Mass Effect 3

[Jakanden]

That's because you're a soulless machine. To me it's like if they recast Indiana Jones for The Last Crusade. Or Aragorn for Return of the King. Or Ice Cube for Friday After Next.

Honestly, none of that would bother me....except for the last one. You can't leave out Ice Cube.

[gobbleskat]

Jay, for me its less about how the character looks and more about how this disappointed me as a fan. I don't see how this glitch couldn't have been noticed prelaunch. If it was, and they chose to launch anyway that says to me that new opening day sales are more important to EA than people who have invested monetarily in the series since it launched. If they managed to genuinely miss the glitch then, well, way to test your game guys.

Secondly, I put a lot of work into tweaking those features. I spent a lot of time trying to get a very expressive level of detail that reflected his sole-surviver backstory. He looks, well, conmplicated. I could probably get him similar, but I don't think it will ever be close enough....and that is going to be awful distracting to me.

Bottom line: Don't try to make the transfer of a character from on game to another if you aren't going to bother making sure the function is portable. It smacks of laziness and sloppy QA.

I am still super excited to play the damn game, but honestly I wasn't in a hurry before the glitch got discovered either. Maybe if I wait until I beat Half Life ep 1 this will all resolve itself anyway.

[Jakanden]

Ok, I can understand that. Since I used the default shepard, I had no time invested in his looks. I do agree with your point about them either noticing it and saying fuck it, or not noticing it (which is unlikely).

[Reznor]

Clocked about 4.5 hours in Mass Effect 3 so far, I'll just go with my Likes/Dislikes for now:

Like
- Control feels a bit "tighter", more responsive than Mass Effect 2
- Just walking down a hallway and recognizing so many characters from past Mass Effect Games
- Better Combat AI
- Planet Scanning even more streamlined by area scanning planets in the solar system to find out which planets have something
- EDI and Joker's chemistry. Plenty of chuckles to be found in this
- The Codex. Love flipping through new entries and have them read to me during "downtime"
- "RPG Mode", "Action Mode", and "Story Mode" RPG Mode is standard Mass Effect, Action Mode cuts back on cutscene and conversation lengths by auto-deciding some choices, Story mode makes Combat laughably easy.

Dislike
- Streamlined Planet Scanning is balanced by the "Oh SHIT! Reapers are coming for me!" mechanic Using Area Scanning too much draws attention to you.
- Multiplayer. Fuck it.
- Origin PC distribution service - A major "FUCK YOU EA!" on this one. Error-prone, obtrusive, system-hogging, etc. This is the main reason I was forced to pirate it after actually buying the game.

If for some reason you haven't played Mass Effect 1 and 2, you really shouldn't be playing Mass Effect 3 first. The game pretty much starts assuming you know what is going on, but there is enough explanation to go around for the few Mass Effect "newbies" out there.

[Ekkebus]

I'm about 6 hours in now. Feels like I'm nowhere in the game though. Only have a couple of new squadmates beyond the first two and I've only completed a handful of missions. The game isn't the leap that was ME1 to ME2 but there are some pretty noteworthy refinements:

- I like how you start off with a ton of your powers already leveled up rather than starting all over from scratch again. I also appreciate having respeccing available almost right from the start.

- the new weight-based equipment system is a big plus. The class-imposed weapon limitations kind of drove me nuts and I really appreciate the freedom this system gives you to customize your loadout at the possible expense of your cooldown times.

- scanning is more straightforward. The whole 'alerting the Reaper' thing seems like a fair trade off and I appreciate how it ties into the story.

- better with Kinect? It may actually be true albeit slightly. Being able to simply call out the powers that I don't have hotkeyed instead of jumping into a menu is a nice little way to keep the action moving. I'm not using it for choosing my dialogue and opening doors, that would just be silly.

- already some hilarious moments. Joker/EDI have been a highlight. A particular encounter on my first trip to the Citadel killed me.

[Reznor]

- I like how you start off with a ton of your powers already leveled up rather than starting all over from scratch again. I also appreciate having respeccing available almost right from the start.

Completely agree on this point. Turns out the Level Cap for ME3 is 60, so you could powerlevel in ME2, then import into ME3 and start as a total badass.

- already some hilarious moments. Joker/EDI have been a highlight. A particular encounter on my first trip to the Citadel killed me.

I've made it a point to speak with every single person on the ship after each ground mission. Joker just keeps getting funnier, and funnier.

[Jakanden]

Since I didn't play any of the DLC, I have no fucking clue what is going on. Why the fuck is Shepard on trial the first minute of the game? The codex doesn't explain why and there is nothing in the opening segment to state what happened.

I am a bit pissed that my 120 hours between the two games apparently doesn't mean shit without having played the DLC.

[gobbleskat]

I think you are looking for clues that aren't there. Shepard is decommissioned after his involvement with Cerberus, but he is still counseling the alliance about the reapers. nothing that happens in the beginning of the game relates to the 3 DLCs I just played, i just extrapolated it based on what they were talking about.

[Jakanden]

According to what I read, it is due to what happened in the Arrival DLC as that is what bridges the gap between the two games.

Piggybacking off of the final DLC available for Mass Effect 2, Arrival, Mass Effect 3 begins with Commander Shepard on trial

However, I cannot find a plot breakdown of the Arrival DLC anywhere.

[Jakanden]

Ok - Sian explained what happened in the DLC so now I know why he is on trial

[gobbleskat]

That's what I'm confused about. When is he on trial? The commitee just called him in to confirm that what they were seeing on their scans was the Reapers. Or is this just something I haven't gotten to? I inferred that he had narrowly avoided a court marshall, but I figured that was for Cerberussyness after Anderson talked to him about it.

[Jakanden]

In the Arrival, Shepard destroys a Mass Relay to prevent the Reapers from coming through but does so by sacrificing 300,000 Batarians. Needless to say, they aren't too happy about it.

[Ekkebus]

I don't remember a trial either. I played The Arrival and I'm pretty sure blowing up the Batarians wasn't forced. Noone even brought it up here until I was a few hours in. I thought he was just put on ice for working with Cerberus as well

[Reznor]

In the Arrival DLC, it's stated that the trial is to be held on Earth itself for what Sheppard did.

So unless you've landed on Earth again.... *Shrugs*

[Jakanden]

I don't remember a trial either. I played The Arrival and I'm pretty sure blowing up the Batarians wasn't forced. Noone even brought it up here until I was a few hours in. I thought he was just put on ice for working with Cerberus as well

After watching the Arrival DLC online, they do indeed state he is going to earth to account for his actions in blowing up the Mass Relay which is where ME3 starts. I guess it is just a coincidence that it seemed like he was on trial at the beginning to me.

Its a moot point because now I am caught up. I just found it to be irritating. Ill stop my complaining since I seem to the only person who was confused