Hello and here is what i think so far.Keep in mind i haven't beat the game yet.

Here is some more detail so far:

You can now carry up to 5 weapons but they weigh you down and lower your recharge time on your abilities, which can seriously hinder your survival.

Pressing x now not just runs and covers, but you can also do a barrel roll to avoid being shot.Battles are more hectic than ever, requiring eyes at the back of your head since you can't change camera angles and get shot at from all angles.I keep accidentally barrel rolling every time I try to duck and cover.The circle button releases either a regular hit or a powerful hit.You can even grab people and kill them while taking cover for an instant kill.The knife attack does a huge amount of damage to a no barrier enemy.

Weapons:

So far I have the standard weapons

Shotgun rifles etc, and everyone can use now.You can also now add to the weapons up to two mods.The game is attempting to bring back some of what was sorely missed In mass effect 1 such as ammo and mods.

Powers:You got up to 8 powers plus 1 thing for learned ability, and you no longer have to use points on weapons anymore, since everyone can automatically use every gun.Instead of like before, you start to get a branching path on the 4th level of upgrade.The cost goes up fast 1 point per level.The branching path asks you now of you want more range on your power or more AOE power effect on your effect.

There seems to be something new called reputation along with karma.Im guessing reputation has something to do with my leadership since I'm leading a war against the reapers rallying people to join my cause.You can also get reputation if you look around and butt in to conversations by pressing x and making Shepard say something.Example:He tells one of the turians that people of his kind could use help on the moon with the fight.You also seem to be able to get things for reputation as well.

There is now something called a war terminal on your ship which gives info on readiness and total military strength plus effective military strength, and has a list of armies.

There is also a specter terminal in the citadel which gives info on quests and leads on stuff which you can read, and you can order expensive equipment which you might never be able to afford.

There is now also a new shopping system, where you can order weapons online and get them sent to you for an added price.

There is also something strange:The shadow broker vi bot can research upgrades for you.Im not sure yet how it works.I might need to find blueprints for it to make.

Quests:

You can now overhear things and get quests like I'm me1 and also get mail for quests or in cutscenes.This is great news.
All the info is in the quest page info and it won't point an arrow where you need to go.Some quests might ask you for going to a world and scanning it for something to complete it.

Traveling:

You still use fuel like in mass effect 2, but a lot of your refueling stations are destroyed by reapers, and you have to now dodge reapers by escaping immediately.You still have probes but you no longer have to scan every planet, instead you get this radar for scanning planets for relics and some event.I actually like this, as I wasn't a fan of mining on all planets.

Crew:So far a few mass effect 1 and 2 crew members make a return.Havent seen any new ones yet.I won't spoil it as you have to see it yourself.

World design change:The citadel is back again, and so far it seems a lot smaller.You use the elevator to get to each floor.So far I have the hospital dock a bar which is also a disco and also the human embassy.

I have a feeling so far that the designers were listening to the players about the complaints about the citadel and the lack of ammo and scanning planets, which is a nice thing.I hear that me4 will bring back the mako, which is great news.


Multiplayer:

How to play:You need to create an ea account to play and download map packs and a free pass to join in for free.

Character choosing:Each listing is a character roster with a gender and race separate skills.Leveling one in that one row levels all of them in that row.Your characters also have access to weapons you got from using cash from completing online games.You can gather weapons from purchasing packs to get a new character.

Online game:Once you are done getting a character chosen, you must choose a difficulty and desired place and enemy to fight.You can either create a game and fight that one enemy and have everyone join you, or you can join a random game.Be careful to not go too high in difficulty or you will get massacred.Even on bronze the game is very difficult.

Items:So you won a few levels and want to buy something? The first thing you will notice upon entering the game is you get free packs choice with one item you can choose from.In this pack can be a choice of things:

Free medi gels to resurrect yourself if you die a lot, which is important.
Free shield booster when your shield is down.
Weapons
Weapon mods
New character races
Bullets with effects for penetrating armor and shields
Etc etc

Money:Every few rounds, you get a mission of some sort in that game to do something, wether it be destroy x enemy, rescue that thing, or use a computer terminal to download some important info.Completing these will earn you credits after the round is over.Everyone who is in the team wether dead or alive will get credits if you succeed in winning, making a team effort that more desirable.

Experience:Wether you died or you finished that game entirely and got rescued, the experience depends on one thing:How many rounds your team survived, and how many enemies your team killed.More kills and rounds higher xp for team.Total xp between all team members is rewarded to each member for helping the team survive.

Dying:After your hp runs out, you fall down and can't get up.Your team member has to rush over and heal you or the enemy will stomp you and cause you to be dead for one round.If that happens, you have to wait till the next round to get kills.If everyone dies, the whole team loses that game and it ends immediately.You get your credits and xp for missions and kills and rounds won.

