I finished Mass Effect 3 last night

And I cried. A lot. Like, full-body sobs even though I tried to stop it. The ending made sense from the tone of the games, so I can't fault them for that, but it still made me cry.

I am trying to write this with as few spoilers as possible, too, but wow. I was so emotional.

I felt really, really silly for feeling this emotional over a video game at first, until I thought about it.

I spent more time, cumulatively, playing the three Mass Effect games than I took to read all of the Song of Ice and Fire books. I cried for people who died in those books, in spite of spending less time with them than I did with my Shepard and Crew in Mass Effect. So, considering that one thing Bioware totally rocks at is characters, it would have been crazy if I hadn't felt affected by the ending.

Something that really made the third hit home for me, though, was that the beginning of ME3 starts in Vancouver, BC.

No, really, it does!

Just like home. Plus, uh, a few more really tall skyscrapers I guess.

See? It even says.

I was playing it, and running around, and I found myself thinking, "Wow, this place looks really familiar." And how often do you think that in video games? So I paused and looked it up (that up there is the save image that I saw after saving), and it's definitely my hometown.

Those mountains are so familiar! The giant spaceship squid, less so.

So watching this bit felt really personal. This is MY HOMETOWN, you giant, robotsquid jerks!

Something I didn't know until after I finished it was that your multiplayer games affect your single player game's readiness rating. Your readiness rating helps decide how your final push goes. If you don't do any multiplayer, then you're stuck with 50% of the resources you've gathered through your single player campaign.

Also, your resources affect how your ending goes, too. I think there are nine different endings that can come about from your readiness and choices combination.

I am glad it lets you start the ending scene from the beginning of the end (without the whole FIGHT THROUGH EVERYTHING PART), because the first try I made a choice that I didn't actually think I could make, I just wanted to see what would happen if I did that thing I chose to do. Then I was like "WAIT NO THAT DOESN'T COUNT OH SHIT DO I HAVE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN" but thankfully I did not.

Basically what it comes down to is that I would definitely recommend these games to anyone who likes video games, although if you are like me and don't do well with shooters I would say to play it on casual/easy settings. I keep trying to play Borderlands 2 because I think the art style is cool but doing to terribly at it that I log off and play something easier instead.

I think my next plan is to play through Dragon Ages again, and then playing Mass Effect as the male Shepard and going for Renegade, as I went for Paragon with my femShep because my pathological need to be nice translates into how I play video games.