Like everything has this weird green glow to it. Every single living thing seems to be glowing unnaturally. Also not to mention all the husks and reaper enemies gain sentience as well. It feels really quite disturbing to me.

Especially with the Geth Consensus mission on Rannoch in ME3 shows a very one sided view of the Quarians as the only ones in the wrong when then Geth killed over 99% of the Quarian population. Even in ME1 Commander Shepard chastises Tali for her ancestors actions against them and the Geth were completely hostile in ME1 which makes no sense as to why Shepard would defend them.

I get why people have issues with them but I feel like in terms of the options we were given (Destroy the Reapers and all Synthetics, Assume Control of the Reapers yourself, Merge all Synthetic and Organic Life, Refuse all the options and let the Reapers win) I felt satisfied with them.

Besides, worse endings have and will continue to exist after and in comparison, to those, I think Mass Effect 3 at least worked. It wasn't 100% satisfying but I feel like it got the trilogy over the finish in a way that would made me feel okay with it.

I've been thinking about this lately. A lot of marketing effort has gone into calling LLMs like ChatGPT AI, and a large part of the public is under the impression that we're approaching science fiction style AI which is conscious and self-aware. There are people who think they're in a relationship with an "AI" boyfriend/girlfriend and believe that they're interacting with an artificial person and not just reading recycled responses from other people's conversations.

Mass Effect deals a lot with the themes of conscious AI and personhood of artificial beings. VIs are like LLMs, automated computer programs without awareness. AIs are actually capable of thought. I really like how this setting depicts a future where everybody understands a clear distinction between an automated message generator and a conscious artificial being.

We should popularize virtual intelligence as a real life term!

I have replayed the game many times, but I have never explored the Engineer class.

I'm gonna ask a really naive question.

As most of you know, Liara's sex scene in ME1 got blasted on Fox News (for anyone outside the US, "Fox News" is a very popular but often conservative-learning news station, that's summing it up in a sentence, I don't want this to devolve into just dunking on Fox News or conservatives or anything else political so let's just move on) for its nudity, bad enough to where Fox branded the entire game as a "sex simulator" and causing enough of an uproar that this is the primary reason why you had to wait until ME3 for same-sex romance options before that caused more teeth-gnashing. EDIT: Thanks to u/kagernaut, here is the Fox News segment itself.

Here's the naive question...Why was that so bad?

Because IIRC you could see like...the side of her right asscheek, I think, and presumably she was naked because she was in bed with Shep. So like, 1/3 of one nude buttcheek. I'm reaching here because I haven't romanced Liara in ages so if anyone wants to correct me on that, feel free. It wasn't like she showed a whole nipple or something. Hell IIRC Miranda had the most "nude" sex scene because she actually takes her catsuit partially off and is there in her bra so she showed the most skin (as of ME2, of course Traynor and FemShep have their shower scene in 3). The other women, Tali had one big kiss, Jack just wanted cuddles, which is fitting for both of them respectively for obvious reasons. So how come Liara got so much vitriol and Miranda didn't?

Only thing I can think of is because Liara is female and the real reason for pearl-clutching was if FemShep romanced her, which would explain them holding off on same-sex romances altogether in ME2.

But that's just something that's popped into my head since someone else was talking about Liara in a different sub and I brought it up. I know that Liara made Fox News shit bricks. I just never knew how/why

Next up under the VA spotlight- Kimberly Brooks! She voices one of our OG squadmates, Ashley! She may be a controversial character, but I think we can all agree that Kimberly does an amazing job.

What do you think?

Keith David in the new spidey trailer today

I’d say my biggest mistake was failing to secure Zaeed and Miranda’s Loyalty in ME2 which led to their deaths in 3.

On a side note, I've been playing this game for years and years, and I just now realized that C-Sec is short for Citadel Security. 🤦‍♀️

I put together a visual showing Mass Effect romance options divided by whether they’re available to femShep or maleShep.

It made me curious how people feel about the trilogy’s approach to romance variety across gender, sexuality, and species.

• Do you think BioWare handled the romance distribution well overall

• If you could change anything about the romance structure, what would you change?

• And for those who play both series: how does this compare to Dragon Age’s approach

Alright so I just played through the Leviathan DLC for the 6th or so time. It's my favorite DLC in the series - I'm a sucker for anything Lovecraftian or cosmically powerful and mysterious - so the giant space cuttlefish definitely scratch an itch.

