Mass Effect 3

[BobSmith101]

Someone fill me in. Thats a different kid from the little girl that died in the preview trailer but does a child somehow factor in as a plot device in ME3? Why is Shepard all ate up over one out of billions of deaths?

Well, the kid is clearly an allegorical representation (either by the writers directly or by "Shepard's subconscious") of the plight of the human race on Earth while he's hanging out at Purgatory with asari chix. To keep this spoiler free, the dream thing does get repeated in the game when Certain People buy it.

 

btw. I'm (un)impressed by Bioware's ability to make piss-poor demos of their games. The ME2 PS3 demo was technically utter ****, DA2 demo showed the worst parts of the game, and the ME3 demo had about 80 % of the dialogue cut away from it - because it's the "new character" mode where the story is slowly filled in later on instead of going DAO/ME1 style exposition overload from the start. Frankly, think they shouldn't do these since a lot of people are happy to assume it's reflective of the finished product.

 

 

The whole arc where Mordin sacrifices himself to give the Krogan another shot was brilliant on all levels, in addition to writing have to highlight the gorgeous graphical effect the spreading of the genophage cure had

 

 

The whole Earth level was terrible, you could not have done more to show off the weaknesses of game if you had set out with that goal in mind. The game reminds me of a bell curve. Awful begining,great middle and awful end.

Edited March 9, 2012 by BobSmith101

[Gorgon]

Not getting any DLCs. I'm not ideologocally opposed to them or anything, I just don't like the feeling of being taken for a ride. Huge success for EA getting 40% of people to go along with it, also showcases the futility of trying to do anything about it. This is how it's going to be from now on. The 'real' version is going to be 25% extra.

 

Finished the game, not bad. Although I didn't agree with the finality of everything. I would have prefered being able to truck around after having finished the

 

main mission, but I guess the story desperately needed a conclusion.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Gorgon

[Gorgon]

Almost done. It's like they took The Matrix, Serentiy, Star Trek and Battlestar Gallactica threw them in a pot, and gave it a good shake. Pleasantly surprised though. For all the raving it's a good game.

 

You forgot Babylon 5, which is probably the biggest influence on Mass Effect.

Nobody watched Babylon 5. Well maybe the Mass Effect writers. Anyway I tend to group it with Star Trek, same makeup artists.

 

In terms of the setting, tone, and story, Mass Effect has a lot in common with Babylon 5.

 

You have humans being newcomers to the galactic community but becomes powerful very quickly.

 

Every race in the galaxy use FTL technology left behind by an ancient unknown race.

 

A lot of advances in technology is gained from reverse engineering tech left by alien races.

 

There's an intergalactic UN but unlike the Federation in Star Trek, there is a lot of conflict and backstabbing between the various factions.

 

There's a pro-human/earth conspiracy backed by powerful shady corporations.

 

Aliens tampered with the evolution of various species across the galaxy.

 

There's an ancient evil that sows chaos and destruction across the galaxy every few thousand years.

 

The protagonist tries to convince all the races to unite and combat the threat but everyone is too concerned with their own problems to care.

 

Various people want to exploit the technology of the ancient evil, including secretive human factions and corporations. This is also met with disastrous results.

Voyager had a cameo though, and I remember seeing an Enterprise style dish starship. Isn't it the Star Trek universe wth a few extra species thrown in. Edited March 9, 2012 by Gorgon

[Gorgon]

No wait, that's deep space nine. Anyway it still sufferes from being a sci fi series from before they could convinicingly make them. The effects and design are painfully bad.

[Calax]

One interesting thing for me is that the N7 missions given to you by Hackett are prequels to the Multi-player missions, with the co-op basically being "hold the place that shepard took".

 

 

And the second Kei Lang fight is BS. You beat him upside down and side ways three times, then he just pokes you and you all loose in a cutscene.

 

Edited March 9, 2012 by Gorth
Fixed spoiler tag

[Hurlshort]

While having a fun and rather reminiscent moment with Garrus and Wrex, it struck me how bizarre it would be to have one of them be dead in this game. Bioware really did pull off an amazing bit of choice and consequence here over a trilogy.

