Creston wrote on Mar 8, 2012, 00:19:

Flatline wrote on Mar 7, 2012, 22:03:

It sounds like you read right.

How it works

So basically, if you don't want a super depressing grim ending, you either have to play perfectly through THREE games, or you need to grind in multiplayer and probably spend money to get unlocks.

Sigh.

Fuck you Bioware. Fuck you EA. Fuck you both. I'm avoiding you now on principle.

Okay, so here is how it really works:

In the SP games, you obtain War Assets, that all contribute to the war effort. For whatever fucked up EA reason, Bioware decided it would be a great idea to have those War Assets count only according to the percentage that you have in your Galactic Readiness rating. So if you and I both had 3000 points in War Assets, and you had a GR of 50%, you'd have 1500 points of actual War Assets, whereas if I had 60%, I'd have 1800 points.

You need an x amount of War Assets to get the "best" ending (I think it's somewhere around 2000-2500.) The SP game does apparently have enough War Assets to meet that 2000-2500 number, even with only a 50% Galactic Readiness, but yeah, you do have to do EVERYTHING in order to get there.

That said, even the BEST ending is still pretty goddamn grim. (which is why folks are up in arms at Bioware. Nobody wants to play a series for five years only to watch everything and everyone die at the end, no matter WHAT you fucking do.)

However, you do NOT need to "spend money to get unlocks" in MP. You can earn unlocks simply through playing, but your Galactic Readiness goes up just by playing, period, whether you ever unlock anything or not.

Also, the whole booster deck idea of the packs you 'buy' would turn me away from the whole idea of paying for it. I could see paying 5 bucks to unlock the Krogan if you really want to play as one, but why would you do so if you don't even know if that's what you'll get?

Some Bioware dev was actually defending that decision on their forum, saying "the large majority" of their fans "love the random unlocks because it makes you try different characters."

Yeah, okay, EA peon. Make sure to scrape up a few more dollars for your Reaper EA Overlords.

You gotta admit, it's quite impressive how far Bioware has fallen in such a short time.

Anyway, that's the deal with the endings. Apparently the MAJOR decision that affects the endings is whether you saved the Collector's base or blew it up. Then it goes by War Assets total, apparently.

That said, the mp is actually a lot of fun

Creston