everyone being equal while on paper sounds good. The reapers win all normal life is gone never to reappear. Destroy is the only option, resist the Reapers and kill them all! Edi and the Geth's sacrifice won't in vain they give their lives for us to survive and end the cycle of destruction.
@@willhornsby206 if it weren’t for the developers confirming that Shepard is not indoctrinated at any point, maybe I’d agree. But I cannot agree on the sacrifice part. EDI and the Geth are not even given a choice here, they don’t even know it’s on the table. They’re out there one minute shooting Reapers and Husks and then the next, they’re all just dead. Because you killed them all. Any future AI race will see that even Shepard, someone who brokered peace between Synthetic and Organic life, was more than willing to destroy their predecessors to save Organic life and have no reason to believe that their lives are considered in any way equal to Organics. And in a way, that’s spitting on Legion’s sacrifice. You rendered it completely pointless by just killing them all off anyway, you might as well have just let the Quarian’s kill the Geth back on Rannoch.
@@reaperofthings💯
my favorite part about Zaeed's loyalty mission is that you can save it for post game and just leave him for dead lmao
Yeah, but in order to get it is with a lot renegade points. Shepard left him behind amid the blast.
Killing Zaeed should of been the paragon option. he should of been a test for paragon characters not to work with clearly evil people just for a minor benefit. especially when the team already has multiple characters who do the exact same thing as him
I always felt like Overlord could’ve been so much better if companions had voice lines for certain events/actions.
Miranda, Jack, Tali, and Legion in particular really should’ve had some kind of commentary, since the plot of Overlord is somewhat connected to their characters.
Or even Jacob as he’s Cerberus too
Citadel was such a great dlc. I absolutely loved it. It's always the last dlc I do just before I rush off to the Cerberus base. One last golden moment with your crew before the final push
I always do the main plot after Rannoch since that's generally a 'win' and a nice moment to have fun, but save the party for the very end.
I would think a lot of Mass Effect fans would also like Galaxy Quest. Where Robin Sachs (Zaeed) plays the main antagonist. RIP Robin.
I love Grunt telling people they can't come in during the Citadel DLC.
I know right? I couldn't stop laughing, my dude was having time of his life 😂
Pinnacle Station is available as a mod for LE's PC version. The Legendary Edition's gameplay improvements don't help. DLC is still broken.
Shhh, let me believe
But that's only for PC so it doesn't make a difference.
It's bad until you have stronger weapons. Then it's just passable.
IMO, the crash site was more there for roleplaying and narrative backstory than anything really.
Pretty much, but sometimes that's all you need.
Just the shot of David in that contraption in Overlord makes my eyes glisten. It's just so wrong...
Does the same for me for different reasons when I see him in Grissom in ME3.
Personally, I'd put "Sky" to C, Overlord up to B, Omega up to A. Otherwise I think you pretty much nailed it.
Yeah when Overlord hits, it hits. And not a fan od Bring Down the Sky?
Agree on number 1 with one major exception…… the dumbing down of the entire squad in falling for Brooks’s somewhat feeble deception.
You have the most acclaimed group of people in the galaxy falling for the “ooh silly me” routine and no one thinks to run a background check on this woman who’s appeared out of nowhere just at the same time hundreds of mercs are trying to kill you.
So, the plausibility of Shepard and co’s sudden absence of cerebral capacity aside…….. it’s a fantastic DLC.
As an ex Cerberus operative, she probably created a fake profile within the Alliance database. The comics expand on this, she’s apparently a master infiltrator who had already adopted different identities in the past. It’s not beyond the realm of possibilities that she had the resources to create a whole fake identity for herself that could deceive most people.
Of course, Liara should have known better because, y’know, Shadow Broker powers and whatnot, although it’s implied that the War with the Reapers has severely impaired her resources and reach.
Good overview, I just think putting Arrival as the worst DLC doesn't make sense because of its story impact alone. The writing isn't great, but it doesnt warrant calling it the worst. It just should have been something that triggers much later. Firewalker should definitely take the worst spot here. I also dont think Leviathan deserves to be in the S tier, ahead of LotSB at that. It's B tier for me, A if I wanted to be generous, it feels shoehorned in and it's never mentioned again except by the Catalyst.
I don't know if you saw my video on Arrival but the writing is really just that bad. And I'm curious why you don't like Leviathan?
I really wish they made a DLC where you can get a Batarian as a squadmate
Also just read the bit in the description and I completely agree.
Look at the Borg in Star Trek: you can outright walk around their ships and you are so unthreatening to them, so beneath them, that they don't even bother to fight you. That arrogance is absolutely something the Reapers would have too
It genuinely blows my mind to see anyone liking the explanation of The Reapers' origins but I can appreciate the new perspective you bring.
