[Favre4Ever]

There seems to be a large following of the Mass Effect series. So I thought we could benefit from a dedicated thread for everything Mass Effect related, especially as we play through Mass Effect 3.


I will start this off by asking what everyone's favorite race(s) are?!?

My number 1 has to be Drell... Mostly because Thane is so f****** bad ass.



and the Turian in second.

[DonovanMcnabb for H.O.F]

Watching my roomnate play it right now.

The Krogan are my personal favorite though.

[Vin]

Elcor.

[Favre4Ever]

To those of you who got ME3 already... let me know if the DLC in ME2 plays a big part in the decisions and what not during the story line of ME3. If it does... I want to buy a couple of the DLC I never purchased before and get them done before buying ME3.

If they have little to no carry over, I will just get the game now.

[RazorStar]

Get the character DLC's Kasumi and Zaeed. It does add a bit to the game, along with the Shadow Broker one. ME3 seems to be really good at carrying over the things you do and decisions you make.

Also holy shit Ashley got hot.

Salarians are the best race.

[Favre4Ever]

I have Shadow Broker and Zaeed already.

What about like... Arrival? (the dlc)

[RazorStar]

I couldn't say. >_>

[Thanatos19]

Arrival is a piece of shit DLC. The huge choice... well you're not allowed to make the choice, it's just done for you.

As to whether or not it carries over, since there's only one decision you can make and since everything you do leads to the same outcome, I'm guessing it doesn't affect the mission.

Lair of the Shadow Broker is a great DLC, but I don't think it really makes much of a difference. But it's very fun in its own right, and it will make a difference if you and Liara were... close.

I'm about six hours in, it's pretty good so far.

The only major gripe I have with it is an old companion who is apparently not going to join you.

Spoiler

Thane's Kepral syndrome has advanced to the point where any combat activity sets him off. They're surprised he's made it this long, he mentions a doctor giving him 3 months to live, 9 months ago. Regardless he certainly isn't going to join you.

I do like that they've made Shephard seem a bit more human, especially if you have the Colonist/Sole Survivor background, which I was surprised they didn't go into a bit more in ME2.

And I have Garrus back.

And the first new squad-mate, (meaning non-ME1/ME2), besides James Vega, I completely did not see coming at all. Kudos to them on that one.

[Arz]

Favourite Race is pretty hard I would have to probably go with the Taurians first and Salarians second. Though my favourite character is Wrex.

I get this in 7 days, it needs to hurry up.

[Thanatos19]

Okay.

I have another couple of major gripes. The first one is fucking game-breaking.

I am getting gigantic spikes of lag, this is far worse than anything Skyrim threw at me. It is not possible to snipe, and since I was playing an engineer with a sniper rifle in ME1 and ME2, I wanted to do the same in ME3. It's hard enough to hit thing with other guns as well. I've gone to a scoped assault rifle for the time being, but it's not the same at all.

If you don't want to know about combat abilities and some new tricks of the engineer class, next part is a spoiler. It's not a spoiler of anything story-wise, but maybe some people would rather find out for themselves.

Spoiler

Secondly, the ability of the engineer to practically spam abilities when you just have a heavy pistol and a machine-gun pistol equipped is completely and totally broken. I am going through insanity like its veteran difficulty from ME2. I don't like having to dumb down my combat skills in order to actually have any challenge at all. I literally shoot incinerate, drop down behind cover, and its recharged before Shep gets completely in cover. Since they instituted cross-skill combos, there seems to be no reason to use weapons when I can just splash cryo blast on a group of enemies and then use incinerate to blow them all to smithereens.

And while we're on the subject of overpoweredness, giving the engineer ANOTHER combat drone was a dumb idea. Call it a sentry gun if you like, but if I can throw it, and it can shoot a damn flamethrower, it doesn't matter. Not to mention you can upgrade the drone with the same flamethrower, or rockets, if you prefer.

The only mission that was any challenge so far was the second one from the demo. They spiced that up a bit.

The third gripe is just story-wise. Minor spoiler regarding the starting events of ME3 vs what we were told was going to be the starting events of ME3.

Spoiler

We were told that ME3 was going to start in the middle of the trial, and that would have been a cool place to start indeed. Instead, I'm spending the first ten minutes of the game trying to figure out what's happened between ME2 and ME3.

I will say, though. Jack, at least paragon-influenced Jack, is done so perfectly. Absolutely great character development there.

I can also confirm that your final decision in the Overlord DLC pack does carry over into ME3, with just a couple perks given as reward, though, nothing too important.

This post has been edited by Thanatos19: 07 March 2012 - 08:18 AM

[Vin]

How much does importing a character change the feel of the game? I want to import one of mine, but I'm worried that starting out at level 30 is going to kill a lot of the fun in the game.

This post has been edited by Vin: 07 March 2012 - 02:40 PM

[DonovanMcnabb for H.O.F]

Yea. I love this game a lot. But. I transferred my account... and im an engineer and thus game is very easy which I hate on any game... And Edie is a boss.

[Thanatos19]

Vin, on 07 March 2012 - 02:39 PM, said:

How much does importing a character change the feel of the game? I want to import one of mine, but I'm worried that starting out at level 30 is going to kill a lot of the fun in the game.

It changes it a ton, IMO. Makes it far more immersive.

