Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Mass Effect 3 was a thing that happened and it was pretty disappointing. It's been about
a year and a half now so I was thinking let's see where they went wrong what might have
happened if the game was actually good. I was inspired by the great videos what if Episodes
I and II were good. People have done videos: here's all the problems and stuff but not
as much what we actually constructed a coherent narrative out of this thing. So I kinda wanted
to do that. I've had a lot of these thoughts over the past year and a half so I put these
all together and see what comes out. Hopefully it would be a better story than that. Just
a note here I'm going to be using male pronouns when I'm referring to Shepard because that's
what my first Shepard was and who I spent the most time on so that just feels the most
natural for me. So yeah, starting off in the beginning. Really picks up where Mass Effect
2 left off. You have the Normandy is back at the Citadel undergoing repairs 'cus they
got beat up a little bit at the Collector base, and also because when you bro out with
Jason once you get farther in Mass Effect 2 he's like "get loud, spill some drinks on
the Citadel." So that's what's going on. The two engineers, Ken and Gabby, they're doing
stuff, and if you told the Illusive Man to go *** himself they're already re-doing the
paint job, going back to Alliance colors. Then you're at the after mission party. You're
in the club in the Wards with the Turian bartender. People that are there, you've got Jerome of
course since he suggested the party. Probably Zaeed 'cus hey free drinks and he's up for
that. You got Garrus 'cus he's your best space bro. Chakwas is there, you know she's takin'
shots of the Serrice Ice brandy. Joker, he's looking mournfully at the dance floor cuz
he can't dance without ***' up his bones. Tali's there too, you'd think she'd go back
to the flotilla but after the whole trial thing she's like "I need a break from them."
If you picked Morinth she is there and she's stalking prey whatever, kind of creepy and
Shep's like "I made a bad decision with that." And then if someone I didn't mention that
was a love interest, they're there as well. They're having a good time they're spillin'
some drinks. In comes C-Sec and they're led by the newly promoted Bailey. He's like "Shepard
you gotta come with us 'cus the Batarians are like ***' pissed off that you blew
up their system and they found out about that, the Council's just like 'yeah we're gonna
throw you to the Batarians so we don't have war them.'" Everything gets kind of tense
people are like oh *** are we gonna pull out guns but Shepard's, he's kinda drunk and
he's unarmed so he's "whatever, I'll go with you." And they take everyone at the party
too because they're kind of complicit since they were there. They get transferred to an
Alliance ship and they're takin' the Normandy in tow 'cus they know EDI's in control of
the Normandy so if they tried to transport them on that, they would get escaped and they
would never see them again. Shepard is in the brig and maybe if he's a spacer have one
of his parents come by for a chat, we actually get to see them. Get a little dialogue there
then also we introduce James here. When I first played the game I saw James and was
"who the *** is this guy and why do I care about him?" Because they just kind of throw
him on us but this way James is gonna be like Shep's guard or jailer so we get interaction
between those two more, and we actually develop this guy a little bit before we introduce
him as a main character. I think that would work better all-around. Then the ship arrives
a Arcturas Station which is a big Alliance hub for their fleet. And we find out there's
going to be this trial. It's going to be a three creature tribunal: you got the Batarian
guy of course and he's gonna vote against Shep no matter what because he hates humans.
You got the human counselor either Udina or Anderson they'll definitely support Shepard
no matter what, and then you have the Turian counselor because the Batarian wanted a "neutral
guy" but he knows Turians and humans have some race relation issues. The trial begins
and you start going over past events. I think this would be a great thing for new players
'cus it kinda involves those interactive story deals they set up for new players for Mass
Effect 2 and 3 where you go through all the previous choices in the game and just reiterates
some of the other choices you make so they bring in the crewmen they got, they testify,
ask them questions. You got the Virmire survivor, who obviously wasn't on your crew and Hackett,
who ordered the mission to the Batarian system. Finally after all these people Shepard takes
the stand, and the Batarian is the one questioning him, he like "I'm gonna get this guy." You
have background coming in so if your origin is from Mindoir he brings it up "you hate
Batarians because they raided your system, that's your motivation for killing all these
people. If he's the ruthless background he's like "oh you went to Torphan you killed all
these people this is just the next step for you killing all these Batarians. From Mass
Effect 1 there's Terra Nova. Shepard's defending himself and stuff, you be renegade as hell
and be like *** you dude. But then in the middle you get this priority message coming
to through and it's like you guys need to see this, and it turns out its a distress
call coming from the Batarian Hegemony and they're under attack by the Reapers. Oh ***
and you get a video feed and they're landing on Kar'Shan and it's like "Oh man this, this
is happening right now." The Batarian's just like "I gotta get outta here," so he just
leaves. And the other guys are "I guess the trial's over now, I guess it was Reapers."
