Mass Effect 3 vs. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Dragon Age" Inquisition

[Winter]

In part two of chuck's review of SW The Old Republic: Sith Inquisitor Chuck covers one of his issues with ME3 which was how the choices weren't personal enough for the player character and how with all of the companions personal stories wrapped up in ME2 meant he had nothing left to care for.

As I've mentioned before I happen to really love Dragon Age: Inquisition and I also love The Witcher 3 and for me I feel that both are ME3 done right. In DAI and W3 you're choices effect the world that your character lives in and will determine who lives, who dies and who is running the show when all is said and done. In DAI you will have to decided who will rule Orlais, how the Mage and Templar war ends, the fate of the Gray Wardens and, including DLC what will happen to the Inquisition itself.

In W3 you will also have to decided who will rule Skellige, how the war between Redania and Nilfgaard will end, if the Mages will be able to escape Novigrad and what will happen to your adoptive daughter, and that's not even getting into the endings of the hundreds of side quests in the game which include what will happen with a number of your friends in the game.

Both games, in my opinion, strike a pretty good balance between giving their respective stories a epic scoop and still making things personal. In ME3, everything is set on a grand scale and yet nothing is really personal. The game tries to make things personal by having the main goal be about retaking Earth but that only really works if your Shepard's back ground is their from Earth and even then it still doesn't work as throughout the series we never went to Earth until the start of ME3 and we're only there for about 10 minutes so there's no chance to give Earth a real character.

Another issue with ME3 in contrast to DAI and W3 is that with the latter two you really got to know the people involved, their motivation and their goals and why they were going what they were doing. In ME3 you're not really given a chance to get to know most of the people involved in the war and the ones you do get to know are either characters you already met and the few new comers are few and far between.

Another issue is how the villains are handled in each game. While DAI over played it's villain it still worked as you rarely faced him and his army is only ever fought twice and the twist at the end helps to keep things interesting and makes replaying the game all the more interesting. In W3 it had you go up against several groups of villains who where independent of one another and kept the Wild Hunt which made your encounters with them all the more interesting.

But with ME3, it had it where the Reapers were everywhere and are almost on the verge of winning the war despite the fact that Shepard is almost always winning and the only time she loses is when the script says you do.

To show what I mean take a look at the Battle of Thessia and how it contrasts with the Battle of Haven and the battle of Kaer Morhen. All three are pretty much about giving the villain a victory or at the very least going to a draw which is really hard to do in a game as you have to make so the defeat doesn't feel like a cheat. DAI did this by giving you a in game reason as to why you couldn't win by giving the villain a Dragon which, if you tried take on the one in the Hinterlands, was either so hard that you nearly lost or, (like me on the first play through) got killed after 2 minutes with the Dragon almost looking like it felt sorry for you. In W3 there is a in story reason by way of Magic frost that requires a great deal of magic to break.

ME3 on the other hand just has you lose against someone that it took me one minute to beat, ON INSANITY! IN MY ENCOUNTER WITH HIM! You don't lose because you'r going up against a Dragon or a magic force beyond your powers to deal with you just lose because the game decides it's now time for you to lose. And just to throw salt on the wound you also lose the people you were fighting with because your radio isn't work, FOR NO REASON!!!

This is why I love DAI and W3, they give you more personal reasons to care about the outcome of these conflicts by giving you personal choices that have grand effect on the war while ME3 is about giving you grand choices that have little to no personal effect on you or your companions.

Thoughts?

[CharlesPhipps]

I think Dragon Age: Inquisition was terrible, honestly, because it went from being an adult series which combined fantasy tropes and real life instances of classicism, racism, and religious strife into a series which was about you versus Skeletor. The game was miles long and inches deep. There were whole regions were you had almost no interaction with the public and was just killing things. It felt like an MMORPG.

I felt Andromeda also played like that and it was just so...tedious.

As for Shepard vs. the Reapers, I don't understand how there's a problem with that because Shepard managed to beat a couple of Reapers that doesn't mean the millions of other ones which exist are hurt. Mind you, I do think the game screwed the ending because people did want a Dragon Age ending.