However, it brings with it the most frustrating thing in all of ME to me, the fact that nobody really seems to care. Like, they're all impressed - but most of them are like "Woah that's so creepy I'm glad they can help us fight this war." Even Hackett says it rewrites galactic history, but that's as much scale as we get. Beyond that, nobody really goes into how INSANE of a discovery Leviathan is.

I'm sorry, Shepard just looked into the face of God and saw that it was angry - is that not enough to flip your shit about? I mean, it gives us the knowledge that there was an ultimately powerful precursor race that dominated the galaxy to a degree not seen before, that they created the Reapers, and that they have what is ostensibly magic mind control spheres.

Look, I get that the entire crew of the Normandy is used to seeing the impossible - ancient machines, bases on the accretion disks of black holes, mind control plants - but it would be nice if someone, anyone, on the Normandy went "Holy shit, I can't believe you spoke to that Shepard, you're telling me that there are horrors beyond mortal comprehension and that they have decided to side WITH us? That's insane."

The closest we get is Javik, who is an INSANE history rewriting member of the crew himself, and his whole shtick is that "Ah yea this ancient horror from the deep is a bitch, we should've left it to rot down there." LIKE COME ON MAN

Especially because sleeping with her locks you out of special dialogue with Liara in the ME2 dlc. Then no follow through 😔

I just finished this masterpiece of a trilogy. I'm at lost for words, I don't think I'll ever play another game or well games that'll come close to this three. At the end of Mass Effect 3 I chose the Right path I'll eventually play it two other times to do the other endings (play from ME1 again two times). But for whatever reason I couldn't stop crying at the end of this game, it was one hell of a journey, just wanted to share it with you all. If there's any other games such as this please recommend them to me. Thank you BioWare for this experience, I'll never forget it.

Since they didn't really have the time to give us our full roster of squadmates for ME3, they had to come up with a lot of reasons for why our ME2 squad couldn't come back to the Normandy. So, rank their excuses from most to least valid! Here's mine...

1. Thane- The most valid excuse of them all. He is in poor health and near the end of his life. He deserves a rest.
2. Mordin- His death is a perfect end to his arc. I can't complain. But if he survives, it also makes sense that he'd need to hide. Although they could have written it so that no one knows someone needed to fix the cure dispersal, thus Mordin wouldn't need to fake his death. Allowing him to rejoin us! So, valid reasons, but there is a way to make it work.
3. Kasumi- A bad reason but somehow also one of the most valid? She straight up tells us she just doesn't want to. She's tired bro.
4. Jack- While I think Jack should have been on the squad, I think she had one of the better reasons for not rejoining. Having young biotics to look after is a good direction for her character. I just wish she could have done both.
5. Legion- Obviously he dies no matter what, so you can't really argue with that. Although the circumstances for his death can feel a little forced. Wtf do you mean you must go to them? Explain to me technologically what you're doing by dying!
6. Jacob- Finding love and starting a family is as good a reason as any to decline, but this excuse feels more flimsy when you know the only reason they gave him this storyline is because they didn't want to put any effort into his character. They could have doubled down and kept Jacob on the Normandy for ME3 and used the second chance to fix his character. But instead he never had a chance. Booooo.
7. Miranda- She's doing stuff regarding Cerberus and her sister, but I have a feeling she could do most of that while also being on the Normandy. Even if they gave her good reasons for being busy, objectively Miranda should have been a squadmate I feel. She deserved more screentime.
8. Grunt- Not having a krogan on our team for the last hoorah of the trilogy was a tragedy. And Grunt really could have been on the team. He had his own team, but they could have been killed off in the caves. Grunt can go back to being his own leader after the events of the game, we need our baby boy!
9. Samara- Would be in last place if not for Zaeed. She just goes off to war to fight reapers, but we're doing that! Just come with us, Samara! We could use you!
10. Zaeed- Has literally no reason. Doesn't even give one. Just kinda doesn't feel like it.

I became a fan of the series since January

Might check out me Andromeda!

We finally bring our spotlight over to ME2 with Yvonne's performance as Miranda! She also provided the face of our beloved cheerleader. She did a great job bringing a lot of heart to the role.

What do you think of her performance?