Huh, fancy that. Shepard gets let loose; he meets up with Hackett and a newly promoted
Admiral Anderson. At this point Anderson leaves the council because he's a military guy and
he's needed in that capacity and Udina takes on the council regardless. This kind of explains
what happens at the beginning of Mass Effect 3. We don't know why Anderson left the council
if you chose him. So this just fills in that kind of plot hole. They're talking with Shepard
and they decide, okay you're going to get your commission back we need you to get out
there and handle this. Shepard's like, alright so he heads to the Normandy and assembles
his crew. Now, most of his teammates are gone the ones from Mass Effect 2 as soon as they
were able to leave they're able to leave they're off doing their own thing 'cus they got ***
to do now that the Reapers are here. But you got Chakwas, the engineers, you got the alliance
people on the crew since they've been repairing it since they didn't finish at the Citadel.
You got James, you got the Virmire survivor, and you got Garrus. Got your team back together,
the first mission you go on, you're going to Mars to meet Liara. Pretty similar to how
it is in Mass Effect 3 but instead of just all Cerberus they're mostly mercs which are
led by a few Cerberus commandos. As the game goes on these commandos all become more husk
like in appearance since they're becoming more Reaperfied. So it pretty much ends in
the same way: you get your confrontation with the Illusive Man, Edi takes the robot body,
Virmire survivor gets beat, and Liara joins the crew. Big change here, Prothean data is
no longer about some big space McGuffin that they can use to kill all the Reapers at once.
It's actually just an archive of Prothean weapons and armor and ship designs and stuff.
They're like okay, we're gonna use this information, we're upgrade all our fleets and weapons and
stuff and we're going to call it the Crucible project and that's what we're going to be
working on now. Bassically what this'll do like in the fleet case is everything moves
up a weight class. Like you have frigates that hit like cruisers, cruisers that hit
like dreadnoughts, and dreadnoughts that hit like Reapers. Nobody's just like oh we can't
win this conventionally. No you ***' can you just need to do it right. So now you get
points split up. So before you had war assets which was just everything together, but now
you have fleet and ground assets which will count for different ways. And then you also
have Crucible assets which acts like a multiplier for those two. So you get higher Crucible
so you're able to upgrade more of your fleet and you're able to get better guns on the
ground so that's how that system will work. Admiral Hackett gets put in charge of coordinating
the fleet and the Crucible upgrades. Anderson is put in charge of special forces and ground
operations. He's not going to just sit on his *** on some planet for no reason. He's
gonna be in charge of something. Udina takes the place on the council and he coordinates
with the other races for the Crucible project and then going between for the different militaries
to get some semblance of a coalition going. Next mission Shepard goes to Eden Prime to
recover Javik. This is pretty vital because Javik is a great character and he should be
there from pretty much the beginning. So mission goes pretty much the same except again you
have more mercs than Cerberus commandos. And that's pretty much the end of the beginning,
of the first act. The Middle, there's a lot of stuff that's unchanged it's just shuffling
things around so that the story makes more sense from a narrative perspective and keeps
a more consistent tone. First part of this section is: everyone's just preparing for
the Reapers. They're letting the Batarians get slaughtered because *** those slaving
***. You have Sur'Kesh and Tuchanka which are pretty much unchanged because that's probably
the best mission in the game. And then you also have Rannoch. This mission is pretty
much unchanged. The Reaper presence, you're like "oh they're attacking the Batarians why
are there Reapers here?" Well they're sending off these small destroyers as kind of a vanguard
to try and mix things up and keep everyone off balance while they're building their forces
while they're conquering the Batarians. Then you have the side missions for this part.
