It’s not so much the face, as all the choices. And (damnit!) I do not want anything spoilered for me at all, so I don’t want to know which choices are important and which aren’t. Helped the Hanar preacher in ME1? Maybe he leads an elite squad of ninja priests into Reaper territory. That crime lord gal who becomes a social worker if you set her straight? Maybe she unleashes her suicidal patients on the Reapers into a great wave of emo. I dunno, and I don’t want to know until I play through, but damnit I want all my choices!
[spoiler]Everything EA touches turns to shit. These clowns created three endings for a character-based trilogy (read: one ending with three different filters), all of which are horrible, unsatisfying nBSG endings.
Serious ending spoilers:
The mass relays are destroyed, your crew are stranded on some unknown planet and Shepard either dies or is stuck on a disintegrating space station.[/spoiler]
Thanks! I did just shelve the Asari prisoner issue, and stumbled into an alternative solution, so that was nice. It also looks like if I fetch the right kind of toothpicks I can fix the other issue too.
Quimby, your discussion of your monkey Shepard made me laugh like an idiot at the gym, so people were looking at me weird. I decided if I tried to explain why I was laughing, they would have looked at me weirder. (I do think the female faces tend to have a prominent maxilla. I think they were going for pouty Angelina Jolie and overshot into Planet of the Apes territory.)
sticks fingers in ears, shuts eyes, says LA LA LA LA
Remember folks the game ain’t out in Europe yet, spoiler tags are appreciated! I’m still pissed off that I accidentally ruined ME2’s twist that the Collectors were Protheans, and I’ve already heard that in ME3 Emily Wong dies! Not quite on the same scale but I was pretty upset. Why couldn’t it have been Khalisa? After Shep has one last interview and slugging match for old times sake.
Not looking at anything, just reporting on the facecode thing. Got the demo yesterday (I’m late to the party I know); put in the facecode I got from following the BioWare forums resulted in a pretty perfect reconstruction of my Shep I’ve had since ME1, although I’ve heard results can vary. So, when I pick up my copy tomorrow and import my save, if it cocks up I’ve got a recourse.
Also; it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. What the hell has happened to Shockwave?! Gone from an unstoppable freight train of biotic power to having all the force of a chihuahua taking a piss. Warp’s still as useful as ever though, as is Singularity. Floating ducks!
How does the gameplay compare to the first two games? ME1 felt more like a traditional RPG with real time-fights, whereas ME2 felt like a FPS with talking. I liked the plethora of options in ME1, even though the inventory system was kind of a mess. Plus, the regeneration/cover system in ME2 seemed too “gamey” for me. Is the third installment an continuation of the trend, a return to the original, or a whole different thing?
In ME 2 you essentially have 6 life…er…sections; your shields and 5 units of health. Your shields regenerate no matter what, your health only regenerates if you’ve something left in that section, you can only regain your health sections with Unity’s equivalent. See a Let’s Play of the demo to see how it functions.
It’s more of Mass Effect 2. improved, though there is a difficulty called “Narrative” which tones down the amount of reflexes you need to get through the game. The cover system is refined, not perfect, but it feels smoother now. The game doesn’t get as intense as Gears of War (at least on Normal difficulty, which is quite a challenge for me).
RPG-wise, there are more choices you can make. From level 3 onwards, each upgrade to a power have 2 options - either more AoE, or more damage, and the like. You get to mod/upgrade your weapons, and put piece-meal armour together to give you the exact bonuses you want. You can’t turn your pistol into an artillery like in ME1, but there are still enough varieties to make it fun. In the end though, your reflexes still count more than your stats.
(And ooh some of the weapons are fun too! There’s a heavy pistol that fires sticky bombs!)
There are more tactical choices to be made too; do you carry lots of heavy weapons which does heavy damage into the battlefield, but reduce your power regeneration speed, or travel with just a pistol and/or SMG so that you can keep spamming your Warp?
The game also have rewards for doing melee attacks or biotic combo - there’ s a Seletinel upgrade which gives your powers no recharge time if you set off a biotic combo. There’s one which ups your protection by 30% if you kill someone with a heavy melee attack.
It seems that the system has finally strike a right balance.
Sorry to follow my own post with another post but I was wondering if anyone else has an issue where the dialogue volume is really low but sound effects are loud? I checked all my windows sound settings and they seem fine. It just seems to be in the game.
