http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mass-effect-3/
Not played it yet so I can't comment, but if it's even more dumbed down than ME2 was from ME1 (I loved ME1 to bits) then they can't be far away from the mark.
Also, Day 1 DLC is always money-grabbing bullshit.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
Pretty much, if you love multi, you can get the best ending with very little single player stuff. If you hate multi, you can do more of what you enjoy to get the best ending.
This is just what I've heard -- I haven't gotten to play yet, and won't get to until Sunday 
- The DLC is some bonus content for the collector's edition, and while it is supposed to be quite nice, it isn't essential for the story.
- If you just want the story, without paying extra for the collector's edition, you can buy the DLC since day one.
- The multiplayer raises "Galactic Readiness" which you need at 100% (or close to) for the best ending.
- You can raise the galactic readiness in single player to 100% by doing most (or all?) of the side missions. No need to do any multiplayer for the best ending.
- However, if you rush through the game, sticking to the main plot, and don't do any multi-player, you cannot get the best ending.
- The RPG system is a little bite more elaborate than in ME2, but still a little bit less complex than in ME1. Mass Effect never was a hardcore RPG where you can spend hours optimizing your character.
- I don't know what people are smoking. *
Tarquinn fucked around with this message on 03-09-2012 at 02:24 AM.
* Since Bioware joined forces with EA, and especially since Dragon Age II (which is good, just not Bioware good) there is a lot of unwarranted hate for Bioware out there. Seems to be the cool thing to hate right now.
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Tarquinn said:
Dragon Age II
I had a lot of hate for this when it first came out.
But then I played a wise-cracking bald mage who always had Varric in the group.
Then I enjoyed it quite a lot! 
Maradon! fucked around with this message on 03-09-2012 at 08:25 PM.
but yeah, consoles are holding back the PC big time.
He seems like a swell guy, but because he looks like a douche I just don't like him.
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Drysart said:
Holy shit the textures in this game look like absolute ass.
Better than the textures in SWTOR, which are locked on "Medium". The setting also known as "Muddy" and "this is just awful".
They switch to High Definition during cutscenes and ONLY in cutscenes. BioWare have stated this is to streamline the texture loading process and reduce slowdown in lesser systems. So now they're choosing my graphical options for me.
Though there are high res texture sets coming in Patch 1.2 so I guess I can't complain too much.
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Mortious came out of the closet to say:
Better than the textures in SWTOR, which are locked on "Medium". The setting also known as "Muddy" and "this is just awful".
Clothing is about the same as SWTOR. If you really want to be annoyed by the shit texturing, look at a cutscene where you can see Shepard's hands. Especially if you can see them in closeup. They look like they were textured on a Commodore 64. They are literally the worst textured objects I've seen in a game in at least 10 years.
(At least Femshep has the problem. Not sure if Maleshep does.)
P.S. Good Guy Bethesda:
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How.... Vallo, the Second Coming.... uughhhhhh:
I've pretty much decided I will never buy a game that I immediately have to turn around and buy DLC for the rest of the game. This is the most bullshit trend in gaming I can remember.
"have to"
Also: what do you think level designers do when a game enters alpha? Depending on the studio, they're either mostly fired (remaining staff help with bugfixes), move on to the next big game, or they work on DLC.
I know most people would rather them move on to the next project, but the perception of malice here is misguided. I'd rather it be free, too, but it's not as evil as Internet people think it is.
Related:
https://twitter.com/#!/deliciousbees/status/177840901140398080
https://twitter.com/#!/aegies/status/178255111284469762 Kegwen fucked around with this message on 03-10-2012 at 02:53 PM.
Nobody would mind the idea of a short campaign and an extra character being a collectors edition bonus. I can say this with confidence because that's exactly what the From Ashes DLC is and nobody has yet complained about that method of delivery.
Take the exact same campaign and character and make it a ten dollar download - half the cost of upgrading to the CE - and suddenly, as if by magic, everybody thinks it's bullshit.
Is Mass Effect 3 somehow incomplete without From Ashes? I have not once seen anybody try to make the case that it is, and yet it's assumed to be incomplete by the people complaining about release day DLC, and in a display of circular logic that would make a creationist blush, the only evidence they offer is the mere existence of release day DLC.
It cost money to produce From Ashes, money above and beyond the development cost of Mass Effect 3. It's content is extra, Mass Effect 3 would be well worth your sixty dollars without it.
There is absolutely no reason why the developer should not charge more for the extra work they've done. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 03-10-2012 at 07:57 PM.
You look at the top selling games of 2011 only the Call of Duty titles put much of their stock in graphics. Portal 2 ran on an eight year old engine, Lego Star Wars is hardly known for photo realism, and pokemon - which occupies two spots in the two 10 - only tries to look better than other pokemon titles.
I don't want to say that good graphics are old hat now, but that is exactly the case.
Anyway weren't you also nitpicking the textures in the dang spiderman movies? Maradon! fucked around with this message on 03-11-2012 at 03:14 AM.
One made in December lists:
1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
2. Just Dance 3
3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
4. Battlefield 3
5. Portal 2
6. Batman:
Arkham City
7. Just Dance 2
8. Madden NFL 12
9. Gears of War 3
10. Call of Duty: Black Ops
Which still largely reinforces my point.
Get that shit off my list.
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Maradon! came out of the closet to say:
Good graphics are not the draw they once were.
Good graphics are not the draw of every game, but when you're building a game that meets these conditions:
1) Is a cutscene-driven drama,
2) Has pretty thin gameplay, and
3) Doesn't have a specific less-realistic visual style its aiming for
You've got the perfect storm of 'what the hell were they thinking?' because for a game that hits all three of those points, you'd better have good graphics because your ability to draw people into your cutscenes is what you're leaning on.