I'm curious why you feel so strongly
@@pikmonwolf I'm one of the people who think that their origins shouldn't have been explained at all. You do raise a good point for why that's a good thing but I'd like to counter that:
Everything being explained and detailed except for The Reapers makes them a lot more unique and adds tremendously to their horror aspect. Them never having a proper backstory is what made them so terrifying to begin with, it was never about how powerful they are (from the players' perspective). This is Lovecraftian Horror 101, after all.
As it stands now, their origins is basically Geth but genocidal. I just wish they at least used the Dark Energy idea that Drew Karpyshyn had.
I'll never get past the Xzibit meme: "Yo dawg; I hear you don't want synthetics to kill organics, so I made synthetics to kill organics so that synthetics don't kill organics."
@@GalahadTheSeekerAfter playing Halo I have to agree 100%. The Flood is the same, you have no idea where they come from and what they want besides killing all life, until 343 takes over and starts retconning everything. The way it's explained also sucks, as someone else already said. But I do love the idea of Leviathans themselves, mythical beings that have had billions of years of evolution from an already complex and dominant base
@@gatzmajortz5033 i think the point is that the reapers kill only advanced organics, so that less advanced ones can survive and start the new cycle, as opposed to synthetics who would destroy all organics forever. Still, i agree it is a bit silly.
27:20 The problem with explaining the reapers is that it would inevitably require a long, complicated, and kind of far-fetched explanation in order to make any sense. Also, the simple fact that they were explained poorly, and the catalyst just comes out of thin air to explain what the point was with questionable logic, also didn't help.
Also, more importantly, it would take away time from what the actual end of the game should have been, that being the suicide mission on steroids. Your goal was to never understand them. It was to destroy them, and the end of the game should have reflected that instead of pulling an explanation out of their ass. ME3 didn't need to explain the reapers in order to be satisfying.
We can dance around it all we want, but we all know what the Leviathans were made for, to further justify the ending.
All good, but one Thing. The Arrival should be higher, because it tells the Story why Shepard is grounded.
There's a reason for Shepard to be grounded without it though. You worked with an organization that has started full on attacking and slaughtering Alliance personnel.
@@pikmonwolfBut they were seemingly fine with you doing that in the main game of ME2, and you can even have the backing of the council in doing it. There's littearly no reason for them to arrest you without arrival.
For the extended cut, the Normandy pick up scene. Harbinger is an AI and has sensors not eyes. The Normandy is a stealth ship and was silent running. So Harbinger couldn't see the ship.
The hammerhead could've been great if they let you dodge projectiles like in the mako. I could see a version of 1 where you can pick between the two for each mission as a mobility vs tankyness tradeoff.
Also nothing can compare in the series to how warm and fuzzy the Citadel makes you feel. I wish there was even more slice of life. Especially an epilogue for the perfect destroy ending with Shepard recovering and hanging out with their romance and friends. We may get that in 4 or whatever they decide to do tho.
Even when enemies shoot missles at the Hammerhead, usually they're seeking and will chase you down.
And yeah Citadel is super gratifying.
I cannot believe you put Normandy Crash Site and Firewalker above Arrival!
It may have awkward dialogue and a weird plot twist with Kenson’s motivations, but it’s the only part of the story of ME2 that actually advances the main reaper plot line. Arrival should have been the main story of ME2, instead of a pointless heist to take down the Collectors we should have been gathering a team to rescue an alliance scientist (Maybe from the Collectors instead of the Batarians), the game should end with the way Arrival ended.
I also think Leviathan is better than citadel, and agin it’s what the main story should have been.
The issue is that Arrival is so important and impactful that the plot holes matter so much more.
Well, you can save it for after the suicide mission and make it the final mission.
9:20 No need to sneeze on it, just nearby will do.
My problem with Leviathan is that it really dumbs down the squadmates and Shepard, because every time they see something that its cleary not right they just brush it aside
What do you mean?
@@pikmonwolf they dealt with indoctrination before, so when they see weird people talking crazy they at least should suspect something
It also makes the Reapers seem like they are nothing. Also makes Sovereign look like an Idiot lol
@@lightsinadarkworld2013 But it isn’t indoctrination, it’s more like mind control and the people aren’t acting the same as indoctrinated people.
@@lightsinadarkworld2013But they do suspect things? They even say that what happened with Garneu’s assistant is reminiscent of indoctrination.
When they go to TGS Mineral Works they can tell things aren’t right so they start breaking into places to figure it out themselves.