[HoonDing]

Is there any point in buying new weapons if you can upgrade all your starting weapons to X?

[Hurlshort]

Is there any point in buying new weapons if you can upgrade all your starting weapons to X?

 

The Spectre weapons look pretty sweet, plus a few do things that are rather unique. I like the explosive disc shooting pistol.

[Gorgon]

For me, weight restrictions made the first two pea shooters I got the only ones I used, those and the rapid fire sniper rifle since most opponents are staggered my multiple hits. I also dislike how they handle weapon kick. In ME2 your reticule would snap back to its immediate previous position after a hit or long burst, without it, those constant small adjustment are a pain to make with the mouse especially since I use a rather slow setting for maximum accuracy. This makes any weapon with a strong kick undesirable.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Gorgon

[MrBrown]

Is there any point in buying new weapons if you can upgrade all your starting weapons to X?

 

You can only upgrade them to V

 

But, to answer your question, the weapons have differing stats, even at high levels. The Spectre weapons, while very high cost, aren't _that_ much better than the weapons you find; they're just well rounded.

[BobSmith101]

I mostly stuck to powers . Engineer seemed very OP with the cryo/incinerate combo 100% damage. Drone/turret was just icing on the cake.

[Gorgon]

Sabotage and Hack were largely useless. Only usable when shield and armor has been stripped, by which point why not just kill it off instead of having to worry about it again when the duration runs out. Overload hits instantaneously, stuns and removes barriers. Very useful even against organics.

[Azure79]

I thought sabotage and hack were pretty fun. I didn't have it being a Vanguard, but I had Tali using it all the time in the Geth/Quarian levels. I would just hack a few rocket troopers and geth bodies would start flying around everywhere.

[HoonDing]

Running around with EDI and Javik is like the best thing ever.

 

You can only upgrade them to V

 

But, to answer your question, the weapons have differing stats, even at high levels. The Spectre weapons, while very high cost, aren't _that_ much better than the weapons you find; they're just well rounded.

Heh, seems I've already upgraded everything then. I'll be using the particle gun until the end of the game.

[Calax]

Nothing like watching a geth prime/reaper drone flip out on their allies due to hack.

 

That said, Vanguard is WAY underpowered for what they want you to do in game. They want you to get in fistfights with a shotgun... but the game is almost entirely based around long range fights.

 

Although biotic charging into a group of enemies, popping shockwave and nova, and then shotgunning them to death is fun... even if you get insta killed by the NUMEROUS anti-melee fighters in the area.

[Bos_hybrid]

Is there any point in buying new weapons if you can upgrade all your starting weapons to X?

 

You can only upgrade them to V

 

Yet there is an achievement for upgrading to X. MP only perhaps?

[MrBrown]

Yet there is an achievement for upgrading to X. MP only perhaps?

 

Hmm, wiki says you have to play a new game, importing an ME3 character, to get levels 6-10.

[Calax]

Ok, so just beat it. And now have a semi-standard (anymore) post game rant...

 

 

Ok, the ending. Others have discussed it above but I'm gonna have to dig into this a wee bit. I took the synthesis ending and have issue with the fact that it BASICALLY kills everything else you worked for... All three of them do really. They destroy the Mass Relays which means that interstellar travel is deader than a doornail on in a particularly hard segment of wood. So all that work you did to get everyone to work together and sing kum-bay-yah? Invalidated.

 

And as people have pointed out, the entire Reaping shebang is a hypocracy. You're eliminating all the advanced organic life, to make sure that synthetic life doesn't take over... WHAT!? Part of me wants to say that the devs couldn't figure out a good way to end everything, but that just doesn't cut it (never mind the fact that there doesn't seem to be evidence of this). Everything you work for from the start of Eden Prime to special spot on the citadel, is meaningless because the paradigm and civilization you were trying to protect are forever changed.

