Hello everyone, just stopping by to throw my 2 cents into the mix.

I made a YouTube comment breaking down the video and posted it over on r/masseffect and figured I'd throw it up here too. It's a text wall, so brace yourself:

All in all, this video was pretty unrepresentative to the point where I'm not entirely sure where the satire and honest criticism are disconnected from each other.

Let's break it down piece by piece, and for context, I have well over 60 hours in the game with ~90% completion and only played on Insanity difficulty.

0:32 Various bugs: Scream lack of polish, to which I agree. However, take a clip from the opening minutes of the original Mass Effect and not show how unpolished it was isn't exactly being honest. While the gap between the games is large, the intent and development behind both of them was similar resulting in similar problem on this front.

0:50 Default Sara Ryder being hideous: Subjective, but I agree. I use a better, more pretty version of the default Sara made by the community. It took all of 3 minutes to find and use over the default BioWare one.

1:13 On previous Mass Effect games being solid 3rd person shooters; Mass Effect 1 controls like trash. Everyone knows it. When you tell people to play through it, you tell them to play through easy and power through because it isn't fun to play but it is fun to experience. Mass Effect 2 improves on 1 drastically, but didn't have the depth that 3 had. 2 is also where we start to see various issues with the scope of the story being presented that occur further into 3's development.

1:32 Liam isn't funny in the opening mission, this I agree. His loyalty mission on the other hand is easily one of the best quests in the game, full stop. So he's a mixed bag. Fair enough. Interesting you didn't talk about the no-nonsense characters like Vetra or Cora here, and instead talked about Liam and Peebee, two of the more silly characters as an indictment of the full cast.

1:48 Ah yes, I forgot you need household names to make a good cast. What we need in more games is Troy Baker, Nolan North, Jennifer Hale, Steve Blum. They're so underrepresented /s. Further, Dragon Age: Inquisition used a great deal of lesser known voice actors to a pretty good effect. I simply can't agree that the companions don't feel authentic because they don't use well known voice actors.

2:26 On Nakmor Kesh, 1.) We know what female Krogan sound like thanks to Urdnot Bakara from ME3's genophage arc (or 1st act). 2.) Kesh is a female. 3.) Kesh doesn't sound like that (though this one I think is satire, but I just figured I'd throw that out there).

2:40 "The combat has been dumbed down"

1.)To illustrate this point, you use a clip in which you run out into the open, presumably to highlight the stuck in the air raider, without using a skill ever. this is presumably not a difficulty that requires thought as death would quickly follow this action on anything higher than normal.

2.)It's only partially true that you can only have 3 abilities at a time. If you don't use the profiles system you're absolutely right. Not using that system, however, demands a really strong primary spec or lack of knowledge because you really are hamstringing yourself unless you build correctly. Profiles work like hidden hot bars with shifting passives, and using it properly in a fight can add many layers to encounters on higher difficulties. On lower difficulites, it isn't necessary because the game is braindead easy on anything lower than hardcore.

3.) Not being able to use squadmate abilities is a non-factor to me, as I gamed the system in the past titles. Playing as biotic in ME3 throw a squaddie in with overload and you win the game. In ME2, bring overload and squad incendiary ammo and you win the game. In ME1, just do your best against the krogan.

2:55 In order to illustrate the point about quests being confusing, I feel like you missed the mark here. The real problem with quests in the game is that it takes just a crazy amount of loading screens to get from planet to ship to quest giver to next planet, which you touch on in a disconnected way later in the video (4:10). Kadara is fantastically bad in this respect in that it takes 2 loading screens (3 if you're coming from out of system) and a short walk to even get to the questing area. Actually doing the quests when you get there is easy if you've played a video game in the last 10 years and know how to use a quest log or, y'know, context clues. Unless they bug out, which is a real possibility though not super common.

3:20 The AVP system and Strike teams are both explained. In fact, in order to use strike teams, you literally had to talk to two NPCs that explain how the system works. The AVP system is also talked about, though I suppose the game presumes you played DA:I to some degree to understand how its power system works and how similar it is to the AVP system. Also, as bad as some of the menus are in this game, I don't think anyone was confused by the vendor screen (3:23).

3:26 Research, then craft. There is no straight upgrade system in the game. Research doesn't take the same resource as actually crafting the guns, so its free(ish) to research the how, and the overall amount required to craft a given thing is basically non-existent. I never had an issue not having enough mats to craft whatever I wanted. I did run out of the research points a couple of times, though. The reason they give you every gun in the game is so you can research how to make them, then make them better than you can get in the open world if you augment them right.

3:40 Disliking open world games is subjective, but I can understand why a game about exploration would be open world, can't you?

3:44 This scene from first contact with the Angara is taken so hilariously out of context it strikes as completely dishonest. You cut all the dialogue from the walk, the subtext of your arrival and the circumstances for why the scene is even taking place. If you didn't want to touch on those things, using this as an example is counterproductive.

3:55 Disliking the nomad is understandable. Not for everyone. Using it for vehicular manslaughter, coincidentally, not for anyone.

4:35 In all honesty, I find Sara Ryder (Fryda Wolff) to be uninspiring in her delivery too, Dunk. Scott (Tom Taylorson) does an excellent job and seems a more natural fit for the role, much in the same way I though Jennifer Hale did a better job in most of ME1-2 than Meer did (and fell off in 3). Now, that said, Shepard and Ryder are two different characters. In my opinion, Ryder being unproven is a great benefit to the story, as if people trusted you as you stepped off Ark Hyperion after having succeeded the previous pathfinder seemingly by right of birth, it would be very jarring. Earning that trust and respect over the course of the game is the kind of narrative progression that sold me on Ryder completely. You also didn't show what could be the best line in the game right before the interrupt. The "I'm gonna fuck your shit up" line which, when said by Scott is pretty much gold.

5:14 The context is the chamber in which you stand, not the door. Again, don't know if this is satire or an actual example you use to enhance your criticism.

If anyone's made it this far, I commend you. I'm just a pleb on the internet who no-lifed this game. I'm also a BioWare apologist (I guess) seeing as how I really enjoyed MEA, liked the original ending to ME3, and like DA2. I'm open to discussion and am simply offering a different take on Dunk's which while I stand in some pretty solid disagreement, can understand where he's coming from.

Have a nice day. I have an actual paper to write now x.x