As my name implies, one game (Freelancer from 2003) is closer to my heart than any other, but even that game couldn't evoke so many emotions from me like Mass Effect did.
I heard how good the Citadel DLC was, but on my first true trilogy run, I just simply didn't realize where it even started.. went in blindly, and by sheer chance and dare I say luck, I somehow managed to hold Citadel until the very end of my trilogy run.. precisely 100 hours invested, hundreds of choices and decisions later, after getting to know my crew and friends, the scene of "best days of my life" followed by Shepard's final sentence of "The Best" broke my godam heart so much that I just sobbed for almost an hour straight with no exaggeration.. in that moment, I felt solemn peace with life as a whole and tried to make the most of this sudden outburst of emotions and just really immerse myself into this feeling, knowing nothing else will even come close to it. Despite what I've read and heard about the ending of the trilogy, I still thoroughly enjoyed it and made all three of them just so I can put that run to rest properly.
Despite the absolute lows the series has seen, it managed to culminate in probably the best experiences gaming as a whole can offer us during those times. It really showed that it went above and beyond displaying how it transcends art forms where the player themselves are the catalyst in creating the art itself. I have nothing less than eternal gratitude for everyone who worked on these games, allowing me a peak into their creativity and fantasies.
We really just lived "The Best days" while taking it for granted huh?
Zaeed should be A tier if only because it means you get to drop Jacob an entire mission earlier
Hah true, but you can also swing by the citadel and get Kasumi for that
Arrival was important because it gave a better explanation for why Shepard was grounded on Earth at the beginning of ME3 than simply "you worked for Cerberus to save humanity when we couldn't be bothered; thanks for the Normandy 2; but we don't trust you so you are permanently grounded.". Zaeed's inclusion was because you do not get a good "Soldier" type until you get Grunt. If you are playing a Tech or Biotic; you don't have a tank to hold the line for a long time. Garus can't do it; he's too fragile; even if you insist he use an assault rifle instead of his favorite sniper he's just too fragile. I agree that Firewalker and Overlord suck; I've never really even attempted to complete either one after seven or eight play-thru's. I just cannot get the hang of the frigging useless Hammerhead. It is in absolutely no way superior to the Mako except it jumps better. It can't even cross lava any better than the Mako even though heat-convection should push it higher up over the lava to help mitigate the heat. It's a hover-tank that feels like it'd get tripped up by a poorly mowed lawn. The ME3 end-game. I don't hate it; but the original BS of having to do something like 200 hours of Multiplayer to get a slightly better crappy ending sequence was frustrating. I actually never minded the final choices or the three colors of light thing; it was that ending scene with the kid and Grandpa in the snow that made absolutely no sense to me. They should have just gone with the original planned ending even after it was publicly leaked - that would have been better imho. The mission in ME where you get trapped in the mine with the bomb; the bad guy who planned it was supposed to be a Batarian; but they hadn't figured out what they looked like yet; maybe they didn't have the assets to build them; so they wimped out. Liara deciding to avoid getting caught in inescapable traps and excavate for dirty laundry instead of old bones kind of makes sense; especially if you remember that all the ancient relics you find in ME are nearly all Reaper Traps. IMHO citadel seemed so pointless. The other DLCs contributed something to the story; finding out that Cerburus cloned you in case they lost control of you really contributes nothing. How did the clone even escape being indoctrinated like the entire rest of Cerberus? I didn't realize that Traynor actually suits up to help out though, a saw the scenes of her in armor, that was cool. It would be kind of fun to watch the techie who was obsessed with her toothbrush that got left behind become a bad-ass. :D
I still think that arresting you for being Cerberus makes more sense than anything that happens in Arrival. Also you can get Grunt immediately so Zaeed really isn't changing anything there. You can get Grunt before you even go to Omega.
@@pikmonwolf Certainly you can go to get Grunt right away; it will suck hard if you don't have a soldier to keep all those tubie-Krogan's out of your face and you are doing it as a biotic or tech; with one of each for a backup. Not even to mention the boss fight with the Ymir at the end. You can get grunt; but you'll probably double the amount of time it takes to complete the game trying.
Zaeed Massani should be higher as he takes rejection in the citadel party like an absolute legend, dont wanma hook up? Thats your call now wheres more booze an other angry shoot things people?
He's not a gentle man, but he is a gentleman.
I hate the shadow broker DLC because it forces me to kill off my favorite Council Spectre. 😢
She's a great villain, 2 had a lot of great one off baddies.
Played the trilogy for the first time, and i fully agree with Citadel being the top pick. It adds so much to the game in my opinion. It also feels like a final celebration before going into the end game moment, gives a much needed light hearted break in between the trauma simulator that is ME3.