The thing I never understood about scanning in this game, is why they bothered with the actual scan itself. By which I mean the running the circle around the planet following the white line to the collectible. What's the point of that bit? You have infinite probes, so you can't fail it. There is never anything other than the one item to find, and it tells you exactly where it is.

So why not just give it to you when you initially scan the planet? Or when you at least have done the initial scan from space, and go to the Planet info screen. Why not just have it pop up then? Time freezes during all this, so the Reapers can't get you whilst you're actually scanning the planet, so there's no time limit or anything. So I just don't get what the final scanning process is supposed to achieve. It feels like a pointless waste of time exercise that could have been cut out completely. Or change it up some and put some hidden extras on the planets if you take the time to fire off some more probes or something. Same with little mini game of dodging the Reaper ships. Why bother? Much easier to just let them catch you, retry for no penalty and use your knowledge of where the scan objects are to not alert them at all this time. Whole thing is just time wasteing nonsense.

Just one example of how I feel this game was slip shod in its execution. The menus, the quest list, the Normandy itself with its gloomy, tomb like atmosphere, no animations on the lift (hardly a big concern, but still it just doesn't feel as polished), and the awful scanning field room that you have to go through every time you want to check your EMS (a stat which heartbreakingly doesn't really matter, nor does the details of what you are finding, since you never see any of it in action).

And the main story SUCKS! I'm sorry - it does. The Cruclble is such a cop out deus ex machine piece of crap storytelling cheat. It completely sucked all my enthusiasm to play from that game. It feels like such a kids cartoon way of doing things. Like an episode of Dangermouse where the scientist gives a huge explantion of why Baron Greenback's big laser of death bent in a U shape and blew his own ships up.

'Because it only shoots baddies'. Which is what the Crucible is - a giant Death Star thing that fires a 'Kill all the Reapers everywhere with 1 shot' ray. What a joke... And its even worse that they're actually building the thing from scratch, with blueprints and calculations written in a dead language that is barely understood by anyone in the modern age, in the middle of a war full of defectors and traitors that are impossible to detect, defending it with fleets that have no chance of standing up to the Reapers if they found it... Gah, its just the worst rubbish ever!

Another entry of mine:I don't like how the quests are no longer available in the citadel if you go off and do the quest for the krogans and the bomb and then go to the citadel.

Money is also pretty scarce so far.I don't see how anyone can afford the weapon at the specter office.

Those are high level weapons. Money is actually quite plentiful in this one - you can get quite a bit just from scanning some of the planets. The trick is to settle on which guns you feel are the best value for the most people, and only upgrade those. Don't buy any of the crap like unique armor sets or model ships or any of that crao. Also settle on which mods you feel are the best, and only buy those. You can always buy the other stuff later if you change your mind, after all. Just don't try to buy and upgrade everything. Be sensible with your cash and you can really stretch it out.

Also, never buy stuff from the Normandy, because it markls up the prices to include cost of delivery to the ship - go to the Citadel and buy direct from the sellers.

As to Quests, NEVER do missions labelled Priority, until you have done all the other side quests and fetch quests. Priority missions should be done last (you see what I mean about this game being slapdash as that is the polar opposite of what Priority means!) Its just a codename for 'Main Plot Mission' and if you do them, you lock out various side missions and fetch missions. So scour everywhere, do all the other missions first, scan every planet etc, then do the Priority missions.

Not that there are many side quests. There are no missions from scanning planets anymore. The N7 missions are just mini beast mode jaunts on the multiplayer maps, and the Citadel missions are all just a lot of 'Go here, press this button' nonsense that has you shuttling about in that damn lift between floors, enduring endless loading screens. There are only 3 actual side missions in the whole game! I suppose you could count the optional missions during the Krogan and Quarian story threads, but come on, those are main missions that most people will feel compelled to do anyway...

I am doing them but reapers get in the way and I can't seem to do them with reapers chasing me and they won't let me finish scanning the galaxies.Its so annoying to be chased by reapers as you are trying to scan worlds and they go faster than you.On top of that:Fuel is expensive and there are few areas to resupply.

One thing that really bugs me, has to do with Cerberus.Im trying to figure out a way to put spoiler alert since I don't want to spoil the game for people.

The scanning is easy. If you get detected, just let the Reapers catch you and kill you. Hit retry and it will take you back to when you entered the system, with the bar reset to zero. The scanable objects are always in the same places, so just race about scanning constantly, memorize where everything is, die to the reapers, restart and scan in peace. Also, keep an ear out as you fly around - scanable objects in space (i,e destroyed fuel depots) will give the ping noise that you get when you touch a planet or object, even if you can't see it on the map yet. (This doesn't work for planets though, as that noise triggers every time you fly over any planet).

