Mass Effect 3

[SAB]

The biggest problem about ME3's ending is that they tried to pull the curtain back on the Reapers' motivations. There was really no need to do that. The strength of the core narrative and themes of ME3 was enough to invest players through to the end. The Reapers could have just been intergalactic bogeymen and it would've been just fine.

If one wants to argue that point, then I would bring up an irrefutable one about how poorly Bioware handled the Reapers' backstory. If they wanted to tell us all about the Reapers, the one way that you SHOULDN'T go about it is to introduce a new character in the final 10 minutes to deliver the giant info-dump. They had a whole game to drop hints about what the Reapers are, but instead they split the focus and made Cerberus the major antagonist for much of the game.

It's poor writing, even if we were to disregard the actual contents of the writing.

BOOM

I think thats a very good point.
It is still my favorite series ever as a whole (and I don't despise the ending either really) but at no point in playing it did I ever think, 'I better find out why the Reapers are here!' while I was playing.

Honestly I thought Mass Effect 1 explained more than enough there. They were the gods of the universe come to harvest and clean when they saw fit. Somethings are bigger than any tiny mind can understand.

I can't remember the exact dialogue but Soverign says something to you like, "we have no beginning, we have no end, we simply are"

And then you being a tiny stubborn human decides to take it upon yourself to try and kill god.

Thats all I wanted or needed to know....


And even if they did feel the need to explain more, it should have been seeded throughout the games, or at the very least the 3rd game.

 

[plasmid303]

BOOM

I think thats a very good point.
It is still my favorite series ever as a whole (and I don't despise the ending either really) but at no point in playing it did I ever think, 'I better find out why the Reapers are here!' while I was playing.

Honestly I thought Mass Effect 1 explained more than enough there. They were the gods of the universe come to harvest and clean when they saw fit. Somethings are bigger than any tiny mind can understand.

I can't remember the exact dialogue but Soverign says something to you like, "we have no beginning, we have no end, we simply are"

And then you being a tiny stubborn human decides to take it upon yourself to try and kill god.

Thats all I wanted or needed to know....


And even if they did feel the need to explain more, it should have been seeded throughout the games, or at the very least the 3rd game.

Exactly, the motivations of the Reapers was supposed to be unknowable to our feeble minds.

ME was never about the mystery behind the Reapers. It was enough to just let the player try and interpret it themselves.

It's too bad that Bioware found that they needed to tell us. It's kind of like Lost or the SW prequels where the mystery should have just remained a mystery, because the answers are often less than satisfactory.

Regardless, I still love the series and the universe it built.

 

[SAB]

so Leviathan comes out 28th in the US right?

 

[astro666]

Yea it does, probably in about 10-12 hours or so.
Does anybody know if Operation: ALLOY was a success?

 

[SAB]

Yea it does, probably in about 10-12 hours or so.

I was hoping it would go up at midnight in the US so I could download after work here in Oz

 

[plasmid303]

Leviathan release times:

PC - Between 9-10am PST
Xbox 360 - Midnight-1am PST
PS3 - Between 2-3pm PST

SAB I'm not sure if digital content uploads are done simultaneously for you guys in Australia.

Launch trailer:
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYjenu-f_3g[/ame]

Viral campaign:
https://blog.bioware.com/2012/08/27/i-speak-the-truth/

 

[Ex-Parrot]

Sometimes they are up within an hour or two, sometimes it takes as much as a day or more. I was hoping that Mass Effect would be one of the quicker ones as far as Aussie digital release goes, but alas, not. Oh well, it'll show up soon enough, I guess...

 

[SAB]

So I"ve downloaded it and finished it.
Great stuff.

Very interesting info as well in there. I'll keep it spoiler free here of course.

But it closes off the plot holes and inconsistencies of the endings.

So was this developed because of fan anger?
...or were the ending problems present because crucial information was left out in order to pay for it later?

I'm honestly not sure.

Anyway, I liked it better than any of the main story in ME3.
The Crucible was a silly death star 'ultimate gun' thing done in a million sci-fi stories.
Leviathan as a plot device and big twist/finish would have been so much better than that and should have been the focus on of ME3 instead of the crucible....

EDIT: This came out during my 2nd playthrough so I've plugged it straight in. I don't know how this affects the ending of the game itself or the conversations with the starchild.

 

[Matt S]

How long did it take you to beat?