You have the Rachni with Grunt, you got the ex-Cerberus scientists with Jackson, and you've
got Grissom Academy, the Ardat-Yakshi monastary, and the bomb on Tuchanka. Can also work in
the Omega DLC here as another side mission you can do. Once you complete both primary
missions you get called back to the Citadel because it's under attack by Cerberus led
forces. So you just immediately go there and it's pretty much the same, except in the Kai
Leng fight when you're with the Salarian Councillor, Thane doesn't hesitate at all if he's still
alive and he just shoots him dead like no issue, just pops out bam. Because he's a professional
assassin, that's what he does. And he's uninjured so he's just like "Oh hey, now you gotta go
up there Udina's the one kinda behind all this." So you're like "oh ***." Then the
scene with Udina happens, he gets plugged and you continue from there. Everyone's just
like: Cerberus is this huge threat right now, the Reapers are kind of on the back burner
right now, we need to take care of these guys. Then you go to Horizon and the mission is
pretty much the same. If Kai Leng survived you can have another fight here kind of like
the one on Thessia with the gunship except you can actually kill him here. Shepard wins,
Leng dies. Or if Shepard looses Miranda comes in and saves him and the mission continues
from there. Then from Horizon you head to the Cerberus HQ which was put at the very
end of Mass Effect 3. It's pretty much the same, if Kai Leng is still alive for some
reason in case you're terrible at the game, he's a sub boss. And then finally you fight
like the semi-huskified Illusive Man, who has all these Reaper powers and stuff. So
that's the kinda like the preparing for the Reaper phase. Then it's Normandy's turn to
get refitted in the Crucible project. And this is where you can have the Citadel DLC,
where everyone goes on shore leave and has those missions. Which is fantastic, I love
this DLC, I want it to be in this game so bad, and I think this is place where it should
go. Now that Cerberus is done, all the previous side missions are unavailable because oh ***
the Reapers are here now and they are comin' hard. Three new primary missions, you have
the one on Thessia where you have to recover the Prothean archive. They don't know what's
in it but they figure it's important so they might as well save it before it's destroyed.
Then on Palivan you still have to rescue the Primarch because the Turians are gettin' hit
hard, he's really the only one who's holding it together so you need to get him out of
there so that their whole front doesn't collapse. Then the third one on Earth, where they're
trying to build another Reaper larva there so you have to go sabotage that. Once those
three are complete now you're approaching the ending. So the Reapers pull back from
these three fronts and people like huh what, what's goin' on? But then they're like oh
they're probably going to attack the Citadel because the difference in this cycle is that
they don't have control over the relay network so they can't really stop our troop movements
which are why we're able to put up fight like this. They're probably going to come here
they're probably going to try what Sovereign did, shut down the relay network. They're
just like, we're going to pull all our fleet and armies to the Citadel now. And they're
preparing for this, all the civilians are evacuated to Bekinstein so we don't have to
worry about them. Admiral Hackett takes control of the fleet, he spreads it out through the
nebula "okay we're going to ambush these guys, we're going to need all the advantage we can
get, we're going to surprise them." Then you have armies deploying across the presidium.
General plan here is we're going to lure the Reaper fleet in, deactivate the relays then
try to just take 'em out when we have all our forces together. On the Citadel you got
Wrex directing the Krogan, and the Primarch is obviously leading the Turians, you got
Geth setting up. And then out of the blue, oh you got Rachni coming in. People are like
all freaked out what, what the *** are we gonna do about this. But then that Asari from
Mass Effect 2 comes in she's like "no don't worry, they're cool they're totally cool."
Then you have Anderson on the ground directing everything from the Citadel chamber. Everyone's
setting up they're like "okay we can do this." Then a message comes in Sur'Kesh, they're
not necessarily here because they're pissed at Shepard for not sabotaging the Genophage,
but they're like oh ***, we're under attack. People be all like, oh we gotta go save 'em.