I've already run into several things that were changed because of decisions in ME1. This is slightly spoilerish, so I will try to keep it as light in the details as possible.

If you don't want to be spoiled at all, I will just say that Bioware finally did a good job of making some paragon decisions come back to bite you.

Spoiler

The Rachni queen from ME1 is back

This one is a bit more spoilerly, but nothing serious, you just get the update in a news bulletin and a couple teammates comment on it.

Spoiler

That scientist you spared, twice, from ME1 and ME2, Rana Thanoptis? Yeah, it turns out you were getting played, and she was indoctrinated the whole time. She murders a few people while yelling about stopping the Reapers

As mentioned earlier, your final decision in Overlord plays a role.

How you treated Jack, Garrus, Liara, Ash/Kaidan plays a role.

All of it serves to make the game more immersive, more of a feel of, yeah I caused this to happen, for better or worse.

It also has some pretty incredible scenes.

Major spoiler of a plot point, (which if you didn't see this one coming, I'd be kinda shocked) and also major spoiler regarding Mordin Solus.

Spoiler

Mordin Solus humming under his breath the song that he sings to you in ME2, (I am the very model of a scientist salarian), while working on trying to get the genophage cure airborn as the building collapses around him is just fantastically done, and it only works if you know Mordin from the previous games. How tormented he was over modifying the genophage, and now he gives his life to save the Krogan, and how he is perfectly at peace over his decision. It was just the perfect touch to a major character death. If anyone else has to die, I hope it's handled as well as that one was.

And the difficulty has ramped up considerably, I toned it back down to hard-core. When you run into three brutes at once on insanity, in the middle of a canyon with little to no cover, and no heavy weapons, I defy anyone to kill them.

This post has been edited by Thanatos19: 07 March 2012 - 03:04 PM

[Favre4Ever]

So I need to get Kasumi and definitely Overlord DLC still

Any news on the effects of the Arrival DLC, let me know please.

[DonovanMcnabb for H.O.F]

IDK.... He's the bad guy and all that. But still, I'm a huge fan of the Illusive Man.

[Vin]

Was Kaidan this whiny and paranoid in the ME1?

[Thanatos19]

Vin, on 08 March 2012 - 12:00 AM, said:

Was Kaidan this whiny and paranoid in the ME1?

Yes, that would be why I always let him take the nuclear blast on Virmire.

Ashley is done very well, if you were wondering.

The Kasumi DLC is definitely something to get, and not just because of the character.

@Favre: Arrival isn't going to affect the game in any way. There is only one outcome. The only thing it might've done would've been to affect the game based on whether or not you

Spoiler

tried to warn the Batarians

but that would have had to have happened during your trial. Since the game starts after that, it won't affect ME3 at all.

@DMac: Edi is a boss. Some great scenes with her. And don't worry, the game gets harder. Just amp up the difficulty level for now.

I wish there was a way to import your character's decisions, and still start at level 1.

[Favre4Ever]

Thanatos19, on 08 March 2012 - 05:41 AM, said:

Yes, that would be why I always let him take the nuclear blast on Virmire.

Ashley is done very well, if you were wondering.

The Kasumi DLC is definitely something to get, and not just because of the character.

@Favre: Arrival isn't going to affect the game in any way. There is only one outcome. The only thing it might've done would've been to affect the game based on whether or not you

Spoiler

tried to warn the Batarians

but that would have had to have happened during your trial. Since the game starts after that, it won't affect ME3 at all.

@DMac: Edi is a boss. Some great scenes with her. And don't worry, the game gets harder. Just amp up the difficulty level for now.

I wish there was a way to import your character's decisions, and still start at level 1.

Thank you very much. I'll get Kasumi and Overlord and then probably buy ME3 sometimes next week.

+1

[DonovanMcnabb for H.O.F]

So my roomnate is a lot farther then I am in this game, and he's a straight renegade, and im the opposite... He has just finished a sequence where you have to hit the LT ro activate a renegade action, and I was wandering if any of you guys are that far tried to not hit it and see what happens...

Spoiler

When you beat Lang or Chang or whatever the hell his name is at the Illusive Man's place, and Sheppard hops unto the computer, he Lang gets up and tries to stab you in the back while your guard is aparently down. Obviously my roommate who's a straight renegade hit LT which causes Sheppard, who we both thought had his guard down to all the sudden spin around and stab him (Lang)... Do you die if you don't use that renegade option? lol.

[Thanatos19]

So yeah. Major spoiler regarding Thane Krios.

Spoiler

I really hated that in the end, there was no way to save Thane. It was even worse because he takes a sword to the gut from Kai Leng, and I thought he was dead then. Then he lives through that, only to have Kepral's finally finish him. My sister is going to hit the roof, lol, she loves Thane. (So does her Shepard.) His dying scene was also great, and fit the character perfect. It fits that the first time you meet him he is giving prayers for the person he killed, and then as he's dying, he's still not worried about himself, but about Shepard, and gives his final prayer for you.

My problem with it is that Ash joins you right afterward, so your companions and crew are all talking about Ash joining, and no one says a word about Thane's death. I thought at least Liara would have said something, if only to make sure Shep was okay. That's two major character deaths in 13 hours of playtime. I'm guessing Bioware isn't done trying to move you emotionally. At this rate, I'm gonna lose half my squad before the end of this thing.

This post has been edited by Thanatos19: 08 March 2012 - 01:32 PM