 

[SAB]

How long did it take you to beat?

Probably 3.5 hours.

About the same size and length as ME2's Lair of the Shadow Broker.
And while short, like Lair, the environments and what you do in them aren't just retreads of the main game but are a little fresher and more interactive and cool.

 

[Shadowscythe85]

Probably 3.5 hours.

About the same size and length as ME2's Lair of the Shadow Broker.
And while short, like Lair, the environments and what you do in them aren't just retreads of the main game but are a little fresher and more interactive and cool.

Sounds encouraging. Can't wait to get around to actually playing ME 3 (have had it since day 1).

Have they said how many more campaign DLCs there will be? Heard about the suppossed Omega one but that's it.

 

[Matt S]

Probably 3.5 hours.

About the same size and length as ME2's Lair of the Shadow Broker.
And while short, like Lair, the environments and what you do in them aren't just retreads of the main game but are a little fresher and more interactive and cool.

Cool - I was 'fearing' an hour so 3.5 isn't too shabby - thanks for the heads up

 

[plasmid303]

I thought Leviathan was fantastic. Not Lair of the Shadow Broker levels of greatness, but it had a lot going for it. Variety, visually interesting locales, new Citadel area, new hub areas, new variables that affected combat, and most importantly (to me), a lot of new dialogue and banter from both your squad and new characters.

If you are interested in the history of the Reapers and the true nature of the Catalyst, Leviathan is worth playing (or at least worth watching on youtube or something). It doesn't change the outcome of the ending though, but it adds a new wrinkle.

This mission is the kind that ME3 sorely lacked. It was tiered and spaced out properly, slowing the pace of the game down to allow the player to walk around and explore an area without being herded from one battle to another. It felt a lot like a mission from ME2 (especially the excellent ME2 dlc missions).

It took me a little more than 3 hours and I enjoyed every minute of it. Definitely worth $10.

If Leviathan were originally in ME3, it would have vastly improved my opinion of the game. Still, this dlc is great even experienced months after having finished the game.

 

[astro666]

I'm glad to hear that people are enjoying it. Hopefully I can download it at some point, maybe the next time something sells from one of my sale threads. One of the many, many, many casualties of being unemployed, not being able to afford DLC.

 

[DarkShadow]

Sounds encouraging. Can't wait to get around to actually playing ME 3 (have had it since day 1).

Have they said how many more campaign DLCs there will be? Heard about the suppossed Omega one but that's it.

There should be a few more, before ME3 came out, they where talking about how they could produce more DLC for this game as they had more studio's or something like that. But it can take a while, didn't ME2 come out in the beginning of 2010, and the last DLC for it (Arrival) somewhere half way in 2011, 1.5 years later? If they do that again with ME3, we could very well expect the last DLC to roll in somewhere in the last few months of 2013.

Anyway, I have the comic ME Invasion, which goes about Aria and Omega, and at the very end it says it will be continued in ME3, so we should expect some Aria/Omega DLC. It was the same in ME2, they had the comic Redemption, about Liara finding Shepard's body and the Shadow Broker, it also said will be continued in ME2, and it was continued with the DLC Lair of the Shadow Broker.

 

[plasmid303]

Further proof that Omega dlc is coming and also signs pointing to possible Citadel dlc:

Users who datamined the Leviathan dlc files found the file name "DLC_Omega_Aria_Fleet" and this image:

And this:

The "LEV" location files indicate Leviathan dlc areas, the others would be Omega and Citadel areas. Since there is only one new Citadel area in the Leviathan dlc, one could assume that the rest of the "cit" locations are new and for something else completely.

 

[astro666]

Very cool.

 

[Ex-Parrot]

I'm in for all the dlc campaigns they make, Mass Effect whore that I am.

 

[SAB]

So I finished my 2nd play through with Leviathan and extended endings active.

It is interesting to see 'the star child' conversations further altered by the Leviathan DLC. You now have more talk options and more explanation.

Really works to explain and close off a lot of the problems with the original ending.

 

[Shadowscythe85]

So I finished my 2nd play through with Leviathan and extended endings active.

It is interesting to see 'the star child' conversations further altered by the Leviathan DLC. You now have more talk options and more explanation.

Really works to explain and close off a lot of the problems with the original ending.

The more I hear, the more I am glad that I did not get around to playing ME3 yet. By the time I do, it sounds like most of the original issues will be fixed / covered.