It was quite a long time before I played Mass Effect after its initial release – I refused to buy the games on PS3 until the trilogy was released, and I didn’t want to buy it on my 360 because of the infamous RROD, which I was getting intermittently at the time. I kept my head down through the ending controversy (although I found the vanilla cupcake prank absolutely hilarious) and when I finally DID play it, I actually didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

This time, though…well. There’s a lot to unpack here, but maybe it’d be better to just throw away the suitcase…

I have only ever played Mass Effect 3 as a Paragon Shepard, as far as I can recall. But Jean Luc is a Renegade, and I wasn’t about to change this. Besides, I reasoned, a new experience of the game would be good for me – and, in a lot of ways, it was. I lost a lot of characters, and it felt like all the bastard choices I had made, both in this game and the two previous ones, were coming back to bite me. I refused to take any Paragon options at all, and two of my characters ended up committing suicide because of it. I FINALLY got to shoot Kaiden and put him out of my misery. Garrus and Liara, my go-to squadmates for the whole game, were annihilated at the end. Being a Renegade, I also opted for the Destroy option, so this was basically Everyone Dies: The Video Game. I mean, holy shit. Some of this stuff I’d not seen before, and whilst it was kinda annoying to watch characters I’d worked so hard to keep alive die, it was also very satisfying, because this was definitely my Shepard.

…but this is where the fun ends. Because Mass Effect 3 is NOT written in a way that allows you to be a pure Renegade, and these deaths feel as much like the product of poor writing in a standalone experience as they do a build-up of several games. Since when does Jean Luc Shepard salute? Since when does he care about random children he finds in a vent? Since when does he have nightmares – very badly scripted nightmares – about said children? I had to work damn hard to re-mould my Shepard into an unflinching, unforgiving bastard, and I did NOT care for it at all. I would not have chosen to hand the Normandy back to the Alliance. I rejected the Spectre status in the second game, and I would have in the third if I had been allowed to. Picking the Renegade options in this still led to some frustratingly tame and conciliatory dialogue and it annoyed the hell out of me to have my character taken out of my hands like this.

I mean, I get that this is the big finale, where the galaxy has to come together, but…good fucking god, let me play a character who doesn’t really give a shit about this, please. Someone who is so fed up with this shit that he just goes out there – alone, unanswerable to anyone – and brings everyone together by brute force. Why should you have to choose between forces? You do what I tell you to do! The Quarians and the Geth don’t want to work together? Tough shit! I really do not like how tame this all is. If I were playing as a Paragon I doubt it would be a problem, because the Paragon Shepard is, to my memory (and I will no doubt revisit this either next year or the year after to verify this) a negotiator. Someone who WOULD pick the heroic options, and inspire troops through acts of courage and loyalty. For the Renegade Shepard this is a problem. They’re a brutal, unforgiving monster. They push people out of windows, shoot them without blinking, and make threats every other sentence. The Renegade Shepard is the ultimate edgelord, and that is completely absent here. It felt very much like my effort in the previous two games went to waste, and whilst I got my glowing eyes and horrendously scarred face back – yay! – it didn’t really feel like I’d earned any of it.

In terms of gameplay I’m not really sure if I’d say this has improved or not, outside of giving you the ability to run as long as you want to…something long ovedue. I love the increased variety of enemies – even if I do hate banshees with a passion – and the weapons are fine, but skill trees don’t feel particularly flexible or well thought-out, and that element of exploration is pretty much gone. I don’t think even the narrative can justify that, because you could have always found Reaper bases to infiltrate, or stranded allied outposts. These things were missions in the game, so why couldn’t they be free missions as well?

That said, the lore was very satisfying, particularly that provided by Leviathan and the later Geth missions. As a species the Geth became much more interesting with the introduction of Legion in the second game, and their origin was told rather well here I thought. The Krogan ruins were a frustratingly brief look into Krogan society and what it could be again post-Genophage, and even if Shepard wasn’t a very satisfying character in this game, the returning squad members all had very natural-feeling and enjoyable story arcs. Jack’s was probably the most surprising and entertaining, with her being a teacher of all things. I also really liked Prothy–sorry, I mean, Javik.

But ultimately, I’m sad to say, I did not really enjoy this replay. The dissonance between what I wanted my character to do and what they were actually saying and doing was a little too much for me to really immerse myself in the experience, and I had an overwhelming desire to give up and restart from the beginning and choose Paragon options this time, because it sure felt like this game wanted me to do that. Having my choices invalidated by bad dialogue was depressing, to say the least.

I will, as I say, revisit these games in the future as a Paragon, because slightly poorer experience this time notwithstanding, I love the Mass Effect universe. But it is perhaps not as well-written or inspiring as I thought it was…or perhaps it’s just the third game being as bad as people claim, albeit not for the reasons they typically claim.