Mass Effect: Paragon Lost

The game is incredible (to many people, you might not like it as much, though it would make no sense checking the movie, if that is true), but the animated movie (with a sub-story involving a major character from Mass Effect 3 (but not Shepard himself) is nicely told, but there is never a real Mass Effect feeling. It never got hold of me that is.

The cartoon style is made differently than the one of the game on purpose. You might find that one of the reasons you might not connect. You cannot deny EA that they were trying. There is some fun dialog in the movie, but it never evolves to anything more. The question also would be, does it make sense watching it before Mass Effect 3 or after you played it? I watched it after, it's OK as companion piece, but I won't revisit this again (which cannot be said about the games ... re-playable a lot)

Don't watch this before playing ME3, watch it after, and only if you're bored.

Even then it's not good - it wasn't set well, brings nothing new, rehashes elements from the games, and generally spoils some plots of the game. It also was not anything like James Vega, nor the collectors from the video games. It also had a very bad and forced sad ending.

You would be better off skipping this film entirely and playing the video games again. It really brings nothing new to the table, and ultimately is a waste of time.

As a result this film cannot be recommended because it was a big hore to watch.

As a huuuuge fan of Mass Effect and its universe/lore, i was pretty damn skeptical going in to this movie. Pretty much anything i saw in the trailers beforehand (especially the cheap animation) did not impress me one bit. I'm glad to say most of my biggest fears were in vain. Well, the animation isn't exactly Studio Ghibli -like eye candy, but i got used to it pretty quickly.

My other main concern was main protagonist, James Vega, who's probably the most boring and generic character in the games. Or at least out of your squadmates. They manage to make him likable though, someone you could really root for. The voice acting wasn't as top notch though, and the same goes for pretty much every character. Still, it is adequate.

What it comes to the most important thing, which is of course the story, it's quite... Good! It's structured kinda like a handful of missions and cut scenes in the game, and you can almost see in the eyes of your mind how these events would be handled in a game. The dialogue should get a couple of chuckles out of ME-fans, and the ending is actually quite moving, yet fitting. The games are all about big choices, after all.

I could nitpick on some minor things, like the Krogans who didn't look much like Krogans and so forth, but i don't really feel like it. It was faithful enough to keep me well satisfied.

If you're a fan of Mass Effect, at least give Paragon Lost a chance.

Mass Effect: Paragon Lost is by no means the worst video game movie adaptation I've seen in my life, but it's the only one we have of the Mass Effect universe, a game series published by Bioware. The problem is the quality of that game series. Mass Effect is all about the story. It is a vast, epic saga of galaxy in peril and is to be counted, at least in my opinion, among the greatest of space operas, along with Star Wars and Star Trek. So you can imagine that in my honest opinion a cheap anime-style direct-to-video tie-in doesn't quite cut it.

Taking place during the events of the second game and telling the backstory of one James Vega, an eventual teammate in the third game, the movie admittedly has a few good things going for it. The character animations and designs, for one, are mostly pretty good. They look like the characters from the game, the facial expressions are evocative and the action scenes work. I have no idea why they made the krogans and the collectors appear almost twice as big as they are in the games, but that's a nitpick.

The ending is also surprisingly good, capturing the essence of the Mass Effect games and their tendency to make you face extremely tough choices, usually between the good of the individual and the good of the society.

But then, the downsides. While the characters are animated decently enough, given the budget, the backgrounds are pure guano. They're cheap CGI garbage, clash horribly with the actual characters and don't convince for a second. Every single background in the actual games was more convincing than anything in this film. And the first one of those came out five years before this film.

The story is also lame, aside from the ending. It shows us nothing new of the Mass Effect universe, thus failing to please the existing fans, and it is pretty much inscrutable by anyone who has not played the games. There are few cutscenes to the previous events, and they're so quick that they don't help much. And it's not like it would have been hard to include a brief segment in the beginning. Like: "In 2147 humanity found a cache of alien technology on Mars. A decade later they managed to join the larger galactic society, which had flourished in the ruins of the civilization that came before them, the Protheans. Later this new galactic society was threatened by an ancient threat, known as the Reapers, led by Sovereign, a dreadnought spaceship of vast technological superiority and might. It was eventually beaten by the joint taskforce led by Commander Shepard, but his warnings about the eventual Reaper invasion were dismissed. And now he is believed dead." See? Not that hard, and would have made the whole movie infinitely more watchable to newcomers.

So yeah, while Mass Effect: Paragon Lost is not as bad as it could have been, it's certainly not good either. That's mostly due to the limitation of the budget, I believe, but it still means that I cannot in good conscience recommend this to anyone. Not fans or newcomers. If you're a die-hard fan of the Mass Effect universe, you're going to see it anyway, in which case I can say that at least there's some good in it, but trust me, it's not worth it.

First off, let me state I only played half-way through the first game and didn't touch the second or third. I despise the cheap emotional and sex ploys employed in the game just to beef up a weak story.

So when watching this amerime my sister who is a bigger fan (1st and 2nd game and novel) sit with me so I can check with her some facts about the story.

So here is my impression and opinions of the Paragon Lost: The art was inferior to what other game franchises put out i.e. Halo. And sometimes highly inconsistent.

The director had either very bad storyboards or was left to his own imagination on how each scene was to be played out that you will encounter a lot anime art (gestures, postures) tropes you in fast and cheap anime series.

The story overall was dull and weak. There was not much on character backgrounds or settings and with even that it felt dragged out.

The voice acting ranged from OK (Freddie Prince Jr, Laura Bailey and Monica Rial) to 1990s-2000s style dubbing (Jad Saxton biggest offender no offence to her). I totally blame the voice director.

With all this in mind I would have right this movie a 3 or 4 but and there is a big but I follow one rule, "The end justifies the means." Which means that no matter crappy the beginning and middle of a story is, the ending if it is good will allow forgiveness for the rest.

And I must say the ending did not cop out despite the red herrings in the 1st and 2nd act would like you to believe. The ending shows a realistic and only logically conclusion to the time and situation present for that I am grateful.

If I would recommend this movie to buy it may, just maybe for the ending that is similar to the choices you have to make in the games time and again. But if you are not a fan then rent it. The ending is much better that most other sci-fi movies that have great 1st and 2nd acts but fails to pay off in the final 3rd act which always leaves me angry (like all the hype build up just to be disappointed when you finally see the crap product).