After I finished the last post, I realized that I had just about enough rage pent up to squeeze out one more issue, making this a trilogy.
The story makes no damn sense whatsoever.
At the end of Mass Effect 1, the council was saved, they understood the threat of the reapers, and Shepard was about to go out into the galaxy to find a way to stop said reapers.
Then, at the start of Mass Effect 2, the Normandy was just out hunting spare geth for no reason whatsoever, and the council had "dismissed that claim" about the reapers.
Now we get to the start off Mass Effect 3, and Shepard has just spent the last few months in house arrest, doing shit all to stop the reapers, even though he knows from the DLC Arrival in Mess Affect 2 that they would be arriving in a matter of months.
This is the first thing that bothers me; did Shepard just sit in house arrest and do nothing for these months? Is that the Shepard that we came to know from Mass Effect 1? No, it isn't. The Shepard we knew would've broken out of the building, stolen a ship, and went off to pursue whatever leads he could find.
But he just didn't.
Then the reapers attack earth, and Shepard has to flee to...do what exactly? I understand that he has to leave earth; he won't do much good if he's dead, but what's the plan?
Well, if they had just said that there was no plan, that he was going to try to link up with Hackett and go from there, that would've made sense. But that's not what he does. He starts down a path that makes no sense; that he'll gather a fleet and come back to liberate earth. That's the plan that he sticks with for the rest of the game.
That plan makes is stupid.
Earth has no actual strategic importance when it comes to stopping the reapers. Even if they could conjure up a fleet large enough to defeat the reapers on and around earth, which they naturally can't, they would've gained exactly piddly squat regarding a final solution to the reaper problem. They bang on about how force of arms alone has no chance whatsoever of beating them, but then completely ignore that.
Prepare now to have Shepard fly all over the galaxy to gather a fleet to return to earth. Yup, that's what he spends 90% of the game doing. It's not critical to beating the reapers, and it's not going to be possible anyway, but that's what he spends the majority of the time doing. For no fucking reason.
Anyway, a few seconds after leaving earth Shepard is contacted by Hackett, the bigshot high-admiral of basically all the remaining human fleets, and told to go to Mars. On Mars they find plans for a macguffin that will defeat the reapers.
That's right; we're not 20 minutes into the game yet, and we already have the solution we need. Nevermind the fact that nobody knows what it does, how it works, or how to build it, it'll solve everything somehow.
But prepare to forget about it, because it will be built entirely off screen, in an unspecified location, with no direct input from you. Now and then Hackett will phone you up and go "Well, we're still building that thing. Hackett out.".
So, explain to me how, during an ongoing reaper invasion, they are able to funnel enormous amounts of personnel and materials to an unspecified location without the reapers finding out about it. Remember, the reapers are so good at finding info about the civilizations they destroy that they are able to basically wipe out all but the smallest traces of them from the galaxy. Yet somehow they can't find the macguffin.
Back to Shepard; after leaving Mars he leaves the solar system using a mass relay. A what? Of, right; those devices that allow interstellar travel that are the very first thing the reapers shut down when they take the Citadel, in order to isolate enemy forces and prevent them from gathering.
"B-b-but..." you stammer, "...the reapers didn't capture the Citadel...".
Case in fucking point. Why the flying shitstain didn't they do that? Oh sure, their little gambit with Sovereign failed, but they could just head to the Citadel and capture it. But instead they go straight for all the homeworlds of the major races for...some reason. There is literally nothing stopping them from simply taking the Citadel and shutting down the mass relays, which would completely stop everything that Shepard and co. do throughout the game!
*sigh*
You know what, I fucking give up. I had other points to make about how the story is nonsensical, but it can't get dumber than this. The villains can just do this one thing that will guarantee their victory and prevent and attempts at thwarting them, which would instantly fail the entire quest of the main character, and the reason they don't do that is...they don't feel like it?
The writers didn't even pretend to think up a reason for it, they just completely ignored it. It's like a stormtrooper caught Leia at the start of A New Hope, before she had the time to input the plans into R2-D2, but just stood there and did nothing to stop her, for no reason.
Screw this game. They took a promising new IP and pissed all over it.
Bioware, screw you.