[TGLS]

If I were doing the Mass Effect series, the suicide mission of ME2 would have been the climax of ME3. Then it can have the Dragon Age ending, which would simply tell you what happened (i.e. did you fend off the Reapers, what happened to your friends, etc.) If Shepard died, no problem, it's the end after all.

[Worffan101]

Disclaimer: Haven't seen Chuck's review part 2 yet. Have not played Witcher 3. Have played ME3 and largely enjoyed it until the ending. Have played all DLC for ME3 and feel that the Citadel expansion is the best part of the whole game. Have played most of Inquisition (because that shit runs slowly on anything short of a pricey desktop and the story/exploration balance is so out of whack I keep getting bored), including the Descent but not Trespasser or the Jaws of Hakkon.

The biggest problem I had with ME3, outside of the ending, was honestly that Omega felt like it should've been part of the base game, and that the game as a whole felt sort of trimmed-down. I disagree somewhat about personal moments; Mordin's death, Wrex's interactions with Shepard, these all felt good, the geth/quarian arc was great but makes me wish there was more Legion, basically everything with Garrus and Liara when they weren't busy--but the problem, for me, boils down to the game not having enough content, and feeling very straightforward. I'm going from one place to the other with very little time to stick around--and while that feels great for a commando in a war story, this isn't JUST a war story.

What would've helped is more dialogue with the companions, removing Kai Leng from the game (or better yet, having the Illusive Man get the Prothean AI some other way while Shepard guts Kai Leng like a fish in the Citadel coup mission, Kai Leng is literally the most annoying and least fun villain in the entire series), putting /more stuff to do/ in the base game, and fixing the ending.

It showed all the early signs of EA interference, in other words.

I don't necessarily think that makes the game /bad/, but all together it does make ME3 not as good as ME2.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think you could fix most of ME3's ending by ending it with Shepard lying down beside Anderson and maybe having voice overs of the Reaper's exploding.

Leave it ambiguous whether Shepard lives or dies.

Mind you, the Leviathan DLC and Omega both feel like they should be main game content.

Obviously, so does a certain Prothean.

[Winter]

I think Dragon Age: Inquisition was terrible, honestly, because it went from being an adult series which combined fantasy tropes and real life instances of classicism, racism, and religious strife into a series which was about you versus Skeletor. The game was miles long and inches deep. There were whole regions were you had almost no interaction with the public and was just killing things. It felt like an MMORPG.

I felt Andromeda also played like that and it was just so...tedious.

As for Shepard vs. the Reapers, I don't understand how there's a problem with that because Shepard managed to beat a couple of Reapers that doesn't mean the millions of other ones which exist are hurt. Mind you, I do think the game screwed the ending because people did want a Dragon Age ending.

I see where you're coming from but for me I didn't mind the maps as I still had fun exploring them and finding all the Easter Eggs hidden throughout the game but I will admit that I wish they had more story to them like what we got with the DLC The Jaws of Hakkon which made that map all the more engaging as there was a narrative to make exploring all the more meaningful. Again I see where your coming from but for me the characters and the main story were strong enough to keep me engaged in the story and I've played DAI more times then I can count. I personally found DA2 a lot more tedious as the game consitend of mostly fighting while just going through the same maps over and over again. I will admit though that I do like how DA2 went for a smaller scale and I hope that DA4 does the same by having there be fewer maps and a smaller threat while building up to the bigger threat of DA5.

As for Andromeda, the reason I find that to be so much worse is that unlike DAI which had a number of hidden gems throughout the game the maps in MEA were almost completely empty and the few things that were there were just the same four or five missions that weren't fun in the first place. In DAI I love the star charts, finding the crystal shards, clearing out enemy bases, killing dragons, looking for lost history of this world which, as someone who was just coming into DA, was very interesting and helped me learn more about the world. But with MEA you learn next to nothing about these worlds, every Precursor base is exactly the same copy and pasted mission, (look for a way to open the base with a poorly throughout puzzle system, explore the base, activate said base and run from deadly cloud).