If you're wondering how Cerberus has so many soldiers all of a sudden, don't hold your breath waiting for a sensible answer. The explanation comes right at the end and is laughably silly. As for why they're just the evil guys now... because they are! It really doesn't get any deeper than that. ME3's story just sucks, I'm afraid.

And never mind about spoilers. The game is like 4 years old! Most people these days consider a game ancient if came out last month... They're hardly going to care about being spoiled for a 4 year old game.

What really bothers me, is somehow Cerberus was able to invade the citadel and have such a huge fleet, get reaper tech and have countless planets.

I know that citadel is stretched thin, but the invasion of the citadel seems a little ridiculous, considering earth is under attack and the citadel is a mix of multiple races.I understand earth has several colonies, but so does the Asari probably.So do the salarians and turians, and the salarians turians and Asari do have fame in military, considering Asari are very talented biotic commandos and turians are good sniper assasins and skilled soldiers and engineers.

I'm also not letting go how I think the design for world scanning is still kinda bad, along with lack of stealth mechanism used for escaping.

So far, this game has a lot of unfun mechanics to it.I seriously don't like that map system nor the quest system.Me1 had a better quest system which told you which star system the quest was in, now you get no info, it's ridiculous.1:You get no info who gave the quest and 2:Where to find said item.

So far what I'm seeing is this:
Gun system in me3 good with its upgrades preferred
Quest system of me1 is best
Exploration of me1
Quality of worlds from me2
Character level of attention of mass effect 1
Quest quality of me2
Ship upgrades me2

I think me2 was a lot better so far.Only thing I'm liking is the return of the citadel and having quests you can get like in me1 by talking to people or listening to them instead of being lead by a leash.

There is good of course:Return of purchasing items like ammo magazines and mods for weapons is a good step forward from what me2 did wrong.

I also really like the reputation you get from convincing people to join your cause for war and actively getting involved in politics.This makes it feel a step slightly closer to me1 than before, as you are deciding for yourself what to do.

I heard this game's ending is a total disappointment. I don't care that much as the story doesn't seem to be that relevant. In fact, I didn't pay much attention to ME's plot more than I paid to the combat system and I think this sense spreads all over the whole franchise. Most of the time I was more interested in surviving against the odds than trying all the possibilities of being Paragon or Renegade (and when I play it again, I'll play only for the achievements). I was thinking: as in ME 3 you can have same sex romances, just wondered if this gets in the way of Shepard previous romances. I mean, is that easy to become gay after 2 games being straight (for male Shepard) or you just go for it and have fun?

:neg:

I never tried gay relation in mass effect series so don't know.Only know one character who is gay, and that is one of the guys in the hangar.

I never tried gay relation in mass effect series so don't know.

Not even with female Shepard?

Kaidan is as well. To your question on this, there is no 'suddenly gay' about it. You simply haven't been given the chance to express any opinion on the matter before now. I guess you could argue that you have been given the option to say Shepard isn't gay because of the female romance options that you may have engaged in (or at least that would make him bisexual if you later went the same sex route). Its certainly true that it feels a little jarring for so many characters in ME3 to suddenly effectively be bellowing 'I'M GAY!!!!!' from the rafters, when previously its not had much of presence in the series (moreso for Femshep I guess, but even that was unnecessarily complicated by Bioware sticking their oar in and saying Asari didn't technically count as female and all that nonsense).

Considering Kelly Chambers is a kind of Easter Egg, almost non canonical style 'romance' (similar to how Diana Allers is in ME3 where its a romance in name only and not worth your or anyone's time), it isn't until Sam Traynor that she gets a true, Bioware sanctioned same sex romance. And whilst it is my choice of romance, it isn't very well written. The romance comes literally out of nowhere with no build up and there is very little romantic interaction after that. The fact that I like Traynor mostly saves it, and I certainly prefer it to any of the other romances, but that speaks more to their lack of quality IMO.

In closing on this point, it feels no less unusual for it suddenly to be a thing than many other elements in the game (i.e that you can be an Engineer who knows nothing about engineering when talking to people, you can be a biotic and claim to know nothing about it etc etc). The game blatantly assumes you are playing a Soldier, are no nonsense action guy who doesn't care for politics and diplomacy etc and that you are (regardless of gender) atracted to Liara Tsoni. Trying to convince the game that any of these aren't true is an uphill battle.

As to the size, scale and sheer number of Cerberus' operations, I agree entirely. Its one of my principal concerns too. How can they possibly have this much stuff?! Even though the manpower is (badly) explained later on, the amount of ships, shuttles, bases, Mechs, weapons etc they have is truly absurd (they also have a huge fleet and massive force which has taken over Omega in the Terminus systems). They seem to be everywhere at once, conducting all manner of extremely resource heavy and technically demanding operations. Often they seem to have no real reason to even be there either. Like during the Krogan cure at the STG base. You think at the end 'Wait, why did they even care about this, enough to spare so many men, mechs and gunships?!'