This specially got me to finish the game after i messed up The Quarians cause of my ME2 decisions ( but hey, just more fuel to replay it perfectly). I honestly just dropped the game for a few days after realising that even after choosing the Geth, i couldn't save Legion, and the scene with Tali, i just needed a breat (I had made the decision that i wouldn't reload for the first playthrough, and just see how things play out.)
Overally, huge fan of this dlc.
Yeah it's a nice time to catch your breath.
I agree with the list, would only swap Leviathan and Shadow Broker due to romance alone being what tips it over.
Liara romancers definitely eat well with that DLC
It’s nice that your love interest in Leviathan(at least if they’re a squad mate) has some unique lines. Especially when Shep comes from their meeting with Leviathan
As a Cortez romancer, I love how much action he got in Citadel but also in Leviathan. It makes him feel very integral to the squad ❤
My problem with Shadow Broker is if you don't romance Liara, the game kinda throws her in your face as like "You fool! You should've romanced Liara! Now watch Shapard reflexively save Liara over the love of his/her life!! How do you like that?"
I found that really irksome and made me unfairly dislike Liara when I was neutral towards her previously.
19:19 - I don't think it should be appreciated. The Extended Cut was made on horrible crunch (so bad a third of the development team quit), and under the intense and sustained harassment and death threats of the developers from some of the worst of the worst of the fanbase, with the women on the team getting the worst of it. The amount of abuse on both the executive and customer level that made the Extended Cut happen should be a scar against it for the rest of time. And no ending can be so bad that it warrants that kind of abuse.
To that I fully agree, but my takeaway is that it is because of that that we should be grateful for its existence. The developers deserved better and delivered something quite good when a large portion of the audience behaved so poorly that they didn't really 'deserve' it.
If it had cost money, it would be somewhat of a different story. Bioware executives squeezing the workers hard to make extra cash, which was an issue with the trilogy as a whole.
Instead it was a fix that was desperately needed. And I think that the state of the ending in the original release was genuinely unacceptable, but again as you said it didn't warrant the abuse from a certain chunk of the playerbase. But many people raised reasonable responsible critiques. A large amount of people did respond properly.
In the end the blame falls to the management who delivered the subpar product in the first place which they then had to overwork their employees to fix.
It should have been the ending to begin with. The original ending was an insult.
@@3AHoles doesn't really mean it justifies the harrassment the dev team got. Nothing does.
the first part of arrival is great but the whole reveal of reaper origin kills the story
I'd like the prison section if the Batarian helmets HAD THE RIGHT NUMBER OF EYE HOLES!!!
@@pikmonwolf batarian helmets never have the right number of eye holes
Amanda Kenson is a 1:1 with that female scientist in Doom 2016 who wants to open a portal to hell for "reasons". I think they both might have british accents too
At least the Doom one becomes a cool bossfight lol
male shep's tone when he says "the best" says 1000 words, that moment is how I'll remember mass effect and provides an excellent ending :) the time I've spent with these characters truly was the best
i think the reason why people don't like leviathan nowadays is because it doubles down on the ai overthrown organics thing and just completely drops the dark energy plot point. That's why I don't entirely enjoy it. I like the lore and stuff. I just wish it kind of implied it
The thing is, AI vs Organics has been a theme way more than Dark Energy. Dark Energy was referenced like 3 times in ME2 and that's it. It was just throwaway lines, no real theme.
Organics vs Synthetics ties into the Geth, Saren, and a few side quests as well like the gambling AI and haywire robot factory.
@pikmonwolf well I just wish that there is more than ai vs organics plot going on
@@pikmonwolfSure, it was a theme. But it was never THE theme of Mass Effect.
@@graye2799 I mean it literally was tho?
Saren was having two whole speeches about how the synthetics are better than organics and how we should submit. Sure he was doing it under Indoctrination but even then.
Hannibal AI which becomes Self-Aware and sends out help if you kill it.
The Geth v. Quarian Conflict
The money stealer AI that became self-aware.
Sovereign itself.
There were a lot of Synthetic vs. Organics themes in the first game. ME1 was indeed more concerned with establishing a lot of the game first but they were always core part of the games.
More so in ME2 if you talk to Legion and obviously most in ME3 Rannoch.
@@reksraven aside from the Geth and sovereign, the rest are ultimately minor and dont take up time to establish a theme. ME in its entirely was never about AI vs. organics until ME3s ending made it so.
