What is your favorite video game?

Sad what happened to Bioware. Origins and Jade Empire were both great. Kotor 2 and DA2 were fun but criminally rushed through development. Peak Qunari. Then Inquisition was so obviously a repurposed MMO with storytelling that was starting to slip, and I won't even talk about the last one. Never got into ME.

Casey Hudson, the project lead of Mass Effect, was a huge Deus Ex fan, and I honestly think he just got so hyped up on it that he injected Deus Ex into Mass Effect. The thing was, it didn't fucking fit.

I spend all of Mass Effect 3 getting the quarians and the geth to make peace, sacrifice along the way to get it, lose Legion after he just discovers first person pronouns (sob) and this fucking hologram child (why does he look like the kid on Earth from the beginning of game 3?? are the Reapers pulling the image from my mind?? am I already indoctrininated?? NEVER EXPLAINED) appears out of nowhere and says that organic and synthetic life will wipe each other out AS AN INEVITABILITY and the super genius solution has been genocide every 50,000 years, then rinse, repeat, reset factory settings. Now choose red blue or green!

No. I don't agree with the fucking problem. I don't think organic and synthetic life are going to wipe each other out this time. I've made progress. Does that mean nothing all the sudden just because holobrat appeared? I'm sure as fuck not willing to put all organic life in the cyborg blender, become a Reaper, or destroy galactic travel in order to solve the hologram child's nothingburger of a problem.

And none of this explains why the Reapers were so mustache-twirling evil the whole series?? Listen to Harbinger and Sovereign talk, they're Voldemort in giant squid form. I was expecting an evil plot, not that they were just galactic Roombas made by another race. Why did they make their Roombas so evil?? If there's no evil behind the curtain, why evil curtains? Why--WHY--

I was so hyped to find out why sentient robots were wiping out civilization every 50 millennia, and it turns out, it was to keep civilization from being wiped out by robots! OH HOW NICE, THAT MAKES SENSE. 

I've just realized this may have been a bit of a trigger.

Ahem. Ignore my outburst plz.

BioWare is a great developer, ME3 WAS A LONG TIME AGO I'M OVER IT I'M OVER IT.

Companies come and go. Bioware was great when it was run by the people full of passion, but something changed, the passion faded away, and they tried switching to making mainstream blockbusters appealing to a wide audience - something that they just were not great at... Much like what happened to Bethesda - except those guys were making mainstream games to begin with but felt that they were not mainstream enough. And at this point only a husk remains. Larian Studios, Owlcat Games,  Warhorse Studios, CDPRojekt Red and others are now where CRPGs are at.

I liked the Inquisition a lot for what it had to offer. And that was, probably, the last game from Bioware I truly felt was special. Andromeda had a fun gameplay, but something did not feel right about it, as if it was a mishmash of ideas - the game could not find its identity. And it was just downhill from there.

I did not have such strong feelings about it: if anything, it all made perfect sense to me. Think of the genocidal AI as a futuristic iteration of the "paperclip maximizer": an AI that did not receive the parameters that its creators intended it to receive and found an unexpected way to maximize its objective function. And what options does one have when an AI like this run amok? Only to negotiate with it and try to exploit its logic. 

I think the key here is to understand that the AI is not some omni-wise being that has figured it all out, but, in contrary, it is a severely limited intellect that is stuck on following one directive and interprets everything through the lens of that directive. It is very likely that organics and synthetics absolutely can coexist peacefully - but the AI may severely overestimate the difficulties of achieving that due to its biased programming and data.

As for why he looks like the kid... I would imagine that the kid represented the grief Shepard felt over losing the Earth, Shepard's mind held the image of this kid (hence why he kept seeing him in his dreams), and either the AI knew that and chose this form to appeal to Shepard, or Shepard's mind interpreted the image that way.

A lot of questions were unanswered, but I think that generally the story was quite coherent. 

KOTOR 1 and 2 will always be connected to my heartstrings. They were some of my first RPGs. HK-47 was my first videogame robot buddy. And what a mad murderous buddy he was.

I don't know why they never went back to Jade Empire, there was plenty of potential there. Maybe they were embarrassed they ever gave you the option to have a threesome with two first cousins.

Totally worth replaying Mass Effect, I agree.

But I don't have a strong opinion on the endings in the third,

I 'think I disliked the 'original ending/s from what I read about them, and 'maybe the extended cut ending/s too, but that was a while ago.

KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, I've heard good things, but have never played.

I greatly enjoyed Dragon Age 1,

Jade Empire was pretty fun, colorful story, combat. 'Choices were a bit lacking, but it still felt fun clicking on them.

Baldur's Gate 1 was enjoyable, 'interesting for me to play an older game, though it feels a 'bit clunky now. There was a lot of tactics and strategy in fights.

I never tried any of the later Dragon Age games, or Baldur's Gate 2.

Baldur's Gate 3 seems pretty popular with people, though I've not played that either.

Well, they weren't the main 'characters first cousins.

Maybe it's for the best, there was never a Jade Empire 2

While that 'does sound cool, it's too much of a time jump for me,

I'd still want to enjoy the time period of Jade Empire 1,

Wouldn't have to be a 'world changing questline, but I'm sure there would still be other happenings in Jade Empire around that time period.

Well, first, there is an option to refuse to do anything and tell the AI that the organics will decide their fate on their own. That leads to the cycle being complete and Liara planting some data for the next civilization to uncover. 

Second, Shepard was near-dead, certainly having higher priorities than arguing with a machine. It makes sense to hear the machine out and decide what to do with this input, rather than engaging in a debate with a glorified ChatGPT minutes away from dying. I do not think that in that situation anyone's priority will be figuring out why the AI chose this particular hologram, when the fate of trillions is at stake and the clock is ticking.

This may be unsatisfying from the perspective of a player who has been curious about the truth behind the Reapers since the first game - but if I put myself in Shepard's shoes, I do not find anything wrong with how he approached the conversation. I was in a near-death situation once, and I know well that in such a situation you are not going to satisfy your curiosity and your priorities are very different.

The Reapers mocking you, I imagine, is just an intimidation tactic. Or just a generic "villain's speech" stuff which Bioware writers have never shied away from.

I highly recommend that you try out Baldur's Gate 3. The game it most reminded me of was exactly Dragon Age: Origins, only with a full D&D system and incredible combat. I do not have much time to play games nowadays, and Baldur's Gate 3 plus Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader were the only new games I played and finished over the past couple of years. Both are stunningly good, regardless of whether you are into D&D and Warhammer 40K (I knew nothing about the Warhammer universe when starting out Rogue Trader, and after finishing the somewhat dull first act, I was hooked).

Morrigan and Alistair were such well-drawn characters. And Flemeth was *chef's kiss*

wat

I like the resident evil series. I also play Minecraft a lot 

Mario games were good until super Mario world (the 4th one released in America)

Expedition 33 recently - masterpiece. 

Ff14 

Entire Ff series. 

Most of the tales series 

BG3

Suikdeon 

Chrono trigger 

Chrono cross 

Putting it down to favorite. Hard to top expedition 33. Recent but may be best single player of all time 

I will always think Red Dead Redemption 2 was a masterpiece.