You actually fight Cerberus far more often than you fight the Reapers, which is extremely silly. Add to that the fact that they have (in 2 months or so), perfected AI intelligence in the form of the Phantom and Nemesis units. EDI is clearly not human by her manner of speech and cannot fool anyone at that score. But Dr Eve Corey from the start was able to perfectly mimic human emotions such that nobody suspected her. Cerberus have also managed to make the unit look and move like a human too. Considering that by all indications, the tech level on this kind of thing for the rest of the galaxy is closer to those janky poilicemen mechs, this is one hell of an achievement that Cerberus have made. As well as pouring billions into studying indoctrination, and any number of other large scale ops. There is simply no way anyone (even the Council races) could afford half of what Cerberus are doing in ME3.

Another of my pet peeves with this game is the Spectre office. After making such a big deal out of the Spectres in ME1, they are left to rot in the other 2 games. Being a Spectre in ME3 apparently means reading some utterly dry and boring reports, and occasionally authorising people to move some crates or other impossibly trivial crap.

The original ending of Mass Effect 3 was leaked 5 months before the game's release, mainly due to a dispute between series lead writer Drew Karpshyn and Former BioWare team leader Casey Hudson (Who fucks things up big time this twat). Drew ended up leaving BioWare, so Casey and that fop Mac Walters came up with the biggest piece of shit ending in gaming history.

Even the Extended Cut endings, which brought more to the original 3 endings, as well as 2 more which again were bullshit... A lot of fans consider the Citadel DLC to be the TRUE ending of ME3 but I digress. Hoping that Mass Effect Andromeda is better...

As I remember, quite a lot of the original script was leaked, and I remember a lot of it being much better than what was in the game. Its too easy to blame the endings - the whole game has a shaky narrative.

What do you expect... due to the leak, Casey and Mac had to change a lot. Those 5 months prior to release was a mad panic for the development team. They had to rewrite a lot...

the whole game has a shaky narrative.

The first ME was very entertaining to me. Talking to Avina was one of the novelties that had me thinking "probably is going to wear off sooner than expected but, oh hell, enjoy!" Then the game ended up out of the blue (for me) but I still had hopes "ME 2 may make up for this!" and, so far (haven't even touched ME 3 yet!), the most entertaining features I found were changing Shepard's armor color (!!) and wondering how kinky the dialog between Shepard and the yeoman can get or even if he can further his relationship with Jack "that way". Besides this, I just took part in a lot of meaningless fetch quests and bored myself to death scanning planets. Even the Thresher Maw wasn't that hard to kill! I feel sorta cheated by a hyped game like ME was but it's a matter of time for me to rekindle the old flame, ignore these flaws, have some good old strategic shooting behind crates and FINALLY FINISH THE TRILOGY! Well, the replay value is THE JUICE that keeps me interested!

Oh, I never meant to imply that ME1 had a bad story - it has by far the best story in any of Bioware's games IMO. That sleek, 70's hard sci-fi feel mixed with some Cold War Espionage style undertones. Fantastic. I was criticising ME3's story (ME2 has a decent enough, if simplistic, story on its own terms - it was just a completely different tone from ME1. Pulpy, hard boiled 'stalking the mean streets of Omega' and ripping yarn space adventurer antics. Good stuff, but had very little to do with anything in terms of the series. ME3 simply has a bad story though, and its manner of storytelling, particularly around SHepard himself and those hokey dream sequences (what the hell has a misty forest got to do with anything in ME?!) Its all just garbage.


And Revan, well what I don't expect is for them to replace what was looking to be a pretty promising script with a completely awful one. The script I saw had Cerberus still pretending to be good guys, and Shepard having to expose them and Terra Firma's true intentions along with reporters like Emily Wong and Khalisa Al Jilani. I don't remember everything that I read from that script, but it couldn't really be worse than what we got because ME3's script sucks. I'm not saying it would have been perfect - ME2's dawdling and complete abandonment of its responsibilites to move the plot forward, guaranteed that ME3 could never have any credibility (because there is simply no way the Reapers could possibly lose to a galaxy that was completely unprepared for them).

My point is that the leaked script at least had some merit. The script we got in the game doesn't. None of the missions make sense (like the Reaper Destroyers who all seem to forget that they can fly and thus would not be killed in any of the scenarios where you face them), the fact that the Reapers leave the Citadel alone for most of the game, despite it always being their first target in previous invasions, the fact they don't just turn the Mass Relays on and off at will so they can use them and the other races can't, given that they built the things, and the list goes on and on and on and on.

