So anyone else looking forward to ME3 later this year?

I thought I should start this little topic where we can share anything about the upcoming game: Theories, wishes, rumours etc etc.

SO get cracking.

Yes, I love how the Bioware's gone about the continuity so far. They've got a pretty good track record as far as content and story goes. The main problem I have are the vehicle systems. The Hammerhead was less interesting than the Mako in ME 1. Hopefully, third time's the charm, otherwise best to leave vehicles out.

BTW, anyone notice the only crew member of either game that can't die cannonically other than Shepard and Joker is Liara T'Soni?

I'm looking forward to it, but Skyrim kinda over shadows it at least for me.

I have to agree on your points Revvie except for one small thing. If you really and then I mean REALLY mess up the so called 'suicide mission' you can lose Shepard, at which point you can't continue with that character, lest you load and do it over again, There is even a special cutscene where Joker informs the Illusive Man about what happened.

Naturally I wouldn't have experienced this personally, my level 30 Adept is faaar too good for that but one of my friends actually had this happen to him.

Me I'm hoping they bring back Ashley, as Shepard wan'ts his girlfriend back (yes he stayed loyal to her).

Then again, my level 30 Soldier was not as faithful and grabbed the chance to score with Miranda.

One of my friends did a speed run of the game just to see the cut scene where everyone dies. Apparently that's the way the Illusive man wants it judging from his expression at the end.

I liked ME 2 but really I wish they hadn't changed it so far from the first game. The mechanics are very different, I played through the first game right before I played the second game and the actual gameplay was very alien to me. I just felt that the first game just played more naturally than the second one.

I did however like the way they managed to tie things that happened in the first game so well into the second one. Hopefully they do a good job with this in ME 3 as well.

One thing that I can say about Bioware games is that generally their relationships with other characters and their voice acting are done extremely well, better than any other company IMO. They really go all out when searching for voice actors and hire some of the best in the business.

I thought Mass Effect 2 was better than the original in every way except 2 instances:

AMMO

and

Weapon selection

I hated that they made you collect "heat sinks" like bullets. What's the point? I hated that my sniper rifle had 10 shots.

I also liked finding new weapons in the first game and applying mods to them. ME2 didn't have very many weapons to find and almost no mods.

Agreed with everything above, these were the mechanics I was talking about. I liked the huge amount of weapons and customisation in the first game, the second game lacked that a little IMO. I still loved it because of the characters and story but really the game focused too much on recruiting ppl and there's not much story there otherwise.

Ah. I thought by mechanics you were talking about how the combat was a little more action oriented. I thought that cover worked better in the second game, and I liked how headshots and such did more damage than body or limb shots.

I really liked the story in the second one as well. It really pulled me in. The first one I thought was fun but I was still very disconnected from the game.

I kinda liked the system personally. In ME1 I found myself able to park myself a distance away and just spam into the distance and things would die, in ME2 with the ammo requirements it meant you had to play more tactically, suddenly each firefight had a bit more meaning, the way you used your powers was a little more considered, I felt it added more depth and made combat a bit more fun.

The heatsink/ammo system has some merit in terms changing of gameplay, but it falls flat in story integration.

First, in less than a year it's in the hands of every punk on the street and his granny. You'd think something so revolutionary would be better regulated by whomever developered it. Even the mechs on a ship that's been lost for ten years have thermal clip technology (Jacob's Loyalty Mission).

Second, they're more of a gameplay nerf than upgrade. The new "heatsinks" seem pretty bleeding edge compared to the old technology. While ME 1 sinks actually dissipate heat as their name suggests, the ME 2 sinks semm to just... burn out. Perhaps an "improved" version in ME 3 will only need replacing if the character actually overheats the weapon

Still, the ammo system in ME 2 can be overlooked so long as the player A) utilizes their class' powers and maintains good fire disipline.

I'm more of a Dragon Age fan, but yeah, I'm excited for ME3.

I have to agree with Ahrenil on this one, ME 1 felt rushed and incomplete compared to the second, where we got a lot more individual story, and the heat sinks, while I can agree with Revvie's first point I like it.

Due to my (long) experience with FPS games and similar I find it too easy when I have endless ammunition (true FPS are a bit more difficult on xbox compared to a computer but not much).

By bringing 'ammo' into the equation the situation becomes more tactical and you have to conserve your shots instead of just blasting away with a creepy smile on you face and the internal sound of evil laughter.

I would have liked the heatsinks better if your gun still cooled off with time.

