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I'm not disappointed in Mass Effect 3 as a whole, just the ending. Which I find myself entirely numb to, honestly, because there's a shred of hope left in me that they'll amend the damage they've caused to their fanbase.
So I'm a hopeful.
I created a surround gaming rig expressly for Mass Effect 3 and I have no regrets.
I was feeling all of my achievements paying off by the time Admiral Hackett stepped onto the Normandy. I poured myself a small glass of whatever was left of my vodka and drank it as I watched the cutscene go.
I got misty-eyed when the fleets were all reporting in. Asari, Geth, Turian, Salarian, everything was falling into place. I wanted to hold onto that sensation. I poured some rum with some Dr. Pepper and had at it. Throughout the night, I was feeling emotionally charged in a game I had invested myself into. I watched as the battle was met and the shots were being fired, and was in awe when the arms of a reaper were severed, proving once and for all that the races of the galaxy had a shot at this.
Had more rum.
By the time Cortez landed the shuttle on Earth, I was buzzing -quite- nicely. And honestly, it put me in the right kind of mood to experience that level. The senses I needed were sharpened (reaction time, vision, hearing) and any awareness that I didn't were dulled (sense of time, sense of being in my chair). I had my vision, but it wasn't for the surroundings. All I know it was black, bleak, chaotic and dire, and that's all I needed to know. Now and then I'd take another swig of rum. Didn't pause. Just hammered away at the level as if I had experienced it 100 times. I was aware of the plot and why I was fighting, who I was fighting and when, but I honestly couldn't tell you about how much of the level's finer details I remember. I remember being in a room with a skeleton on a bed. That hit me harder than it would have without the alcohol.
When it came time to speak to the older members of my crew, man. There wasn't a single thing said by them that I didn't just love. I was more than misty-eyed by this point, I was silently weeping about everything coming down to a head and that the end was near. I moved on, spoke to the rest of my team. Spoke to Wrex, spoke to Sergeant Coats, and by this time, I was still silently weeping, but I was more affirmed than ever that I was going to take back the earth and send the Reapers to hell.
That final push was brutal, but I refused to die. I wanted to go through that entire level on my first run, and that's exactly what I accomplished. Dealing with three banshees and three brutes (I have no idea if that's how many were there at the final push, but damn sure felt like more), was insane, but I soldiered through it. Then came the mad dash toward the beam.
All my booze was gone by then and I had consumed quite a bit, but I wasn't drunk. Yet I think the ending didn't hit me quite so hard because I was inebriated. It was a really odd, numbing thing to watch the ending unfold like that.
Anyway, I achieved a level of immersion with my surround gaming rig, and with the aid of a bit of alcohol (like a quarter bottle of rum, 1/8th bottle of vodka), I had never felt before, and it made it all worth every red cent.
Do I like the ending? No, I hate it.
Do I like Mass Effect 3. Love it, I have faith it'll be restored. Personally, I support the indoctrination theory.
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