[ul]
[li]Loyalty missions in ME2[/li][li]Turning the base over to Cerebus[/li][li]Saving the Council[/li][li]Sparing or killing the Rachni Queen[/li][li]Character-based DLCs matter! (AFAIK, Kasuimi, Shadow Broker)[/li][li]Whether you punch that reporter…[/li][li]…probably lots of other stuff I haven’t noticed or forgot[/li][/ul]
Generally I don’t have a problem, except on the Citadel all the newscasts and PA announcements tend to drown out conversations I’m having or trying to listen to! I haven’t figured out how I could change that.
IMHO, all the digital noise on the Citadel is a major misstep in their imagined future - they should realize that we’re all becoming more and more connected, but only in our own, isolated and carefully crafted bubbles. No one wants to hear constant broadcasts everywhere - we’re connected to our smartphones with Bluetooth headsets!
But I’ll forgive them because I adore their matter-of-fact inclusion of gay marriage.
I like the game a lot. I particularly like that the paragon dialogue isn’t as wimpy sounding as it was in ME2. Yes, I’m a good guy, but I’m not Mr. Rogers (although both of us have done horrible things to preserve galactic order).
The new cover system can be frustrating, sometimes in battles, I get stuck on a piece of cover or I keep rolling back and forth in a doorway instead of charging through it.
The problem with the face generator in ME3, and 2 as well I think, is that most of the options to adjust the shape of the nose that was in ME1 was removed, so if you made a lot of adjustments to for example bridge and nostril width you’re out of luck. If not then you can get a pretty good likeness.
The main change in biotics is that there are more combos available for biotic detonation, so they aren’t useless against shielded/armored enemies anymore. Off the top of my head you can detonate warp, stasis, reave, singularity, and even lift I think. Shockwave is pretty underwelming in 3, and I tend to not get it at all since all the other skills are more useful.
Each weapon has two slots where you can add devices to improve a gun’s performance. For example, you can add a scope to the assault rifle and more ammo capacity.
First you have to find these items on a mission, or buy them at store kiosks.
To add an item to your gun, click on the modify button, then you can page through the different options avaible.
If you don’t have any items for a particular gun type, then no modify button will appear next to the gun type.
The weapon screen is kind of clumsy, clearly more intended for consoles than PCs.
I’ll just add that the percentage you see in the middle of the screen represent the recharge delay bonus, which is affected by the weight of the weapons you carry. There are skills you can get that increases the amount you can carry before you get penalized. This is only for your character, though. Your squad in single player don’t seem to be affected by weight.
A positive percentage makes your abilities recharge faster, negative percentage slows it down, and they’re capped at 200%. Generally you’ll want to balance weapon flexibility vs weight. If you’re a caster class, like an adept or engineer, for example, you’ll probably want to go with a light load.
Holy shit, what a game. The only thing I don’t like is the fact that I have to do twice as much fetching stuff as someone who plays online.
Just finished the Tuchanka missions too, I’m really regretting destroying Maelon’s genophage cure data. War! Simulations were clear! Things were a little frosty between me and Wrex for a while there.
However, I don’t regret blowing up the Collector Base. Someone on the Dope talked me round and I’m glad they did, given how much of a nutter TIM is in this one. Also; where the hell did Cerberus get all its resources? In ME2 the Lazarus Cell going rogue is described by EDI as a ‘significant loss’, and now they’re attacking the Citadel?! Oh well, felt good to gun down that prick Udina. I’ve been wanting to do that since ME1.
Anyone met Conrad Verner yet? Love the little nod to the import bug in the second game where he apologises for claiming you waved a gun in his face when you didn’t. There’s so many little nods and references it would take me forever to list them all. Some of them were a little bugged, in a single mission my Shepard talked about how he vaporised the last rachni queen only for Garrus and Shepard to minutes later talk about how she was let free (I turned her into Kentucky Fried Rachni in ME1).
Also BioWare, (big spoilers) stop gleefully culling my ME2 squadmates! Requiescat in pace, Mordin Solus and Thane Krios. Also, stop faking me out! First Garrus takes a rocket to the face making my heart jump to my throat, then Kasumi gets blown up, then Grunt jumps down a hole filled with Reaperised rachni! My blood pressure can’t take much more!
I think ME2 did a good job of catching you up with their little comic book intro option (this may have been DLC, I’m not sure) that let you choose various decisions. However, I only used it for trying out things that I didn’t do in my personal “canonical” playthrough of ME1.
In my opinion, I think the humor and “ah hah!” moments of recognition that come in ME3 are best experienced by actually playing ME1/2. I also think that not only do these flesh out the ME3 experience, they also help break up the unrelenting pressure and tension in the game from the destruction hanging over everyone’s heads. I find a lot of moments where I’m smiling in this game, and I’m not sure it’d be the same if you hadn’t played both of the previous installments at least once.