The story makes NO SENSE. It doesn't. And its all because ME2 left them with too much to do. ME2 should have been spent preparing the races in the galaxy for the Reapers, and finding ways to combat indoctrination, learning more about the Protheans and what they knew, and how to use the technology of the Conduit to help them retain control of the Relays when the Reapers arrived. By all means introduce new enemies and the game would obviously need its own story. But there are certain things that as I've outlined above, the middle game of the series *needed* to address, and it didn't, leaving ME3 with far too much to do. And so they just hand waved it all, and put it bullshit plot devices like the Crucible.

The game just sucks. I'm sorry, but this idea that some people have that its just the endings that are at fault is utterly wrong. The whole game was a disaster, and together with DAI, show exactly how far Bioware have fallen. Andromeda had better be the greatest game ever made if they hope to turn this slump around.

What do you expect from that liar Casey Hudson? The original script was great (I read it on the BioWare Social Network Forums before when it was leaked) and it explained a lot... One thing from ME2, was Tali's Loyalty mission... the whole Dark Energy plot was to be a major arc in ME3, but was abandoned... a decision made by Hudson. The Catalyst was meant to be something completely different than what we were given. ME3, to me, was a insult not just to the fans but also the characters and universe that BioWare created.

They never should have allowed things to get so out of control with Drew Karpyshyn. He was their best writer (guy was the lead for KOTOR and ME1 - I think we can all agree the guy knows his stuff!) Whatever it took to smooth things over and keep him there, they should have done it. I mean, they're no kids for crying out loud! Act like the grown men you are supposed to be and work something out - don't just let your main guy for the series walk away, and particularly not when you're right in the middle of the series!

And yeah, Casey Hudson really should have done what Shinji Mikami did with RE2, Mikami didn't like the new ideas and direction that the game's director was touting, but eventually he decided that for the good of the game, he needed to just step back into a more advisory role and let the guy get on with it. At some point, you have to accept that you're never going to agree with each other, and as the big boss Casey should have been the man to say 'Well, we'll try it your way for now, since you did such a great job in the past and if it still doesn't work, then we'll look again at how I want to do it'. Its called man management and its clearly something Hudson has no clue about.

Which is why Casey is now working for Microsoft...

Il try a fem Shepard soon.I created a fem Shepard to romance Garrus.This will be especially fun since Garrus really really likes me in me3.He even said what are you going to do, propose to me? Hmm I could do that if I start as a fem Shepard and see if he does propose to me.Besides I really like Garrus a lot.I ignored and neglected Kaidan alenko in me1 because I didn't like his personality but paid attention to Garrus.Garrus became my best partner along with wrex and tali.I could always try to romance thane as fem Shepard, but that will lead to fem Shepard having a broken heart.

But tell something Vrykolas. I'm not waiting anything groundbreaking from ME 3 when I get there one day (and that's fine by me as every trilogy tends to have its black sheeps) but does the story wrap up at the end of it or Bioware just screwed up and the Andromeda episode is but an apology to the fans? Because I have no intentions until now to purchase any of the DLCs in order to "fill the gaps" the plot may have as they should've thought about that in the first place to not leave that many unanswered questions, don't you think?

A lot of the plotholes in the ME Trilogy is filled in with the companion novellas and comics. To basically get the full story, one needs to get all the extras... not to say the games aren't good on their own as they are... just... BioWare tried too hard to make something as daunting as the task they set for themselves...

Ever since EA got their teeth in BioWare... their glory days are far behind them...

A lot of the plotholes in the ME Trilogy is filled in with the companion novellas and comics.

No thanks Darth. Bioware should've given us the whole shebang through the games I think. I can deal with plotholes if the game keeps me interested one way or another. ME seems to not need a story to be enjoyable and I can live with that. The whole "style over substance" aura was something I got since the first time I played it. And ME oozes style all over in a way that makes gameplay sometimes feel almost secondary, it's what FF XIII TRIED to be but failed horribly. ME has balls for being an "action movie game" shamelessly, but that also means it runs the risk of being inconsistent, predictable, shallow and even substandard.

The thing is that by ME3, the series has sort of lost any sense of an ongoing plot. It ignored the main plot completely in ME2, so by the time of ME3 its kind of too late to do anything interesting with the Reapers. They have no presence, no charisma as enemies. They're just a fleet of big metal squids who are barely in the game at all really. So technically, yes Shepard beats the Reapers and Cerberus who are now just some mind controlled drones doing a good impersation of the Hellghast from KIllzone.