26:57. Bro, Liara IS my love interest. You're damn well right she's getting Shepard's save over the squad-mate. (And romancing/staying faithful to her in LOTSB gives you the most cinematic smooch in the whole game.) ♥
U have to admit watching wtex come flying out of a window was hilarious
Citadel quest is Shepard's loyalty mission and the party is the ME version of the Last Supper
34:18 Overall, I think Jennifer Hale's voice acting is better than Mark Meer's throughout the trilogy, but that line is one that Mark absolutely nails
Puts Leviathan at top and uses the cringey Harbinger of ME2 as justification for why "it's all good." As if people that dislike the Leviathan DLC are all just A-Okay with ME2 absolutely ruining all the mystique ME1 worked so hard to create around the reapers. It's among many other things I deeply disliked about ME2.
Edit...
To be fair, not explaining the reapers at all would be unsatisfying, that's why it's such a shame that ME1 had such an incredible picture of them started for us and then ME2 decides, "let's forget about the reapers a bit and focus on sqaud mates, Cerberus, and Collectors."
I saw that you made videos about Mordin, Legion and Jacob and I was wondering if you're thinking on making one for Tali, Wrex or Miranda (they're my favorites along with Mordin).
Perhaps, I've definitely got some stuff I wanna say about Miranda.
Why the _hell_ does anyone think Omega is a bad DLC?
It definitely has flaws and the original release was very buggy. But it's way ovethated.
0:25 correction on xbox with the original games no the DLC is not free and not all of them are even available
One thing I noticed on a Legendary Edition ME2 playthrough is that point about the mute squad members in Lair of the Shadow Broker. Liara's not the only one who has ample motivation to go after that guy. Know who else has a history with him?
Thane. And he tells us this.
Thane was hired to eliminate the ring-leaders of a Batarian slave operation. The slave ring then had Thane's wife killed in retaliation. Thane thought his family was safe, as he'd taken steps to hide their identities and connection to him. But the Batarians got the info they needed *from the Shadow Broker.*
The Broker was directly involved in the murder of Thane's wife, causing the schism with his son and everything thereafter. But Thane doesn't get a single word to say about it when brought along, and gets sidelined during the confrontation.
man the Lair of the Shadow Broker was so good
7:35 you forgot to mention that it is IMPOSSIBLE to complete it on the Xbox 360, look it up. If you want to complete it on Insanity difficulty, you have to basically leave it up to RNG spawns to get lucky to get through it.
I believe it, ME1 is so much harder on XBOX.
@@pikmonwolf I remember being scammed by this back in the day, having completed Insanity runs multiple times but being unable to finish this at all. I think it was only ever developed with PC in mind or was only playtested on PC, it's obvious looking at guides to complete the DLC being only on PC. The release date of 2009 is weird also, the game comes out on 360 in 07, 6 months later is PC release then it just randomly release almost 2 years after the original 360 release.
Great content though brah, keep it coming
I think the reasoning for this list is pretty much spot on, so great job on the sorting! You've actually helped me appreciate Leviathan a bit more, which, for some reason, didn't connect with me at all when I played it except that last incredibly atmospheric bit.
If it were up to me, and all of this is completely subjective and therefore probably objectively a bad take, I'd definitely swap Overlord and Zaeed, and rank Javik lower.
Zaeed is a very nothing character to me. He's entertaining enough but hardly complex and ultimately what I'm trying to do is emotionally connect with and analyze the companions and story and, well, neither him nor his mission offer much in the way of that.
Overlord is mechanically flawed but the story justifies a lot of it. It stands as the only time a story has ever gotten me to rage at my screen in a good way, throwing insults at Gavin Archer to be precise. David's portrayal is... controversial but as an autistic person myself, he meant a lot to me and I wanted nothing more than to make it stop for him. To make it quiet. It's telling amd appropriate that the Paragon interrupt is to hit Gavin, that absolute piece of shit, directly in his very fucking deserving face.
Javik has the opposite problem as Zaeed. Very unique but completely insufferable. I know that a lot of players love him and I'm a sucker for assholes with good arcs, love both Jack and Miranda very much, but Javik doesn't have anything that would redeem him for me. I can take him shitting on me/Shep for all eternity but constantly belittling everyone and everything I've grown to care about I can only take so much of before I stop caring about his issues. No squadmate is optional to me on principle but if I had to pick one for the airlock, he'd easily be in contention.
Thanks for the video, hoping to see more Mass Effect because I truly find all your takes on it interesting!
What's interesting about Javik is he can pretty much 'fail' his character arc. If you convince him to look at the shard, he gets immovably entrenched in the past and it's made clear that he is the worst fate Shepard could have, losing everything and never moving on. If he doesn't look at the shard you see his arc approach its conclusion on Earth. Writing a book with Laira or going to live among Hanar are him finally letting the past go and embracing the future he finds himself in.