As for Shepard vs. the Reapers, the issue is that you only lose to them three times throughout the game. The first time is acceptable as you have no way of beating such a foe of such power but the other two times are scripted and have you lose due to cutscene stupidity, the battle of Thessia and the final battle of the game.

In my fan fix re-write of ME3 one thing I changed was that while the Reapers were present they weren't as overwhelmingly powerful as they were in the original game and the bulk of their forces where focused mostly on Earth and Palaven as they were the most powerful military forces in the Milky Way. Like Vigil said the Genocide of the entire galaxy is a long slow process yet in ME3 it seems to only take them a few months to cover the galaxy even without the Citadel. I also took a leaf out of DAO's book and kept it so before the final battle, not counting the Earth, it's the battle of Palaven and a brief encounter with Harbinger in the middle of the game that brings the full weight of the Reaper threat home.

I also gave Cerberus a reduced role as they were also overplayed and how powerful they were would depend mostly on what you did with the Collector Base in ME2. In my re-write you only meet Cerberus in the first act before the Reapers get to Earth, on Omega and during the Citadel Campaign but as for the other major missions, like ME2 with the Collectors, DAO with the Dark Spawn and Loghain and W3 for most of the game you're dealing with threats that are independent of the major villains to avoid, as Chuck put it, the Moriarty situations as it doesn't raise the question of how can the villains be so powerful as to not give the players a second break yet so incompetent as to be so easily thwarted in almost every encounter you have with them.

But that's just me and I'm just a gamer with an opinion.

[Worffan101]

I think you could fix most of ME3's ending by ending it with Shepard lying down beside Anderson and maybe having voice overs of the Reaper's exploding.

Leave it ambiguous whether Shepard lives or dies.

Mind you, the Leviathan DLC and Omega both feel like they should be main game content.

Obviously, so does a certain Prothean.

Agreed on the last two bits.

I actually wrote up a whole long alt-ending to ME3 on the miscellaneous Mass Effect thread over on alternatehistory.com, the idea was to use the war assets and levelled MP characters in something vaguely similar to the ME2 suicide mission but bigger, longer, with more krogan, and (obviously given the krogan) more badass. Still a desperate, nearly-lost fight? Yes. But one that makes you feel like all those nebulous war assets you collected actually MEAN something.

[Winter]

Going over to the DLC's of each three games I will say that I absolutely love the Citadel DLC from ME3 as it really felt like the culmination off all my choices, as far as my squad mates were concern, coming together to make one really fun a memorable experience. Sure it's not taking itself serious for even a second but unlike Andromeda or The Last Jedi what makes it work, for me at least, is that unlike MEA and Last is that A) it was a straight up comedy right from the start and was more or less completely discounted from the war with the Reapers that and the biggest threat you face is a evil clone and the concept is treated nothing major.

B) Given how despressing the whole game gets after a while the comedy was a welcomed change of pace. As Chuck said you're making choices that seem beyond your comprehension so facing a evil clone that needs a killing helps break up the dread that over takes the rest of the game.

And finally C) When it has to be serious it's serious like Thane's funeral or Shepard and Samara admitting their feelings for one another if you tried to do so in ME2 or the final goodbye. With MEA and TLJ, for me at least, the comedy often intruded on the more serious moments and the serious moments intruded on the more comedic moments so I couldn't enjoy either of them fully. With those more dramatic moments they are few and far between and yet still work with the theme of the work which is to take a break and spend time with you friends and loved ones.

Going over to W3 I feel Blood and Wine tries to do this and mostly works but it falls short as the treat Geralt is going up against is threatening an entire kingdom and characters can die in a rather horrible fashion assuming you even like them to begin with and honestly I only grew to love on character while the others were rather unlikable, for me at least.

And with DAI's Trespasser, while I love it the more lighthearted moments at the start don't really fit with the rest of the DLC and wasn't needed as more lighthearted moments were already worked into the main game in a way that didn't feel cheap.