But WHOOOOOOO CARES?! The Reapers have so little engagement, so little to make you care about anything they are doing, that its impossible to view the ending as anything worth speaking about. So the Reapers are attacking Earth... Big deal. How many movies, books, games etc have we seen Earth attacked and sometimes actually destroyed? Shepard isn't even from Earth in 2 out of the 3 starting origins. And yes, you would obviously want to protect Earth, but it doesn't get the blood pumping for the player. To do that, you have to see places that you have seen before being attacked, like the Citadel or Omega. A conflict across space has no weight also if its all over in a couple of months etc etc.

There simply isn't any reason to care about anything that happens in this game. So when the end finally comes, it just feels like the biggest waste of time ever. Like you've done no more than you would in a 8 hour action game like Gears of War or something like that. You smashed some faceless, 'Evil Aliens' and saved Mankind. Like you've done gazillions of times in other games. With no dramatic moments, no real rivalries and awesome 'Oh my God, did they just do THAT' moments for the characters, then it all feels hollow and pointless, like you might as well have just played a standard action blaster instead.


Oh and NG - you can't start a romance with Garrus in ME3. You can continue a romance with him that you started in ME2, but if you didn't romance him (or Tali) in ME2, they aren't available for romance in ME3. On a semi related note, Kelly Chambers has a small cameo appearance in the game, but she won't show up unless you romanced her in ME2.

Actualy me3 is kinda pissing me off story wise.Im starting to see all the glaring plot holes that hurt the game, like how a sand worm managed to destroy a reaper WTF!!!! Seriously? And how Shepard managed to destroy a super advanced alien reaper by having a gun that gives a target point for reapers to attack, yet he is fucking standing toe to toe with a reaper? NO friggin way, he would have been one shotted.I also love how before Cerberus was work for humans and now works with reapers, what the heck? That makes no sense.So far the reapers don't seem that intimidating compared to in me2.In me2 we had to fight collectors who were created by the reapers by genetic mutation and cloning and as mordin said no soul left.Everything replaced with tech.

Well, I always have a hard time remembering which RPG had a decent or coherent ending especially when is part of a trilogy. Maybe linearity killed ME plot? Or maybe the devs never had a good story to begin with? What is done is done and being Andromeda an apology or not, cash cow or not, let's hope the best : D

Well, its definately a cash cow. They've slapped the Mass Effect title on it, but its got nothing to do with the original games, nor is it even set in the same galaxy, I believe. Its the same trick that Final Fantasy pulls - the title means you make more money than you would have done if it was a new IP.

And what killed ME's story, was that there was no dramatic tension. They built Shepard up and up and up to absurd superhuman levels, such that they could never have him lose... ever... at anything. So the games don't really have the old crisis level where things go wrong anymore (or when they do, its in the most idiotically contrived ways that protect Shepard's invincibility). It never feels like there are any real stakes involved, because you know that Shepard absolutely cannot lose or even modestly fail. It'll just a sucession of increasingly unlikely wins from start to finish.

NG hits the nail on the head with the Reapers in ME2. The Reaper Destroyer that gets killed by a Thresher Maw sandworm is just pitiful. Destroyers can fly, so why didn't it just do that? The worm is tunneling about and can't be targeted, so why would the Destroyer (which apparently also has no scanners and heat sensors to see where it is), just sits there like a lemon waiting to be grabbed?!

And yeah, the bit where Shepard is rolling from side to side to dodge the beam is *the* lowest point of that game (and predictably is considered awesome by foolish fans). The idea that you can dodge this laser by just rolling about is so utterly insulting. If the Destroyer had simply angled the beam and swept horizonally, it would have been over in seconds. But quite apart from that, the laser should have cut that mountainside up like butter and sent Shepard plummenting to his death in a rockslide. For that matter, why have the Reapers only fitted their units with one gun?! The things are enormous and they don't think that a few batteries of anti infantry and AA guns might be a good idea? Or some racks of missiles? Nope, just one Beam 'O' Death.

And again, why didn't it just fly. Destroyers are noted in the codex for being involved in the space battles. They reached the surface by flying down there, but as soon as they land they seem to forget this fact and just sit about waiting to get killed. It happens again later on, where a Destroyer happily sits there trying to snipe you with its laser, ignoring the fleet of missile trucks that you are blatantly readying to fire at it, despite them being completely out in the open.

That destroyer should have been able to destroy the thresher maw easily, considering its hyper advanced, and yet it gets ruined by something with no intelligence? Why doesn't the thing have X-ray and gamma ray vision and what not? It's hyper advanced and should be really hard to kill.

Also:This really pisses me off too:This company is a cock tease.They didn't show talis face at all, only in a photo frame and it looks human.Couldnt they have given us a glimpse of her face in person? Or were they too lazy to animate her face? Wtf!!
I've been waiting for 3 games and I am very disappointed.