You're wrong, Arrival DLC is S-tier because you blow up 300k batatarians in it.
I don’t particularly like Leviathan largely because it is emblematic of the dumbing down of the Reapers in ME2 a d especially 3. Sovereign is full on cosmic horror - a force you can neither understand nor bargain with. He reveals that everything is a lie, there is no ingenuity, no great breakthrough, no benevolent precursor race, just the cycle of expansion and harvest, and the reason why is not something it feels obligated to explain. By the time Leviathan came out, there were no mysteries left to the Reapers, and it stripped them of everything that made them compelling and terrifying in the first game. They essentially become little more than an alien force with a bigger navy and propensity to turn captured foes into shock troops. That said, this is ME3’s fault more than Leviathan’s
Mass effect in general fumbled the main story pretty hard after me1. I personally feel like we never should have seen the reapers invasion,it ruins the whole point of "If they get here, it's over" and like you said makes them look like just another generic alien invader trope.
33:34 when I first played ME3 as a kid, I didn’t have the DLC. The game kinda remained just… depressing all the way through. One gut punch after another, taking every tiny victory like it could very easily be the last. Then in the final mission, I had the War Assets for Tali and Garrus to survive, even get Synthesis if I’d wanted. Those two were the squad mates I’d brought with me everywhere throughout the series, but then there was no Normandy cutscene. I was left thinking I’d dragged Tali and Garrus to their deaths, not knowing whether they’d survived like Shepard did when Harbingers beam struck or had become ash. It felt like a betrayal to two great friends. Without the Citadel DLC, my Shepard died having gone through tragedy after tragedy with nothing to help him. When I got LE, every time I go through it, I have a smile on my face and tears in my eyes. It is the peak of Mass Effect, and gave my Shepard’s the best damn night of their lives.
How is ME2 squad mostly renegades? There are only 3 renegades: Zayeed, Grunt and Jack. The rest are either neutral or more paragon than not. With the exception of Samara, of course, who is completely fucked up being purely paragon in her devotion to justice and uncompromisingly renegade in her methods.
Garrus and Mordin are definitely renegade. Miranda supports Cerberus which is renegade. Thane and Samara are neutral-renegade due to their callous disregard for life. Jacob and Legion are neutral.
@@pikmonwolf Well, if we are talking morality in the context of ME, if Shepard works for Cerberus and kills HUNDREDS of people to achieve their goals, and still can end up being pure/almost pure paragon, then your assumptions about Garrus and Mordin, and probably many other characters, are wrong 🙂
By the way, Jacob is more paragon than neutral, several NPCs remark on that, even Jack who hates Cerberus.
@@pikmonwolf I think it is weird to place renegade/paragon on the squadies. There is no way to see their alignment.
They don't approve or disapprove of anything.
Most characters can push for a certain outcome, but their need will change depending on who they are with.
For example Wrex will always be against freeing the Rachni Queen, but almost any other Squadmate can push against that even though they would usually be on Wrex' side if any non-Wrex Squadmate is in the party.
Similar to how Ashley will always push to let the council die because she has the anti-alien streak.
You could say that Liara usually presents the Paragon side but she is really the only one who is consistently taking Paragon Priority. Every other Squadmate can switch depending on party comp.
I had Wrex argue for and against saving the Council, same with Garrus, Tali and Kaidan. Same for every other decision in the game.
In ME2 it is even worse because there aren't many decisions were both Squadmates chime in. Often times they actually push for the Paragon option or agree with Shepard regardless.
The Paragon Renegade System is ultimately only for Shepard. No other character really falls fully into either of the two categories as they mostly present extremes.
15:30 Your points on why the Omega DLC is good are very valid, I completely agree with you on this.
23:10, Wow, I didn't know each building in bring down the sky was part of a design competition between different BioWare designers!?!
I think genesis 1 is okay, if you want a save file for ME2. But genesis 2 is the worst if you want something to import for ME 3.
My thoughts exactly.
To me it always looked like Zaeed was wearing a skinned claptrap as armor LMFAO
Good list overall but I’d place Normandy Crash Site in F tier on account of how laughably short it is and the fact it’s basically a walking sim collectathon. Presley’s journals are nice but it’s a waste of time imo.
I love the Citadel DLC, and I think the Citadel Epilogue Mod, which only lets you play it after the main story has wrapped up, makes it feel less weird tonally. It’s like the celebration at the end of Return of the Jedi that way.
For me F tier is the stuff where I think the best experience is not even installing it. So it would be D tier at worst. I feel like overall a play through where you do Normandy crash site feels more whole than one where you don't do it.
