I should begin playing tomorrow afternoon since the game releases around 11AM my time. I am pre-loading it now and will try to put a few hours in over the next few days.
I am 100% unspoiled, so please don’t spoil ahead of where I am. In fact, I plan not to look up how my choices impact story twists and turns.
Things I know about the game(1-3 combined)
it’s famously good
you make choices along the way that play out
people were initially disappointed in the ending of 3…they released an add-on to address some issues
You fight/shoot in this game
it’s a scifi story in space
Shepherd is the main character’s name
Things I don’t know
The exact genre. Action-RPG, perhaps?
Anything about the plot or setting besides “space”
if you level up like DND or just get stronger weapons/armor like in Zelda or other games(or both?)
Anyway, I did say I would post a thread of my thoughts. I have no idea how long it will take to play or even if I will stop to take a break inbetween games.
I will post open spoilers about things I’ve done/seen.
Play it and forget the ending. Just imagine there’s a point near end of three where it never finished. Same way I imagine there was only one Matrix movie.
My take on it: instead of focusing on the last two minutes as an ending slideshow that shows the effect of your choices, look at the ENTIRE THIRD GAME as an ending slideshow that shows the effect of your choices from the previous two games!
The first one is more of a tactical RPG, like the Dragon’s Age games. The second and third are more or less straightforward 3rd-person cover shooters/RPGs.
Have you seen the TV series Babylon 5? Mass Effect was strongly influenced by B5, in terms of setting, story and general aesthetic.
Both, although the levelling up is not as severe as in other games (you don’t start a wimp and end up a superhero; you just get better at some stuff), and the items are mostly a matter of adding more options.
Once you have played all the way through remind us to share with you the ending that should have been. I am sure many here can point you to it.
It’s a great journey and you’ll love it I think. Don’t worry about the end…it’s all still great (and I envy you getting to do play it like this for the first time). Know that it gets better and better as you progress.
I dreamed that they would sneak in the proper ending with the remake but they didn’t (and no surprise…they never said they were and no one expected it but I fantasized about it a bit).
I have free time tomorrow morning. I wish they did not make it wait until 11AM Eastern time to be playable. Would 8AM Eastern really have killed them? Or midnight?
I know…lame. But I have loads of vacation and personal days saved up because I am not using them during the lockdown. So, this seemed as good a use of one as any these days.
Pretty close, I should think. The Ars Technica reviewer talked about 104GB, so a 90GB preload is the vast majority of the game, or possibly even all of it if the reviewer copies weren’t compressed as much as the Steam download.
Yes, it is all three (and all the DLC minus one which they lost the code for). My download on Origin was 100GB. I don’t know what the final will be but that is certainly most of it.
I am on central time but the game is going live across the US at the same time. So, 11a EST, 10a CST and so on.
They act like it will hurt sales to just release it at 6AM in every country or something. This isn’t a TV show where it just instantly pops up on the pirated websites straight away. A few hours of letting it out there in ahead-timezones is not going to impact their sales.
It affects some dialogue and what romantic partners will be available to you - throughout the trilogy you’ll encounter some hetero partners, some gay men and gay women, and some who are available to either.
And I like playing as FemShep because I enjoy the actress’s voice work, the romantic partner options, and the occasional bit of casual sexism on the part of people she encounters. (There’s a particularly memorable Renegade interruption moment in ME2).