Also why didn't the reapers start attacking and conquering races and transforming them sooner? Did you see those goddam banshees? They are the hardest thing to kill, compared to the one they did to turians who are tough but not nearly as tough.Imagine an army of turians brainwashed and cyborgified? Imagine an army of those Elcor robotized with turrets on their back:Ouch. That would be horrid.They were called tanks, but with reaper tech:It would be worse.I don't even want to begin to imagine krogans with reaper tech either.Utnot wrex is a beast, and back in me2 when I was saving grunt, the imperfect krogans were massacring the soldiers easily.Even Shepard said that an army of angry krogans would be a nightmare.Come to think of it:Why don't I have grunt back?

Yeah, the Superman complex around Shepard with a bit of God complex in the middle, like everything really depends on him/her and nobody has pulse for nothing. I found the beggining of ME 2 pretty far-fetched, like the writers were desperately trying to prove something about him/her that wasn't carefully planned in the first place. I mean, dying and being ressurected sounded overly religious, even though the game's plot is a sci-fi political war of sorts. And for what? To end up working for Cerberus out of their kindness disguised as ulterior motives? That was kinda cheap on the writer's part...

Javik even points out that in his time, the Reapers *had* repurposed the races they had conquered, making them in a galaxy and more's worth of altered nightmares. This is precisely the problem - his war against the Reapers sounds infinitely more interesting than the one we see. Because in ME3, the Reapers only have a handful of samey, trash mob units, with the occasional armoured beast. In sheer gameplay terms, Cerberus are by far the more interesting enemies, because their units link up quite nicely (tank units with shields, portable shield generators, Engineers setting turrets, Mechs keeping you suppressed etc). The reapers are just lots of weak enemies who bum rush you.

The thing with Tali is... To an extent I can sympathize with them. It was half assed, no question, but they have said time and time and time again that their writers (in Mass Effect and Dragon Age) really don't care or want to do the romances anymore. They were an addition to KOTOR that really caught on with the fans to the extent that they demanded there be romances in every Bioware game. Add in the growing influence of the internet and its constant calls for social reform and inclusion etc and Bioware was soon coming under pressure every game to provide lots of romance options, of varying gender and racial persuasions etc.

But as numerous interviews have shown, Bioware's staff are not interested in writing romance. As Mac Walters put it 'we want to write sci fi action adventures, not Mills and Boon romance'. So the issue over Tali's face (which is of most interest to those who romance her), is part of their increasing irritation at having to put all this content into their games that they really couldn't care less about. David Gaider has also mentioned that the Dragon Age team seriously considered cutting out all romances from future games, but was sanguine about the fact that the fans would never allow them to do it (and indeed there was much fan rage at such comments).

Bioware are in a difficult place on this. Their writers are predominately white middle aged guys who want to write swords and sorcery tales or sci fi espionage adventures. They're not EL James or Jilly Cooper, wanting to write lurid sexual tales, nor are they more traditional romance writers. DAI was another example of this with a large selection of romances, which were all handled terribly, such that you could tell that the writers didn't care in the slightest about them.

So Tali's face, got about the same level of 'Oh let's just get this over with' attention as the Diana Allers, Sam Traynor romances etc. You'll notice that Shepard has no new straight romances either in ME3, Because the writers are just tired of having to check this particular box. They really don't want to have to do the romances.

Actually the reaper modified guys are fucking tough.The modified turians? Those guys have strong shields and a good range sniper rifle which will break your shield in one hit on easy, and probably kill you in two hits.Banshees and brutes are nightmare creatures in small areas and escaping them, even big areas since if you don't have any decent cover brutes will bull rush you and do huge amounts of damage, and banshees attack homes in on you regardless of being covered or not, but at least you can avoid it.

As someone who plays an engineer in me3 and me2, I hate banshees with a passion, and phantoms and those brutes.Its really hard to survive if I can't keep my distance.I much prefer fighting Cerberus and mechs with cover, because at least I can hide and throw rocket launcher drones.It gets worse:Every time I'm fighting those stupid banshees, I have legions of other enemies on me, like those goddam cannibals.On their on they aren't that bad, but they mess you up bad when fighting banshees.

Playing as a Engineer you have a Sentry Turret and Combat Drone to assist. The Marauders (Reaper Turians) aren't that bad to best, nor any of the Reaper forces. Have a Biotic with you and set up Biotic Explosions... They can deal a lot of damage.

Actually it's the melee enemies with ar or who screw me over, like phantoms, brutes and banshees.

Il tell you one thing though:Shotguns with armor piercing is devastating to a no barrier banshee, especially to the face.It does a lot of damage, and will drop her a lot faster.