 

Of particular note, the Geth, who had attained something akin to an organic mindset, would be entirely eliminated in two of the three endings possible. But again, the Synth ending is probably the most egregious for them becasue they had just started to find their way outside of their own internal community, and are now no longer a part of that. Effectively they'd just started to evolve, and now they won't be able to do it "naturally".

 

Another part of this for me personally is that while they'd played fast and loose with science before you could KINDA hand wave it. Now you've got the atomic communications systems (I forget the exact title), being used like a phone/radio system... when the entire point of the system is that it's very expensive and limited use due to being point to point ONLY. Add to that, the whole Synth idea being absurd from a scientific standpoint (YAYYYY MY ARM NOW HAS CIRCUITS!) and this game just starts to frustrate me. Oh, and the guy who's got tactile memory... because THAT exists.

 

If they'd wanted to do the whole organic v artifical issue, why not have made it more prevalent? The only thing that really even ATTEMPTED to forshadow this was the mention of the Geth war, and the fact that in the Protheans time, there was a similar conflict. I mean if they wanted to make the whole question of "what is living" or whatever there are easier, more effective ways to do it. Take Battle Angel Alita (or Gunnm), the entire series is formulated around the question of "What is it to be human?" using cybernetics to help bring that into question (most of the cyborgs are just brains in boxes). Hell, they even went ahead and HAD the perfect place to put in something like that (where Shepard could have been "resurrected" as a cyborg of that style).

 

Kei Lang... shouldn't have existed. He was, at best, personality less. And felt really out of place using martial arts, and a sword, when everyone around him was shooting like crazy. He felt like the devs had gone

"What's cool?"

"Ninjas... robots... katanas"

"Make this character that!"

and called it a day. He never really had his own reason to exist, he was just a mook with a special face. And he never really felt that dangerous. I mean sure he stabbed Thane (poor guy), and showed off a lot... but I was never actually afraid of him. Every time you encounter him, he's only difficult because of other stuff that shows up, not because he can rip your face off and use it to decapitate your partners.

 

And to cap all this off, why couldn't we have true blue ME2 crew as part of our squad? Yes, Tali and Garrus returned, and EDI gets her special body. But NONE of your new ME2 partners (who had a WHOLE lot of development) were returned to your squad. Instead they all kinda floated around and acted just as backup for you, or died heroically in persuit of a goal that the game refuses to see happen. Probably the best one to have return would have been Jack or Legion, as it was it just felt like the ME1 love fest (none of the ME1 party got splattered except for the "You gotta nuke one son!" selection on Virmire in the entire series).

 

 

Urgh, it's 4 am and I just got done with this. I donno... I've probably still got some sifting around in my head to figure out if I truely consider this a good game or not.

 

When you're actually playing the core mechanics, yes, it can be quite fun. But all to often you're spent spinning your wheels on the Citadel trying to find things, or in conversation, or just wandering about doing something stupid on your ship trying to find a character... who turns out to be in a staring contest with another character and doesn't even want to talk to you.

 

Hurlie alluded to something I think really ends up hampering this game. They're trying to afford you every single opening and change to the story that you could do previously... and it means that they end up with everything feeling very... thin and/or forumlaic. Is there good bits of writing? Yes, but overall there's less of it with your party than before, and they end up dragging a few cliches out to run with.

[Raithe]

Well, after hosting a most non-productive afternoon and evening making my way into the game... I have to say it's pretty much fun. Sure, it takes about 2-3 hours of "intro-cinematics and pseudo-tutorial gaming" before it actually opens up and lets you flit around at will, and there are the odd glitches, but mostly it seems to be fun space opera (even with all the war horror/depression going on)

 

Have minor annoyances with a few things, kept having a jerky-graphics-twitch going on, until I realised they have a "mouse blending" option set to automatically on. Turn that off and everything smoothed down properly.

 

Still, onwards and see how much I can poke at it today...

[MrBrown]

But all to often you're spent spinning your wheels on the Citadel trying to find things, or in conversation, or just wandering about doing something stupid on your ship trying to find a character... who turns out to be in a staring contest with another character and doesn't even want to talk to you.

