Mass Effect 3

[Crazed Rabbit]

It's coming.



Demo on the 14th: http://www.masseffect.com/about/demo/

So the good is that it's Mass Effect 3.

Combat looks improved, and this should be a great end to the trilogy.

It's got co-op multiplayer, which may be good.

The bad is that you have to buy it via Origin.

The iffy is the new 'action, story, and RPG modes'; http://saveandquitgaming.com/xbox-36...eplayer-modes/

Hopefully that means they kept any dumbing down to the action mode. And that the action itself wasn't dumbed down anymore. Hopefully.

Worse than iffy is their choice for voice actors for the new characters: http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/...ebrity-talent/

And the new characters themselves: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/James_Vega

I mean, do we really need Jersey Shore IN SPACE?

But anyways, it's still Mass Effect 3 and there's little that could deter me from buying it.

CR

[Monk]

The more i see that female shepard trailer, the more I think something is terribly wrong with the textures on her face. It almost looks like a ps2 era texture. Something is very wrong with it. Maybe its me.

Worse than iffy is their choice for voice actors for the new characters: http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/...ebrity-talent/

And the new characters themselves: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/James_Vega

I mean, do we really need Jersey Shore IN SPACE?

I'm not really worried about that. A much more incompetent branch of bioware than the ME team managed to write SWTOR, and that had some really good storylines in it. Way better than an MMO deserved to have and was the sole reason i stuck with it for as long as I did.

I liked every aspect of ME2 even the absolutely stupid 180 degree shift in tone that was the final boss fight. Mass Effect is an oddity for me, its the one series thats going in gaming that I just can't be objective with. ME2 fixed or removed everything I hated about the first game, and ME3 looks like its just improving on that. I dig the universe and the overall story, even if when you boil it down, its just a generic sci-fi trope of "Everyone come together to fight the ancient evil." I want to see what they do with that, even though I think i have a pretty good guess how they are going to end this with the hints they've been dropping.

I will play it day one. It will either confirm Mass Effect as my favorite gaming franchise since the original Metroid games, or utterly crush my heart in a flurry of cliches and half-thought storylines.. Either way. It will be one heck of a ride.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Who am I kidding. I'll love it no matter what. Such a dumb fanboy when it comes to ME.

[Kekvit Irae]

Considering how bad Dragon Age II and SWTOR are, I have little faith for ME3.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I just finished a ME 1+2 femshep (nearly full paragon, about half renegade) in anticipation. Even if it's bad I'll see it through. Hopefully I can just never bring the crappy characters anywhere (sorry, Kaiden and Jacob). If not, well, they're ablative armor for Shepard. :3

[a completely inoffensive name]

Considering how bad Dragon Age II and SWTOR are, I have little faith for ME3.

Yes, because it's the same exact people working on all of them, right?

[rajpoot]

Considering how bad Dragon Age II and SWTOR are, I have little faith for ME3.

Thing is the Dragon Age team had a switch in team leads mid series.
Plus they never hid the fact that they were taking the series into a different direction (what they did hide was that they'd been smoking something dreadful while they decided that direction).

ME3 team is still led by Casey Hudson, and I don't think anything apart from the shooting mechanics would be changed much. The story itself might turn out to be a little cliche (it's a well beaten genre after all), but with all the old characters from ME and ME2 coming back and the ever-excellent voice work, I'm sure the game won't disappoint.

[CountArach]

Worse than iffy is their choice for voice actors for the new characters: http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/...ebrity-talent/

I'm going to trust BioWare. They have a history of hiring amazing voice acros (Claudia Black as Morrigan for instance) and I don't doubt that whoever they hire will meet their own expectaitons.

As for the game, I have not been this excited by a new release for quite some time. I'm replaying as Paragon FemShep to prepare myself.

[Monk]

Finished the demo. Interesting.