Well wait, this is probably a Reaper poly, they're probably just going to try and pull
us all away from here so they can take the Citadel and ambush us. Okay, we're going to
hold fast, it kind of sucks, they gotta take one for the team here. Just as they expect
Reapers start coming through the relay. S'like, oh we pretend this is a big deal so they're
closing the citadel, but this isn't all the Reapers though so like, oh we can't give ourselves
away yet, the fleet needs to hold before reveals itself. They send an un-coded message so definitely
the Reapers will hear it, to the Salarians, they're like "get to the Citadel, we'll reinforce
here, and we'll fight 'em." So now more Reapers start pouring in, s'like oh this is going
to be a big battle at the citadel, we gotta nip this in the bud. So then Reapers start
cutting through the ward arms like we gotta shut down these relays fast, then they start
sending more ground troops in. Then while all this is happening Anderson talks to Shepard
he's like "okay we analyzed that uh Thessian Prothean VI. We figured out it's actually
a more detailed map of the Citadel with all the control systems and reactors and stuff,
so we figured out how the Citadel works and in case of a backup plan we figured out a
way to self-destruct. Since it's a huge mass relay, just be a huge explosion and it would
take out all the Reapers." Shep's like okay, I'm going to head down there now, gonna take
a team with me, that's going to be our ace in the hole in case things go *** up. Then
Anderson shuts down the gate, Reapers like uhh what's goin' on. But then the fleet comes
out of the nebula and Admiral Hackett's just like "hit it with everything we got." First
scene, dreadnoughts opening fire, and they just blow the hell out of the Reapers on the
Citadel, if they're fully upgraded, they're just doing a lot of damage. There's Thanix
cannons goin' off. Then this massive battle starts. You have Normandy flying around, ship
just engaging all over the place in this whole nebula. The Reapers are dealing casualties
too, so there's some back and forth. But it's just a huge battle. Shepard's takin' the elevator
down, he arrives on the Presidium. There's a huge battle going on here too. You got Grunt
blowing the *** out of husks. You have Rachni impaling things and ripping them apart with
their tentacle things. Matriarch Aethyta, she's slappin' singularities all around. See
a dude about to be takin' out by a banshee, but then a Geth Prime just like tackles it
and stop it, like yeah. Shepard's lookin' around, he see Conrad Verner of all people.
He's like what, what's goin' on here. But then he looks closer, his like nose and face
is just covered in like red stuff. He's like, oh, he's blitzed out of his mind on red sand,
that's why he's actually helping here. Then you just have other shots of like the various
council races doin' work, holdin' their positions, laying down fire. Shep's like okay things
are semi under control here, I'm going to head down to the access point. Then who does
he encounter there? Chorban, the Salarian guy from Mass Effect 1 who was scanning the
Keepers. He's just like, "yeah I've been doing research here and those Keepers are probably
going to kill you if you go down there." And sure enough you have to fight Keepers to actually
get down to where you need to be to destroy the reactor and blow up the Citadel. They
make it to the control room, Shep gets closer but then he gets caught in an energy field.
Kind of like he did in the Porthean beacon. Now we go inside Shep's own mind, and he has
like a vision of Harbinger. He kind of has this link with Reapers from his various brushes
with Reaper artifacts, and Harbinger's just like "I'm going take control of you." Then
he gets transported to one of the three starting background areas, so either Akuze, Torphan,
or Elysium. And there he has to fight everyone who died under his command in this battle.
And it gets increasingly harder like it gets exponentially harder with each person you
have to kill. At the very least if you had like a no *** up run, you have to fight the
person who died on Virmire, Mordin, legion, and Jenkins. Obviously Jenkins, people forget
Jenkins, first one to die, you need to have Jenkins. But if Mordin and Legion voluntarily
sacrificed themselves, Shep was just like "okay, I love you guys but you gotta do this,"
then they actually fight with Shep like normal squad mates. This is where we start getting
different outcomes. If Shepard dies, like the field goes down, people are like, "oh,
are you okay?" But he turns around, his eyes are glowing orange, and he's just like "assuming
direct control." And he just takes out a gun, shoots all his other teammates, but Javik's
there and like he's deathly wounded, but he takes Shep out, because he's "not again!"