Before the game came out I though that it would be if you overheated your gun and needed to shoot NOW you could change the heatsink and then get back to shooting.

Anyone play Mechwarrior? I imagined it would have worked like the coolant flush in the Mechwarrior games.

Thermal clips encourage you to use more than just your 'main' weapon, especially if your main weapon is the Claymore or the Widow. If I had unlimited rounds for the Widow, then why would I need to carry the Tempest?

The two things that bothered me the most about ME2:

1). I would have liked to have seen more attention paid to your final decision to save the Council or allow it to die. If the original Council died then your Spectre status is not reinstated and you are told that there is a great deal of resentment toward humans in the galaxy. But, other than a couple of half-baked attempts with batarians on Omega, you never really see that in action.

2). The whole conversation with Ashley/Kaidan on Horizon was just bad (i'm talking 'Femshep throwing herself at Jacob' bad)! I wanted to waste a couple of thermal clips on them!

Shepard: 'O.K, how does the fact that you were frozen in place while a whole invasion force of humanoid insects were busy loading half the colony into their phallic-shaped star destroyer make you think that Cerberus is behind this??!!'

Oh, on topic: I am looking forward to ME3.

I know what you mean with the Ashley/Kaiden meeting. You would've thought that saving the Galaxy would entitle you to a little bit of trust, especially from the people who helped you do it. What's more, what was stopping you just from going "Hey Joker, grab Dr.Chakwas and come and explain why we're not the bad guys please"

Exactly. At least when you see Anderson and tell him about the Collectors he is willing to take you at your word, even if that means acknowledging that you are now working with Cerberus.

Bad news.

Mass Effect 3 is no longer coming out this year.

ME3 Delayed until first quarter 2012.

Good news in my opinion. It's no longer going to be ME3 vs Skyrim. March or so was about when I was going to get it anyways.

The best things are worth waiting for, right?

right - that's why I'll continue to wait for Neverwinter Nights 3, even if it has to be made by a bunch of drunken Ukrainian programmers in an ill-ventilated, cigarette smoke-filled room

Are you speaking about yourself now mil? shame on you.

Just joking, As for me I love Bioware, the earned me 100 quid when they revealed the the Illusive Man was working with the Reapers. Strange though I would have thought my friends had started to understand that I'm clearly psychic when it comes to things like this...on a related not I keep bragging about the fact that I've held true to my oppinion that Skyrim would be released in 2011 since 2006 no one believed me and kept laughing at me...guess who had the last laugh

Congradulations, Tellie. Now, what's the next jackpot at the lottery this month?

I'm definitely looking forward to taking Cerberus apart in ME 3. My main Shepard was practically destined for it.

Congradulations, Tellie. Now, what's the next jackpot at the lottery this month?

I'm definitely looking forward to taking Cerberus apart in ME 3. My main Shepard was practically destined for it.

Glad they gave us the ending we deserved. Bioware cares for fans.

I disagree about the ending, it felt really shallow. None of the decisions you made factored in to the end of the game. They put all that focus on your decisions and then they ended up making zero difference in the final cutscene.

In fact all three endings were basically the exact same cutscene with slightly different colored laser beams. I don't think that counts as multiple endings. Not to mention that it leaves more questions than answers.

You haven't played the Extended Cut yet, have you, Kiln?With the extended cut it's actually one hell of a lot better; a great deal of questions are answered, a lot of the original plot holes are filled in and it generally makes a lot more sense. I really liked it, myself.

I'll have to try it but honestly, I doubt it'll make it up to me after all this time. I just know that the stock ending made me wish I hadn't bought the game, despite all the fun I had getting there.

EC at least answers my main question regarding the ending (mainly WTF was Joker doing in a relay jump in the middle of a huge fight) but a lot of the minor choices are apparently irrelevant it's still the same three choices though we now apparently have a refusal option, but that doesn't help that much either.

SO BE IT!!! Well, one of the defining science fiction entries of the early 21st century is over. It was fun while it lasted.

Wow, I've gotta say that I can now endorse buying Mass Effect 3. After playing through all of the multiple endings that now have much larger differences than the color of a laser beam, I can say that the ending is now about 10,000x better since the extended edition was released.

They tie up several of the questions that I had and made the ending feel much more complete than before. It wasn't as comprehensive as I'd hoped but it went a long way towards my need for closure in one of the best series of all time.

See! It wasn't so bad!

It was extremely bad with the original ending.