@@pikmonwolf That’s a fair point. I’ve recently finished the trilogy for the first time and couldn’t believe how bad Arrival was lmao. Got to the point where I was doing a Mystery Science Theater 3000 bit in my head as I was going along to make it tolerable.
For me, the best part of playing the shadow broker dlc, was when Shepard told the Asari Spectre why a hostage does jack shit against someone who readily sacrificed thousands of people, council included, and annihilated a batarian colony. Afterwards I followed that up during the fight when I piled one more warcrime: I pulled out the M-920 Cain and glassed the area just to kill her.
I can confirm that Wanted Dead is awesome. Just has some performance issues that don't seem like they're gonna get patched.
They did a patch recently, bug fixes, made it a bit more stable, so don't be so pessimistic. And yeah, great game. Played more of it even after the ad was all made and approved lol.
@@pikmonwolf oh really? Was the patch for consoles? I've been checking every couple of weeks hoping for one so I've been starting to lose hope lol
@@lxfenix Nope, it was on PC as well. Just released the other day.
@@pikmonwolf Damn well hopefully that means a console patch is coming soon. Thanks for the info!
@@lxfenix yep, the console patch is coming in a few weeks
I think the comedy of the citadel dlc is actually what makes it sad. Usually I do all the story stuff before the very final mission. So the party is the last thing that you and your squad do together before Shepard “dies” and that’s what makes it sad. I absolutely think it’s the best DLC for that reason alone. Knowing that this will be the last time you hang out with everyone you’ve become friends with. That’s the best part.
Making Zaeed a Batarian wouldn't mean we'd get rid of the voice actor lol what are you talking about?
I mean they could've kept Sachs, but he wouldn't have sounded like any other batarian in the game who all had a distinct voice style. They could add a filter, but then it'd sound odd.
@pikmonwolf But none of the squad mates are voiced by the generic species VA? All of them have a different VAs lol
I agree fully with the rest of the video tho, great breakdown of the DLCs!
15:00
As for why some people dislike Omega, I can think of a few reasons.
1. It's yet another mission involving Cerberus, a faction that even in the base game overshadows the Reapers given that you spend more time fighting them then anyone else. People were probably getting tired of this self indulgent writer's pet of a faction.
2. It makes Cerberus even more absurdly, impossibly and unjustifiably powerful than they already are. Not only have they managed to in mere months build a fleet and mechanized army capable of waging war on multiple fronts against multiple superpowers despite having no colonies, not only can they stage an invasion of the Citadel (something that took a fleet of Geth ships, a Reaper, and a back door in the form of the Conduit last time) in the middle of a war when everyone would be on high alert, not only are they somehow able to know what everyone is up to because they’re somehow even better at spying than the Salarians, now we're told they also have the manpower and firepower to seize control of a space station with a population of 7.8 million (almost twice that of L.A.). A space station full of criminal and mercenary gangs.
3. It involves Aria, who is also a self indulgent writer's pet. Shamus Young said it best in his written retrospective:
"Aria is a strutting diva who gets flashy camera angles and gets to proclaim, “I AM Omega!” She has no reason to star in the nightclub scenes, except the writer liked the design and wanted to play Aria and they wanted you to participate by watching and playing the part of the dumb mook she’s got wrapped around her finger. That would be fine as a sort of “flavor text” kind of character, except that your paragon / renegade responses have been re-mapped to “moron” and “bootlick”. You’re not allowed to decide how you feel about Aria, because the writer says you think she’s awesome.... These people don’t actually have clever things to say, and in fact a lot of their dialog is shallow and dumb when it isn’t just clichés copied from better stories. But when they’re on stage the world revolves around them, because they have character designs that overshadow everyone else and the cinematographer is on their side to give them all the dramatic cuts and close-ups they need. When these characters are around the storyteller treats them like the protagonist and relegates Shepard to the role of their impotent sidekick / whipping dog. It would be bad enough if the writer simply made Shepard an inert observer of this show, but then they co-opt your dialog wheel and force you to participate."
And ME3 continues this by showing that she has Councilor Tevos at her beck and call. As if the writer hadn't already heaped enough favors on this annoying character.
Yeah, a lot of different choices than I would have made in this list. All of my choices would be how much narrative content the DLC added and Firewalker is dead last. I agree with the lobotomy suggestion.
Still unsure why you hate on Arrival so hard, given it's at least an _end_ to ME2. Also, rescuing David is the only reason to do Overlord. But to me (and the Geth lore) makes it higher than where you put it, despite the fact that they tied it to the hovercraft.
At least you gave Leviathan some love. And Zaeed. I wrote that scene into my massive fanfic just because of how much Zaeed rocks.