That's the first option. Second option, he wins but he had to kill too many former teammates
so he's just like "oh ***." Just gun to his head, blam, he kills himself. But his teammates
can still activate the Citadel self-destruct. So if killed just a couple teammates, like
the unavoidable ones and a couple others, he regains his composure "okay, we're fine
here." You cut to the battle, the fleet is either winning or failing. Same thing with
the ground forces, things are either going fine or they're *** up. And this is where
you get different outcomes. So you have three criteria here: you have the strength of your
fleet, strength of your ground forces, and whether or not there's anyone left to blow
up the Citadel. Going from best to worst, you have a high fleet and high ground forces.
Everyone holds their position, the Reapers are defeated pretty well, that's the best
outcome you can have. Next you have a low fleet, a high ground, and destruct is active.
In this one the Reapers destroy the fleet but they can't get to the control room on
the Citadel, they activate the self-destruct, Citadel explodes, Reapers are totally defeated,
but everyone's dead. Next you have a high fleet, a low ground, and Shepard controlled.
For this one, the Reaper forces open the relay like they're getting pounded by the fleet
and some of them escape. But they're hunted down. It's not a total failure. Then this
one, you have low fleet score, low ground score, but you have a destruct active. Some
of the Reapers escape, and then they finish this cycle, because they pretty much destroyed
everything and all the armies, but then Liara's beacons help the next cycle defeat the Reapers.
So you might get a scene of some Yahg ships just blowing up the rest of the Reapers. So,
it's a belated victory, but it is a victory. Then the worst one, you have low fleet low
ground and Shepard is controlled. This is pretty much a complete failure, you have done
nothing to stop the Reapers, and it will continue indefinitely. Those are your distinct endings.
Then we show an epilogue. Show rebuilding, working on the Citadel. Maybe it's abandoned
if it's too badly destroyed. Then you have other worlds being repaired, so you have like
Thessia, Palavan, Earth. They're being repaired, including Tuchanka and Rannoch. Those are
the big ones which are affected by choices. If you cured the genophage, Tuchanka is doing
great, otherwise it sucks and they're pretty much all dead. On Rannoch if you destroyed
the Geth or destroyed the Quarians, that's going to affect the outcome. Because if the
Geth and Quarians are at peace they actually become a major power and then the eventually
join the council. But if you just have the Quarians they're just going to be struggling
to rebuild and they're not going to be really on the galactic stage for a long time. But
if you just have the Geth they just go back into isolation and build their Dyson sphere
and basically kind of get forgotten about. The Batarians are pretty much completely destroyed,
any remaining things may be assimilated into the Human Alliance, but there's just not much
left. If Shep is dead, but your crew pretty much survives, you have the scene where they
put his name on the board, and it's like "*** he's dead." But if you did everything right,
you get another epilogue showing Shepard and his crew they're like on a beach somewhere
they're just like "yeahh." They're havin' drinks they're playing vollyball this is kind
of going full circle 'cus they started at an afterparty, they're ending at an afterparty.
You got all the past crew mates and team members that are still alive. Oh, here's another thing:
if the Quarians and Geth actually re-unite, then they kind of mentioned this that they're
helping Quarians rebuild their immune systems. You can actually show Tali outside of her
suit, which I think would be cool. And obviously she is some kind of mandibled either insect
or reptile, definitely not a space elf. Everyone's having a good time, but then oh, like the
last husk comes out of the bushes. And s'like oh, what are we gonna do about this? But then
Wrex or Grunt they go up and headbutt the *** out of it. It crashed into a tree explodes,
everyone's like "yaayy." And then you just have Shepard with his love interest "yeah,
it's finally over now." Then sunset, roll credits. That's the sickeningly happy ending,
but I think that should have at least been an option because all the other endings are,
rather, if not bleak, then not happy. And Shepard's only alive in one of them. That's
about it, I'm don't know really how to end this. "How 'bout goodbye?" Goodbye.