I quit playing after the crap ending. I was angry. I was livid. I could have gotten a college degree with the amount of hours I put into that game, and felt jipped. I could have bought other things with the money I spent on the game and the add-ons and DLC. I invested my time and money in it because I thought it would have an amazing and satisfying ending. Did I expect my Shepherd to go live with Thane on the Citadel and raise little adopted kids? No. But I at LEAST expected it to not have an ending like "And then everything exploded and the Krogan ate everyone. The end."

That being said, it is still one of my most favorite games. And once I get over being a big crybaby, I will play, from the beginning, until the very end with the new stuff at the end.

But I will never be buying anything else from Bioware ever again.

Synthesis and control have a decent closure, though synthesis just makes no sense at all.
But destroy? Especially the good destroy ending, you're left with a 3 second reward for all your hardwork, the mods over at the forum said that it meant that there was hope that Shep and their LI would meet again, but your talking about the last game with Shep, I don't want hope or a head canon, I want the downright yes or no. I would have been happy with a written epilogue!

They should have kept the original dark matter plot, less variables for future games.

Well someone pointed out that the explosion from the Mass Relays being destroyed would kill all life, period. So since all relays were destroyed(in the original ending, I don't know about the new one just yet) they would wipe out all life, no matter what. And even in the off chance that they didn't, if you saved the Krogans, they would most likely eat everyone. No one has any way to get home from Earth. Quarians and Turians would starve and die because of their diets/immune systems, whatever is left of the Asari MAY survive because Asari are awesome, but humans don't stand a chance against Krogans who eat a lot and live as long as Asari. Any ending I can think of is depressing.

The dark matter made more sense and gave a little insight as to why the Reapers were doing what they were doing. Instead they're like "Well you're too advanced so boo-hoo, you're dead."

Is mass-effect 3 a good game? I want to try it out, but I want to know if its worth buying or renting.

You'd have to buy the first and second one to understand what's going on.

I just started playing this game, and I find the camera very annoying. Also, why does switching my weapon cause my character to leave cover?

In the 3rd game? I never noticed that it did that D:

Yes. It's very obnoxious.

I've been playing the multiplayer for several days now and it is great. The competetive but non adversarial way that it works makes it tons of fun. I've had this game for all this time but never tried the MP until about a week ago. Now I've found myself refreshed with the series.

It's the only MP I will play. I've got a female friend who is just as obsessed with this trilogy as I am, and we played when I still had Gold.

I loved ME3's multiplayer; before I lost my account which had all my progress on I played it almost religiously and had a tremendously good time doing it. I've even been throwing around ideas for an ME story revolving around one of the N7 squads you play as in my head for a wee while now.

I would read that, lol. So far, all of the ME fics I've read are just awful. Just really, REALLY bad.

That's the case with most fanfiction, really; for every diamond out there there's buckets upon buckets of swill you need to wade through to find it. Mass Effect is a pretty popular universe to write fan fiction for, so while the swill:diamond ratio seems to be about the same it seems to be much worse on account of the sheer volume of swill.

Damn, now I've used the word 'swill' so many times it doesn't feel like a real word any more.

XD to be fair, I wasn't too interested in reading ME fiction. When Skyrim came out and I got REALLY into it, I wanted to read fiction about that even more. I wanted to see if there was any fanfiction about Thane, but...just... wow. I just want some good, solid FemShep fiction without her boning everyone on the Citadel.

Well, to be fair, there are lots of fics that don't have that. They just have her angsting and whinging all the time instead.

Yeah, they do XD It really turned me off on ME fiction. IN MY head, FemShep is hardened, gets the job done but never, EVER forgets the lives that her actions have cost, nor the lives that are lost by the invasion. She is gentle with those she cares about, but won't beat around the bush if they're being stupid. Not "Oh Thane/Kaiden/Liara/Garrus/wtf ever, I'm in soooooo much pain in my heart! Let's go to bed and DO IT!" XD

I haven't chimed in on this discussion because I may be the one person who is glad that 3 turned out the way it did. The outcry over it has been so deafening that I believe Bioware is going to be forced to revisit it, which means that we haven't seen the last of Shepard yet. If Bioware were smart (which, over time, they have proven to be with the glaring exceptions of ME3's ending and Dragon Age II) they might consider incorporating ideas raised in the wonderful fan-made documentary, The Indoctrination Theory.

Too many people invested too much into the series to leave it the way it is now. I think Bioware is going to crank out DA3 for the next-gen consoles and then I think they are going back to Mass Effect... and Commander Shepard.