But you fight Banshees on what... 2 levels in the whole game! Its hardly a major problem is it?! And marauders... well, I've never had any problems with them. Maybe Engineers have more problems with them, I don't know. Never played as an Engineer and never plan to. The narrative never supports the notion of Shepard as an Engineer, and they just seem weak with poor weapons and powers IMO. Vanguard for me practically every time. Solider if I'm not playing as Vanguard - they are the only career paths that seem to fit with the narrative that the game establishes for Shepard.

The game blatantly casts Shepard as a shocktrooper, a 'First into the breach, hold the line action, follow me my stalwart companions!' hero. The idea of Shepard as some guy who sits back making drones, or sniping from an invisibility shroud simply isn't supported by the narrative. None of whicb technically matters, but I like to keep things as believable as possible (which is rather difficult given all Bioware's silly decisions). It just doesn't feel like you're playing Shepard right to me, in a way that is consistent with the narrative perception of him/her, unless you are playing in a full blooded, aggressive, lead from the front warrior type of style.

Because that's what the game is clearly positioning Shepard as. Its why you're always thrust into these 'tip of the spear', land where the fighting is thickest, carve a path through the enemies kind of deal.

The game blatantly casts Shepard as a shocktrooper, a 'First into the breach, hold the line action, follow me my stalwart companions!' hero. The idea of Shepard as some guy who sits back making drones, or sniping from an invisibility shroud simply isn't supported by the narrative.

Yeah, as a leader, Shepard is more bark than bite, more "flight than fight". When you're trying the game in harder modes this is specially true. If you rush into things, his / her aggressive posture fades to gray terribly fast.

Realism doesn't matter, it's an rpg.The game suggests you can be an engineer and be a soldier, and in real life, there are people who learn some engineering tricks after joining the army, or medic stuff, but probably very limited.

From what I've seen too:Fireballs are just too good to say no to.Against any organic enemy, fire burns them and also seems to stagger them.

Yes, but the way an Engineer or Infilitrator plays is in direct opposition to how the narrative is protraying Shepard in conversations etc. Not to mention that the training and knowledge that you say he could have is never in evidence during conversations - Shepard always acts like he has no clue about any of this stuff. Its like if you were playing through the game as a human and then in the conversations you suddenly become a giant orange baboon named Samuel. It wouldn't make any sense would it - and neither does the discrepency of playing as such a passive, support style of gameplay compared to the 'Oh, Shepard's the greatest warrior ever' that everyone keeps insisting on.

After all, it would hardly be very heroic or look credible at all if during all these showdown moments againat gang leaders and deadly zealots trying to threaten mankind, if they stared each down and then... Shepard dives behind some crates and shouts 'Just give me a minute to set this turret up, yeah?' Nor does it explain why he suddenly becomes proficient with an assault rifle for certain cutscenes (and where that assault rifle even comes from or where it goes after the cutscene ends). The narrative clearly paints Shepard as a knife between the teeth, real man's man of a commando. Not some tech guy who sets up turrets, not some biotic wunderkind with fantastic mental powers. He's a guy with a gun who's really great at fighting.

The game lets you plays as other classes, but it doesn't even try to accomodate that decision in the narrative. And that jarring discrepancy means I can never play as those kinds of classes in ME. Because the story seems to be about a different character than the one I'd be playing.

Technically speaking all classes in me3 can use guns he maybe a soldier but doesn't mean he will dive back.

Yes, but the Engineer uses pistols. The main perks to that class are drones and turrets, which seem as far away from the action hero commando styling they are giving Shepard as its possible to get. Shepard is constantly being asked to dive into the thickest of the fighting and carve through enemy lines. That is the kind of role that is filled by a shocktrooper commando, not some tech guy. They aren't stealth missions either - Shepard deliberately aims for where the enemies are and goes in all guns blazing. That isn't the kind of approach that the more stealthy and technical classes like Inflitrator, Engineer and Adept would favour.

Shepard is frequently seen getting in people's faces and staring them down at extreme close range. That would be a rather odd move for someone whose main weapon was a sniper rifle. Or who relied on tricks and traps from his omni tool etc. Whichever way you slice it, Shepard comes across as a frontline, gun toting, no nonsense 'shoot the enemies and then shoot them some more' commando. The games frequently embarass themselves by having conversations that fail to acknowledge if Shepard has technical or biotic talents. And the reason is simple - the stats show that most people play as the soldier. So Bioware takes that as their standard in conversations, and nips and tucks for the other classes on the rare occasions they remember to or can be bothered.

Again, it doesn't really matter, but I personally need these kinds of things to make sense. Like in those Rockstar games where the narrative for say Red Dead Redemption is that whatever his name is... Marsten is it? Well whatever, that he's a man who's largely put violence behind him, and is only doing this because the feds are threatening his family etc. And yet you can fill in time between missions by going on mad rampages, gunning down everyone you see and generally being the nastiest man who ever lived. But the main plot will never address that. It drives me crazy to see things like that.