 

 

Here's something I never noticed during my run, only read it on bio forums: you can use the map to check for all levels of Citadel/Normandy, not just the one you're on. Would have saved me alot of time searching for stuff/characters.

[Raithe]

I have to admit, the whole conversation between Liara and her "father" made me chuckle.

 

The conversations between folks in the background are usually quite well done, even (or especially) when they aren't related to any quests, just.. background noise.

[aries101]

Someone on the bioware ME3 forums pointed out as well that whole conflict in ME3 seems to be inspired by Babylon 5 - a lot. To me, the endings known so far seems to be a lot inspired by especially terminator 3: rise of the machines. Wasn't the plot in this movie also something along the lines of machines are going to kill us (humans) to prevent us(humans) from making machines that could destroy the machines (from the future?). To me, the endings talked about so far seems to taken - ehm - be inspired directly - from Rise of The Machines: terminator 3.

 

Also, one of the endings reminds a lot of the ending of PS: Torment. Ever since PS: Torment, it has become the new vogue to create at least one ending similar to PS: Torment's ending amongst game developers, it seems. As for not having the crew from ME2, people were complaining a lot about that they had to give up their ME1 crew in ME2, so maybe this has something to do with Bioware's decisions.

 

More generally, I remember, Ray M. and Greg Z, the two game doctors behind Bioware saying that the game(s) were a cautionary tale about Artificial Intelligence, meaning that the tale they wanted told was a tale about how creating A.I. might lead to that th A.I. became sentient and thinking and decided to rebel about their human creators. Reminds one of Frankenstein's Monster, doesn't?it or I, Robot maybe. [As sort of od an odd tale, I can tell you of Danish children's book dealing with the same issue of sorts: the plot is that our mechanic helpers e.g. toasters, washing machines and diswashers at one point in time created us(I think) to get us to create them. And when we had created them as well as possible - meaning that they were to be sentient and thinking beings they would rebel on us and make us their slaves - doesn't this sound a bit similar to the plot now revealed for ME3 - and the whole ME universe...]

[Azure79]

Nothing like watching a geth prime/reaper drone flip out on their allies due to hack.

 

That said, Vanguard is WAY underpowered for what they want you to do in game. They want you to get in fistfights with a shotgun... but the game is almost entirely based around long range fights.

 

Although biotic charging into a group of enemies, popping shockwave and nova, and then shotgunning them to death is fun... even if you get insta killed by the NUMEROUS anti-melee fighters in the area.

 

I don't know man, I thought Vanguard was quite powerful. I only carried a shotgun and no other weapon. My melee damage was maxed out through armor and weapon mods and my biotic powers were maxed out through the skill tree. I could charge right in, deliver a nova, shotgun an enemy or heavy melee and my charge would be ready again. I could zip around the battlefield offensively or defensively and I loved taking out dangerous enemies like snipers and engineers with a charge to their face.

[Lexx]

Played some multiplayer today, to gain some more active war assets. Damn, the multiplayer gets old and tedious very fast. Played - I think - 7 or 8 matches and it's pretty much always the same. Grind, grind, grind to activate new weapon, so you can grind more, to activate even more weapons... Other than gaining new weapons, I don't see much fun in here and "fun" isn't even the right word.

 

Pretty sure I won't play much more ME3 in multiplayer.

[Calax]

But all to often you're spent spinning your wheels on the Citadel trying to find things, or in conversation, or just wandering about doing something stupid on your ship trying to find a character... who turns out to be in a staring contest with another character and doesn't even want to talk to you.

 

 

Here's something I never noticed during my run, only read it on bio forums: you can use the map to check for all levels of Citadel/Normandy, not just the one you're on. Would have saved me alot of time searching for stuff/characters.

True, but the map doesn't show the conversation turn ins, only the quests you got from having somebody say "oh hay dood, can you do something for me?"

 

Honestly, if they'd re-built the journal to be like the previous two games, a lot of the issues would have gone away.