I figure enough people have played Mass Effect 3 by now that I don’t have to put up giant spoiler warnings.  So, plunging in.  After I finished the game it asked if I wanted to keep playing.  I said yes, and it rolled me back to a point just before you assault the Cerberus base, and the final battle on Earth.

Since I was stuck there, and waiting for the DLC to be released I decided to replay those final sequences.  I’m continuing to keep my war readiness at 100% which meant I was way over what I needed to achieve the best outcome.  But as I moved forward through this I realized that I had no idea what happened if you didn’t have your EMS (effective Military strength) at a high level. 

So I went to that arbiter of all things good and true (cough cough) — the web.   Turns out I was wrong when I said that gathering all the military assets you could was useless.  If you don’t have a high enough EMS it turns out that the Earth is turned into a charred cinder no matter which color choice you make at the end.

The giant pulse of energy that either controls, kills or leads to synthesis with the Reapers destroys the Earth.  Depending on how many points you have it can take out everything, take out buildings, but leave the people, or take out people but leave the buildings, etc. etc.

In my case with my in excess of 7000 points of EMS it was all rainbows and bunnies — except for billions of people having been killed and rendered, and cities in ruins, etc. etc.

But then I got mad at the writers all over again because this didn’t make any damn sense.  How does the size of my awesome unified fleet have any bearing on whether a giant pulse of power that can destroy mass relays doesn’t destroy the Earth?

Look, I’m glad there were consequences for lazy, muscle through as fast as you can, and never do any side missions style of gaming, but couldn’t it at least make sense?  If you had a shitty EMS then the Reapers ought to destroy your fleet and win.  If you have an average EMS then it ends in a stalemate, and a grueling war continues.  Or you unite the galaxy against the Reapers, you win — rainbows and bunnies time.

It’s just bad story telling and another example of why you need real writers to be involved with these games, and involved from the beginning.

I heard a rumor from a friend who is plugged into the gaming circuit far more than I am that most of the top Bioware writers have bailed out.  Maybe the corporate style of EA is incompatible with highly creative game companies like Bioware.  Only time will tell.