Mass Effect 3

[Reverend]

My copy arrived yesterday and so far, my impression is that they've totally blown the previous two games out of the water. Not just the big stuff, but the little details too. The Citadel for example feels much more like a living place. For one thing, people can move around! Seriously. It makes a *huge* difference.

The only things that's bothering me is a few broken quests I've run into. Both on the Citadel and both involving major returning characters from ME2. A quick look at the bioware forum shows that I'm not alone and this is happening on all platforms Hopefully a fix will turn up soon! There's also the issues of sidequests becoming unavailable if you don't complete them before certain points. I was actually aware of this already, but still managed to get caught out.

So, just in case anyone else doesn't know yet; make sure you do *all* the little sidequests before you do a mission marked "priority" because they progress the main plot and things tend to change after you do them. Can't really be more specific without spoilers!

[PsychoPere]

Mr Light wrote:

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I finished the Earth-Mars-Citadel opening and can free explore now. I recall reading somewhere that the new planet scanning thing can prevent mini-missions from being played, how does that work? I do the scan pulse, it shows me which planet has something, I scan it, I pick something up. Where does this lead into mini-missions?

I think you might be referring to journal entries that ask you to retrieve various items from scanned planets, then return those items to people on the Citadel. You can receive those missions from ambient dialogue while on the Citadel, or after finding a given item by scanning its planet before you've even heard that someone needs it. These items will assist in War Assets for various reasons (some are simply for morale; some will inspire people to their better natures; some will be useful for the big "win the war" project; and so on).

[bullethead]

PsychoPere wrote:

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I think you might be referring to journal entries that ask you to retrieve various items from scanned planets, then return those items to people on the Citadel. You can receive those missions from ambient dialogue while on the Citadel, or after finding a given item by scanning its planet before you've even heard that someone needs it. These items will assist in War Assets for various reasons (some are simply for morale; some will inspire people to their better natures; some will be useful for the big "win the war" project; and so on).

The thing to remember is that doing priority missions can cut you off from certain side quests.

[PsychoPere]

I'm playing as my adept FemShep now, and I think I like the biotic punch for melee even more than the omnitool blade.

[Skywalker]

Yeah, I got caught by the "do all side quests before priority missions" thing earlier. I had about five side quests knocked out because I didn't finish them before going off to do one of the main story missions. Kind of a dumb mistake for an RPG vet, but I've still got a ton more playthroughs to do after this one, so I'm not terribly worried about it.

[T.Geiger]

PsychoPere wrote:

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The problem appears to be ME1 imports into ME2 that were not edited in ME2.

Which seems like something they should have caught. How many people would edit their character between games? Especially when trying to "edit" a character means creating a whole new face (or at least it did the couple times I tried).

[superdeluxe]

Don't watch below unless you have completed me 3. Downfall of hitler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b33tJx8iy0A

[Haggis and tatties]

Well i bought this yestarday for the PS3, today its going back for a refund, what a complete mess, the game chugs along like its running on a 1 speed cd rom from 1999, the frame rate is just horrendous, and it froze the machine 3 times stone dead in the first 1 hour i played it.............what the hell did bioware do to this game.

Anyway the guy in the shop when i phoned said he would give me a full refund which was good......and rather quickly too, no doubt i am not the first to take this back.

I assume the PC and 360 version run ok.

[BigFoot]

^ I'm playing it on the PS3 and it works just fine. I do have the downloadable version though, not the Blu-ray one, so that could be making a difference.

[FPAlpha]

Haggis and tatties wrote:

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Well i bought this yestarday for the PS3, today its going back for a refund, what a complete mess, the game chugs along like its running on a 1 speed cd rom from 1999, the frame rate is just horrendous, and it froze the machine 3 times stone dead in the first 1 hour i played it.............what the hell did bioware do to this game.

Anyway the guy in the shop when i phoned said he would give me a full refund which was good......and rather quickly too, no doubt i am not the first to take this back.

I assume the PC and 360 version run ok.

Maybe the DVD is faulty or your drive.. it's the first thing i hear about something like this. However it's not surprising he'll take it back.. either he can sell it off at a small discount since it's opened or the retailer he got it from takes it back without question.

[PsychoPere]

T.Geiger wrote:

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Which seems like something they should have caught. How many people would edit their character between games? Especially when trying to "edit" a character means creating a whole new face (or at least it did the couple times I tried).

The imports from ME1 to ME2 didn't always appear exactly as people would have expected, so I'm sure there were a fair number of people who, like myself, did edit their character's faces in ME2. That said, I am surprised it wasn't caught, since I'm also sure there were even more people who were fine with, or just didn't notice, any "imperfections" in the importation due to the new editor in ME2 and simply continued onward without editing.

[TheGeneral]

My god man, what a terrible ending. Lost complete interest in playing this again...

[Deks]

I finished the game yesterday.
Not sure if the following info can be considered really a spoiler, but you were warned...
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Romanced lt. Cortez as male Shepard... was nice to see (finally).

There were numerous scenes in the game that were really emotional/heart-wrenching.
Played as a full paragon (except maybe 2 or 3 renegade actions), but still hadn't got the effective military strength up to 4000 (was just below that because I had 2 side-missions that I missed it would seem) - and it can be done for the surprise 'end' in SP without MP (which I don't want to touch and think that it shouldn't have played a part for SP story).

Gonna make a second play-through with mostly same options, this time doing full paragon, making sure I don't miss any side-missions and my male Shepard will have Kaiden as his love interest this time (for some reason, it would seem they fleshed out the romance dialogue/scenes for him and male Shepard better than for Cortez - especially in the ending - that was a bit odd, but maybe understandable because Cortez is not one of the main characters, though they did throw some 'nuggets' for Cortez upon better reflection - but still feels less detailed).

The 'end'... well, I have to say it was 'strange'. Everything felt 'off' (won't go into details) - though some things in it were actually quite obvious relatively early in the game.
I wasn't aware until yesterday night after finishing the game that there's a bit more actually if some things are done 'right'... coupled with Bioware apparently telling people to keep their ME3 saves (of which I wasn't aware), and an interesting theory I stumbled upon that actually explains why numerous things in the ending felt 'off' (and that the DLC's might actually put things into perspective).
Usually, I can actually catch these 'non-obvious' things, but I was immersed into the game and wasn't really trying to analyze it at the time, but just went along with it.

Then again, if the DLC's don't really change anything... then the ending I get in the upcoming playthrough (this time with the 'extra') will be ok (and of course, the male/Kaiden romance).

[PsychoPere]

I wouldn't mind seeing that theory if you can recall where you saw it, or even just provide the gist of it here in spoiler code.

[Deks]

The spoiler tag doesn't work for me I'm afraid - unless the thing is always visible to me (though I don't think it's supposed to).
I'll PM you.
As I said, it's a theory... but I have to say that it IS a pretty good one explaining away a lot of the things that felt 'off' in the 'ending' and of course it plays on the 'extra' tidbit I mentioned