They chose the opening of the game (essentially the tutorial) and a later mission to showcase. Most of it was quite actiony and very little dialogue options were available. If i had to guess I'd say they did that on purpose. Don't want to spoil people with your demo any more than you have to - but still its always nice to see how expansive your talking options are, which we sadly didn't get a feel for.

The ME games have always had a slow start. 3 does not. Action starts relatively quickly and is interesting from the start. Your backstory/import options are talked about in between firefights and during the brief pause in the fighting of the tutorial.

Combat feels tighter and very kinetic. Movement as well is highly improved over ME2, its much easier to move around and not feel like you weigh 400 lbs. I was skeptical about playing ME3 multiplayer at all, but I can for once see why they chose to develop it. Feels like enough of an improvement to really make co-op worthwhile and not a chore to slug through.

Grenades are back! That alone is cause for celebration. Glorious, tasty frag grenades. How i missed you.

Health system has combined the systems from ME1 and ME2. Your life is broken up into bars, your life will regenerate one its own but only to fill up the bar that you currently reside in. So if you're down to 2 out of 5, you can only regenerate to fill the second bar. You have to use medigel to recover lost bars of life. Feels like a compromise between people who liked the ME2 system and those who liked the ME1 system. Can't complain but I would rather they went all or nothing in one direction rather than hit a middle ground.

Heavy melee system feels like its not gonna be used much if only because the gunplay feels much better. Stabby time isnt as fun as shooty time.

Some of the abilities were bugged. When i died the bugs disappeared and the abilities worked fine. Strange.

This demo is a horrible tease. Lots of action, lets me customize a character but doesnt let me import and doesn't show off its dialogue options to any great extent. Still, its fun which i suppose was the point, and it got me curious about the full game. Will have to check out the multiplayer after the 17th when they let everyone in.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

They let you import your ME2 character into the demo?

[Monk]

They let you import your ME2 character into the demo?

lets me customize a character but doesnt let me import

Full character customization is in the demo but there's no import, just as i said. Though i heard face codes work if you've got one from the ME2 customizer.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I like the new implementation of the biotic powers when you deploy them. Skeptical about the skill progression. I don't like how one using biotic power means they all have to recharge. (Was that in ME2? Haven't played biotic in that yet).

Allies seem to use biotic powers well. I liked the shooting combat.

Graphics are nice, though still low res in places. Runs well on my 2008 computer.

CR

[rajpoot]

I like the new implementation of the biotic powers when you deploy them. Skeptical about the skill progression. I don't like how one using biotic power means they all have to recharge. (Was that in ME2? Haven't played biotic in that yet).

Yup. ME2 also had a recharge time after using any power.

[Monk]

I like the new implementation of the biotic powers when you deploy them. Skeptical about the skill progression. I don't like how one using biotic power means they all have to recharge. (Was that in ME2? Haven't played biotic in that yet).

Yeah, thanks to players like me who broke the system in ME1 biotics got heavily nerfed in me2. There is now a short global cooldown that activates on all abilities after you use a power.

Graphics are nice, though still low res in places. Runs well on my 2008 computer.

CR

The word circling a number of online communities and comment sections are that bioware purposefully limited texture resolution and the dialogue options in the demo in order to fit to the 2gb limit microsoft puts on demos for xbox live. Other versions of the demo were apparently just ported from that code. I cannot for the life of me find the original quote though, so take it as you will.

[seireikhaan]

Tried it. Not too shabby. Combat's definitely more fluid, but I still had a couple issues sticking to walls and the like and hopping back and forth across a space when I was wanting to vault over instead. Trees seem somewhat improved- at least a bit more differentiation. Shockwave is still awful, even leveled to max. Ashley's appearance still bugging me to no end. Kinda wishing I could just leave her on earth. Didn't fiddle with grenades much, though the AI made decent enough use of them that I had to be aware of their presence. Heavy melee seemed to have a slightly weird hitbox for adept. Overall, fairly good. Good to see Wrex off his butt.