Honestly if it weren't for the fact that I actually like Miranda and want to help her and her sister I would stop playing the main story after Rannoch and just play the DLC's ending with Citadel which I consider the real ending to the series. It's go everything, romance, betrayal, comedy and at least one random musical number. What's not to love?

[Enterprising]

This is why I love DAI and W3, they give you more personal reasons to care about the outcome of these conflicts by giving you personal choices that have grand effect on the war while ME3 is about giving you grand choices that have little to no personal effect on you or your companions.

Thoughts?

It's an interesting choice of 3 games to contrast with one another, and I'd rank them from best to worst as the following:

1. Witcher 3
2. DA:I
3. ME3

I think the main thing about them relative to the depth/quality they offer, is the time that was spent on making them. So in that regard it's no real surprise ME3 comes out last, with a mere 18 months to cobble it together. I played it on release day (the last pre-order I ever made) and above anything else it just didn't feel like a finished game.

Now I know with enough people, you can churn out stuff pretty quickly, and even if that wasn't the case for this game, even just for the creative & story aspects it just wasn't enough time, especially as it's all clear to see the trilogy wasn't actually planned out. (Despite Bioware's statements to the contrary.) Ending aside, it's unquestionably improved after the patches & DLC, but still a non-competition between it and even just the retail release of Witcher 3. EA had the shackles on too tight, and should have held the game back at least a year for it all to flesh out. In contrast to ME:A, the went too far the other direction, and be so slack they let Bioware waste nearly 3 full years on a procedural planet system that ended up getting trashed, and then we know how that all ended, an absolutely disastrous release that caused no ends of mocking & embarrassment.

DAI:I was some good steps forward for Bioware, but the overall world while large in scope and beautiful in it's make up, did not have the life and content to match. I would agree there is better all round depth, particularly when stacked up against ME3, but it still felt their emphasis was still learning too much on the "size" & "coolness" factors, which meant the overall story, side-questing and lore suffered as a result with even more retcons and inconsistencies.

Witcher 3 just handles everything with much more care & thought. Despite there being huge areas of landscape to traverse, for the most part it pulls these off without making them feel empty or boring. There's always a feeling you can find or run into something that'll divert you from the quest you were heading to, it makes you want to look just about everywhere, and generally gives you a pay-off for it at the end. ME3 didn't do that at all, DA:I did it a little bit, but it was so few & far between you ended up wasting you time in a lot places looking around for no real reason in the end.

As long as their is an EA or suchlike over their shoulder, we'll likely never get a game with the depth or story desired unless it suddenly becomes the next money making machine for them. The on-going saga of Star Citizen shows you going completely the other way also requires caution. There's a middle ground in there to be achieved for developers with a publisher looking over them, though I'm not sure if anyone will manage it.

[Riedquat]

What happened in both DA:I and Witcher 3 was all connected to the player. DA:I puts the player in quite a position of authority so their ability to influence things at a large scale isn't unreasonable. Any not entirely pre-scripted event is going to be ultimately derived by player actions (or random), and it's good when there are some that don't rely on direct choices but as a result of various actions, such as who becomes the next Divine. ME3 actually touched on that once or twice (Rannoch is probably the most noticable example, where choices in ME2 influenced the outcome). On the gameplay front yes, far too much was slogging around doing MMO-style fetchquests in areas that existed only to be a sidequest timesink. Andromeda had the same problem. There was an upside to that, the timescale meant that the Inquisition's rise to power and the sense of change and progression did not feel ludicrously fast. Just wish that could've been done without such an obvious case of a few main plot elements sparesely scattered amongst filler.

But ME3 is largely too disconnected from the player. The nature of the story makes that inevitable, even if it was handled a lot better than it was, and that makes having Shepard have that much direct influence in the outcome ridiculous. Any time you can completely resolve a huge situation with a single button press, entirely dependent on the actions of one individual you've got problems. That's as big a problem as the disconnect IMO.

Similarly with TW3 in a way, but there there's no direct power but there are lots of personal connections to people who have them, although as was pointed out somewhere it seems a bit odd that Geralt seems to be on first name terms with just about every bigwig in the world.