I respect why you put Arrival so low but I just cannot agree that it's a whole tier worse than Firewalker. Firewalker is boring in every conceivable way but, as silly as it sounds, at least Arrival is a fun little spectacle if you don't think about the plot. Fighting without your squadmates sucks but it's better than the Hammerhead.
Arrival can be fun in parts. But overall I think the game is just straight up better without it. Firewalker you can just play the main missions and it can have fun moments. It doesn't drag everything down though, specifically because it's forgettable.
HES BACK!!!
I never left, these videos take awhile alright 😅
14:04 As an autistic person I felt that. There's a specific one of Gavin Archer's lines that really accentuates it for me:
"His autistic mind can interpret the geth language at its most basic form and mimic their phonetics."
Now, I'm not going to be generous and act like it's an intentional characterization decision, because it's probably not - Mass Effect 2 is just a product of its time. It's a line I cringe at every single time. It reflects the weird, uncomfortable way that autistic people are spoken about like aliens or robots, too socially disconnected to have a conversation with people in the same room as them, while in the same breath being praised as genius savants. Rather than just being a person _with_ autism, it's all about his 'autistic mind'. Here though, whether intentional or not, it's a fitting thematic element.
By our modern understanding of neurodivergence, David isn't some living supercomputer; he obviously just has a special interest in mathematics and programming logic and a fascination with the geth that made him an ideal candidate for interfacing with the Overlord project. But to Gavin, that's who David is. He speaks about his own brother like he's some kind of freak of nature, like he's analyzing a specimen in a lab, making no effort to empathize with him on a human level. The fact that David is autistic made him sub-human in Gavin's eyes right down to the way the dialogue _talks_ about him.
I honestly always interpreted as an intentional decision. If it was said by anybody else I'd think it was just a rough line, but it's the dehumanizing villain who says it. At the very least, they knew it was something that kind of person would say. And yeah, it hurts to hear. Gavin is such a POS
Putting Arrival as the worst when Pinnacle Station exists... Bold move.
Hey Pinnacle Station isn't full of plot holes lol
@@pikmonwolf it was so bad that they even lost the source code for it lmao 😂
Another weird thing about the Genesis comic for Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 3 is that it doesn't seem to be able to compute the fact you can complete all the Loyalty Missions BEFORE the Joker mission and thus if using it for Mass Effect 3 then you need to choose having a fully loyal squad OR having crew characters that have very little impact on Mass Effect 3 like Kelly Chambers..
I love the Hammerhead. My biggest complaint about 3's gameplay was the lack of the Hammerhead.
Edit: My understanding is Javik's mission as always planned as the first DLC for 3. They just managed to get it done after the base game went gold but before the game released. Would it have been nice if they incleded the DLC for free? Sure but IMO them not doing so got more backlash then it deserved.
Well hey, everyone's allowed their own opinion lmao.
And he was originally going to be an important part of the main plot, so he was definitely originally designed as base game content.
@@pikmonwolf One of the things you mentioned about the Hammerhead is the hitscan enemies. And that mistake in the enemy design is IMO its biggest flaw. The Hammehead was designed like something meant to evade hits not soak them so the hitscan enemies make it seem much worse then it should I
@@roguerifter9724 Yea, the two vehicles are definitely exact opposites. One is slow and tanky, the other is fast and nimble, but weakly armored due to weight constraints.
@@TwinPeaksIndustries Yeah and I definitely prefer the agility. there's a reason in most vehicle focused games involving Mech or fighter piloting, or driving Tanks with one or two exceptions I rarely take something from the heaviest weight class if I have a choice and usually when making custom designs favor mobility. I'm the kind of player who when they start a new Armored Core game the first thing I do is go looking for Hover Legs
The backlash was not deserved however the issue with Javik was that he was actually on Disc DLC. Meaning that if you own an original Mass Effect 3 Disc for the 360 you technically have his DLC. That was the controversy. It was pretty common practice back in the day from greedy publishers (I point out publishers bc 90% of the time the Devs aren't at fault for those decisions).
I love how Zaeed really just wants one of those plushy toys
I wholeheartedly agree with the placements, especially Omega. I see so many people hating on it but the main issue is where it sits in the chronology of the reaper war, it always feels as though its sidetracking you even if you are getting resources for the main conflict. The story on its own though is good, the set pieces and gameplay remain engaging throughout.
I think it makes sense to take time to do the mission. Shepard will touch down on planets for much less with the N7 missions.
18:22. Well, tbf, Zaeed and Kasumi were originally meant to ship with ME2 but got cut from the game and later added as DLC. They weren’t always planned to be DLC squad mates.
Really? Never knew that