A Disaster of a Mass Effect 3 Run

[got_quiet]

Read the second Whyborne and Griffin book and enjoyed it about as much as the first, which was a lot. The mystery was still fun, Elliot, the guy from Griffin's past, was fun to hate, Whyborne remains an adorable nerd and Griffin's insecurities are extremely attractive to me. When Elliot was like, "When I met Griffin he was in the process of getting spitroasted" in order to disrupt their relationship I was like, "Yes, talk about how much of a hussy Griffin was, more sordid past please." I want something to grab Griffin and make him suffer more, and would look up fic for it, but I've got like a dozen books to go and am waiting for the next one to come off hold, and maybe after I've gone through them all I'll take a look at what's on offer.

I'm also now a little sad that the covers are so photoshop. The two guys on the covers don't really reflect my internal visualization of them and again there's not much art out there, and what is there reasonably sticks to what's close to the covers. I was impressed when I hit the Carry On fan art cause there's actually a ton of it, but it doesn't appear to be typical of books. So I'm kind of on my own with visualizing them I guess.

Christine continues to be attracted to danger like a high powered magnet and she makes a great best friend along for the ride.

Next up I'm back in to YA territory and already getting a little annoyed at it a few pages in. It's another book club book, The Sunbearer Trials, and so far it's just started off with a creation myth that is both overly long and entirely cliche. I put the book down after the exposition dump but I still plan on finishing it, I'm just not overly enthusiastic about it at the moment.

I finally finished Mass Effect 3, and it felt like a comedy of errors all the way through. I did finally get my big smooch with Kaiden, and honestly, him lying in the hospital bed did it for me more, but I can at least check the "smooched Kaiden" box off my to do gaming list. I also managed to -not- get Jacob and Samara killed, so that makes a grand total of two people that I did not completely fuck over on this run.

After cleaning up a couple of sidequests I figured it was time for the end game, and it was a complete cluster fuck. First thing that happens is Cortez dies. I looked it up and it says that if I don't spend enough time with him he just gets himself shot out of the air, but I stopped to check on that mother fucker constantly and he had nothing to say, so I don't see how I can be responsible for his poor flying. Like there were side quests for him and everything that just never triggered or pinged for me. I did spend the majority of the game thinking, "It's weird how there's like no loyalty quests or any real interaction with any of the squad this time." I was -looking- for it, so I don't know how I missed all of it.

And to top it all of at the final choice... I couldn't figure out which side was which option. Maybe the little kid's explanation was too long and I lost my concentration or something but it just gave me two different colored ramps and I was like, ok but... which is which?! So I started half way up the left ramp, thought, no, this one will probably destroy the reapers since it's on the left and destroying the reapers was the first choice offered, and since I sided with the Geth I'd feel bad just genociding them right after they came to help us out and also I like Edi so I will try the control thing. So I went right, then got locked into a prompt to shoot at the machine without ever interacting with anything (how is this the way to turn something on?) and couldn't walk away from it! So in the end I did the choice that I didn't want to pick and murdered Edi and the Geth. And of course the game doesn't let you save before big choices so I'd have to play a chunk again to see the other ending.

I just... wtf. I don't recall having all these sorts of problems when I played one or two but three felt like a small mess from start to finish. I suppose my canonical Shepard is a total fuckup who managed to somehow thread the needle to something barely adequate as an outcome. Poor Kaiden has terrible taste in men.

Comments

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[caramarie]

I am weirdly relieved to hear I am not the only one who got to the final choice in ME3 and couldn't remember which side was which! (Although in my case I ended up on the Control ramp.) I figure Shepard was very tired at the time and just wanted the whole thing to be over with either way ...

Re: Here via network

[got_quiet]

Shepard was supposed to be dead a dozen times before he made it to those ramps, so yeah if he just stumbled in a random direction and thought to himself, fuckit, I'm just pushing the first button I see I can't really blame him! But I'm also glad I'm not the only one who got confused at the ending there.

[autumndaze]

I do find the photoshop stock photo covers depressing, but I am heartened by the fact that there are still a lot of folks doing original artwork, in the m/m space, with quite beautiful covers. Unfortunately that doesn't stop the cover art from not reflecting the characters well, but it does give me hope that we're not doomed to only stock photo art.

I'm glad you finally finished ME3! That does sound like a rather difficult set of choices! Not gonna lie, one reason I finished the game up until the last quest and had the Citadel DLC as my official game ending is I also heard how weird the final stuff is just to navigate, game-wise, let alone my dissatisfaction with all of the endings. So kudos to you for giving it a shot, even if it was a pain! Good luck if you try it again for a different ending! I managed to save everyone in all my games but obviously I didn't play ME3's ending so I have no idea if maybe Cortez would have still died in my playthrough or not.

[got_quiet]

I poked around for some fan art but didn't have good luck on the first attempt, cause the search returned all the covers. Do you know any artists that post fanart?

Stopping at the Citadel is a good choice. Just party and let someone else worry about the end of the galaxy.

[autumndaze]

I'm not in that fandom so no idea, sorry. I'd try twitter and tumblr, though. Tumblr seems to have some stuff. I was more speaking generally on book covers, not fanart.

[got_quiet]

Ah, I see. Yeah, there have been some very good covers in the books I've read. The Simon Snow books I thought were particularly nice.

[autumndaze]

Yeah I love Kevin Wada's art :D (he did the Simon Snow covers). There's also a ton of beautiful hand drawn cover art for danmei novels.