[rajpoot]

Shockwave in ME2 was only useful against husks and abominations. Against them it was devastating. You could take down a dozen of them at range, maybe even blow up the abomination and cause even more damage.
Against every other enemy it was pretty much useless like you say. But I'm sure ME3 has some kinds of husks :D

[Mailman653]

Can't wait to import my Shep for the grand finale of the series.

[Hooahguy]

Unfortunately I lost all my ME playthroughs so I have no idea what Im gonna do.

[Monk]

TotalBiscuit has done his usual thing - a new WTF is...? on the multiplayer component of ME3. Looks like your standard horde mode with a ME twist. Mild language warning.



He takes some time to familiarize with the options and the customization before going into a few games. Action starts at around 11 minutes in.

Being a huge fan of co-op horde I think I am gonna love this.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Unfortunately I lost all my ME playthroughs so I have no idea what Im gonna do.

Google, "mass effect save games" without the quotes. There is a website full of tailored shepards for download.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Full character customization is in the demo but there's no import, just as i said. Though i heard face codes work if you've got one from the ME2 customizer.

Sorry, I think I read what you wrote but interpreted it the opposite way. :x

Unfortunately I lost all my ME playthroughs so I have no idea what Im gonna do.

You could always play through them again. :P

There's also http://www.masseffectsaves.com/ which has saves for ME 1 & 2 (I think I used it to get an ME1 save when I first got ME2). There's a ton of variety of saves so you should be able to find something approximate to what you had.

EDIT: ACIN beat me to it, while I was typing that. :/

[a completely inoffensive name]

https://i.imgur.com/FOhf4.jpg

High expectations.

[rajpoot]

Ashley looks better than Miranda now IMO.

[Kekvit Irae]

Been playing the ME3 multiplayer non-stop lately. It's actually quite good and doesn't feel tacked on at all. I especially like the booster pack mechanics where you can buy packs with in-game credits and have random items and unlocks pop out of it.

[Vladimir]

Finally watched the video in the first post. Yea, I'm terrible.

Not a big fan of the cliches but it looks like it will be very exciting. Of course, I'm a little lame and kept thinking about logistics, technology base, and center of gravity of these Reaper things. I hate the idea of reactive warfare like is portrayed in the video. It's getting hard to enjoy games anymore.

[Monk]

Its not hard to see why people are enjoying the MP so much, got in a few hours ago and its good. Very fun even with random strangers, though I gotta think with friends this would be 10x better. A surprising spread among the classes as well. I expected to see everyone playing soldier, but there seems to be a good even spread. Infiltrator and Engineer are tied for my favorite.

Make sure to buy some recruit packs with your credits before ever thinking about saving up for a veterans pack. The supply packs contain (among other things) super weapon ammo, if you don't have any the final two waves get very painful.

Ran into an odd bug - if you disconnect from a lobby, sometimes when you try to join a new one you get stuck on a loading screen. Only way to fix it I found is to restart the demo. Really odd.

Other than that one bug? This feels like an amazing addition to the game. Like others i was worried it would be a tacked on oddity and I was fully preparing to ignore it as I played post-launch. After the amount of fun I had tonight I doubt that's an option.

[Crazed Rabbit]

My adept is stuck using warp, singularity, and shockwave. Time for a different class methinks.

Pretty solid though.

CR

[Monk]

My adept is stuck using warp, singularity, and shockwave. Time for a different class methinks.

Pretty solid though.

CR

Yes thats quite annoying. The different race and class combinations each have different skills so obviously you want to unlock one that has the abilities you like, the problem is its quite hard to do so. I've yet to get a single character token despite opening quite a few supply packs. Probably just bad luck of the draw.

[Crazed Rabbit]

So I have to grind with my human adept until I get really lucky and can play the character I want? When did this become good game design?

CR

[Mailman653]

This one thinks that the Hanar should be made playable in MP, may the Enklinders grant this one's wish.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I'm Crazed_Rabbit762 on Origin.

CR