User blog:Temporaryeditor78/bioware vindicated!

...or maybe not.

now that i've seen for myself the gist of what the extended cut has to offer, here be pros cons wildmassguessings and the like. spoilers abound, tl;dr levels as low as possible.

yays
 * significantly more differences between the endings aside from the lights
 * all but the most astoundingly stu...bborn indoctrination theorists freed from indoctrination
 * green glowy eyes on everyone we know (extra points for javik)
 * investigate options
 * SO BE IT, followed by liara's time capsule a cycle later (this falls under the subheading 'lol')
 * this picture, although not as epic as the next one.
 * KROGAN BABIES. again, for emphasis... KROGAN BABIES.

nays
 * no volus bombers. or dreadnought kwunu. or for that matter, still no appearances of the other auxillary assets (terminus fleet, batarian/hanar/elcor fleets etc). this of course translates into additional concept brainstorming, object modelling and all sorts of devwork too impractical to include as of EC release, so it's forgivable.
 * destroy option still botched... by only a margin. you'd expect shepard to at least object to other synthetics dying along with the reapers if s/he managed to solve the geth/quarian conflict peaceably. as a consequence, no shots of geth dying and only 1 shot of EDI. not even a joker face reaction if she's his girlfriend. HOWEVER, since destroy is the lowest-EMS option, chances are on shepard deliberately making the "wrong" choices throughout the three games, making it unlikely for the scenario of saving both geth and quarians in this type of playthrough. a little jarring, though, if your shepard felt vindictive even after amassing more than enough EMS.

other musings
 * the memorial scene. should all surviving squadmates past and present be on it for extra poignancy or will it look overcrowded? undecided on this.
 * currently unknown if the EC content kicks in only at the rush to the beam. because it's a little tiresome to start it all the way back to cronos station. will test this on a non-EC save sometime.
 * harbinger shoots up everyone who's making a run for it at the beam. why's the normandy untouched? l33t joker piloting skillz? super secret reaperproof countermeasures (EDI did allude to this)? uh, this calls for a little more suspension of disbelief than usual... but still plausible enough to be attributed to luck they didn't get shot down during those 20 seconds or so.
 * if the original reapers were squid/cuttlefish abominations how the f--- did they evolve the means to manipulate tools and build a civilization in the first place? biotics? coiling their appendages into screwdrivers? like the question of hanar technological advance, it is a mystery.
 * no 'what happened to javik' scene in the slideshows. cronian nebula suicide, or 'journeys with the prothean' with liara? we will never know. trivial, but yeah.

all in all, no big issues to report. the EC definitely delivered both on its intent (closure) and the consequences (customer satifaction 90% of the time). and now we have rumors of another DLC involving a certain reaper with leviathan on its name...

carry on, bioware, carry on.