You certainly don't want people's attention suddenly drawn to what appear to be pixelated sausages whenever your framing happens to put the character hands prominently in the foreground.
They're not just 'sort of' bad. They're incredibly bad. They literally look like there's a single 64x64 texture mapped onto them. Like the rest of the game is sporting 2005-era graphics, but these hands are 1998-era. That's what makes them stand out so much, because they're so immensely worse than everything else.
I don't think this gives you access to the Eden Prime mission where you get him, or have him in his room on the Normandy, but I'm pretty sure that stuff is hidden on the disc too.
Don't get me wrong, at first glance they are GORGEOUS. But then you start to look deeper and discover that the only gorgeous graphics are the faces and ships and walls. Everything else looks like mud slapped on by incredibly lazy texture artists. Case in point; go to Purgatory (the bar on the Citadel) and look over the edge at the main entrance since you go in the VIP entrance. You'll see many blocky, barely-textured, people standing there waiting in line. It's beyond bad.
Oh, and I unlocked the entire Prothean DLC by slightly altering a single EXE file. The character, the mission, everything. Money-grabbing bastards. Mortious fucked around with this message on 03-11-2012 at 05:36 PM.
All 3 games are intensely character-driven. They provide massive amounts of interplay between the characters, character-specific storylines, sidequests, unlocks, upgrades, and generally do everything they can to get you to care about each and every one of your teammates. ME3 is no different; throughout the game are incredibly fun and exciting and funny and sad and touching scenes between you and your comrades that made me enjoy the hell out of it.
Then you get to the end, which gives you a shitty 3-button choice akin to Deus Ex (Though apparently the 3rd choice requires the maxxed-out amount of war assets). Each of the endings is unsatisfying and unoriginal. All the people you spent all the time in all the games building up relationships vanish into the abyss. You never find out what they did after you made that choice, how the galaxy ended up with your decision. You never find out what happened to all the races. You get a cutscene with a different-colored explosion and that's it.
Up until then, I was willing to overlook the graphics, the 'day one DLC', Anderson's running animation, and all the other issues people have been pointing out left and right. But the endings absolutely ruined the entire goddamn game for me.
If you care, here are the 3 endings :
1. Shepherd sacrifices him/herself to take control of the reapers to stop their attacks on organics. The mass effect relays are destroyed but the earth is saved. The normandy crash-lands on some remote jungle planet.
2. Shepherd destroys the reapers and ALL synthetic life (Including the Geth, and likely EDI as well). There's an explosion which it's not shown if he/she survives or not, but probably not since Shep was pretty fucked up before being engulfed in flames. The mass effect relays are destroyed, the earth is saved, and the normandy crash lands.
3. The high-war-asset ending, 'Synthesis'. Shepherd combines all organic and synthetic life to create a new hybrid of the two. All the mass effect relays are destroyed and the normandy crash lands, but when joker and EDI come out of the ship both have glowing green circuitry-looking skin and clothing.
No matter what you do, The fleets are stranded in the sol system, your crew is stranded god-knows-where, and your character is dead. Khyron fucked around with this message on 03-12-2012 at 12:19 AM.
We really need the next genration of consoles, or more developers that give a damn about the PC.
Also, "From the Ashes" really does feel like cut content for the purpose of making an extra buck, so I can see where the criticism is coming from. Tarquinn fucked around with this message on 03-12-2012 at 03:41 AM.
The lens flares.
Holey moley, the lens flares.
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Mortious impressed everyone with:
Just Dance?Get that shit off my list.
Thoses games sold like crazy over the 4th Quarter, though I wonder if the number gets padded a bit from the games being bundled with a console, or part of major retailer's promos were you nab a free game, or you by x games and get a gift card deal.
At least Bioware was aware of that, as Jack made an appropiate comment. "Hey EDI nice body, Now you look like a Sexbot instead of a sextoy". Tarquinn fucked around with this message on 03-12-2012 at 06:24 AM.
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Verily, the chocolate bunny rabbits doth run and play while Khyron gently hums:
I liked the game intensely up until the endings. The endings put a HORRIBLE taste in my mouth.
Seems to me you may be doing it wrong....
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
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Bloodsage had this to say about dark elf butts:
Seems to me you may be doing it wrong....
I can't help it. My femshep was so sexy I just had to lick the monitor every time she was on screen.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
The infinite ammo particle beam rifle he adds to your armoury isn't bad either.
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Mortious stopped staring at Deedlit long enough to write:
Review bombing.http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mass-effect-3/
Not played it yet so I can't comment, but if it's even more dumbed down than ME2 was from ME1 (I loved ME1 to bits) then they can't be far away from the mark.
Also, Day 1 DLC is always money-grabbing bullshit.
In fairness, at least according to their PR team posting to reddit, the DLC thing was more of a logistics issue.
They started working on it as soon as the DVD went gold. Since getting a game published is a time consuming process and making a DLC isn't nearly as much so, they were able to get the DLC out the door before the red tape of publishing a DVD was finished - again, all according to the reddit posts.
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Drysart had this to say about dark elf butts:
Holy shit the textures in this game look like absolute ass.
Who the hell are you 
? Can you unban the Diadem account?
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When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent Mortious said:
I quite like the Prothean. Especially when you introduce him as "the Prothean" and people are all, "oh pleased to meet y.. wait.. WHAT?". A few chuckles are to be had.The infinite ammo particle beam rifle he adds to your armoury isn't bad either.
Definitely one of my favorite characters, though I'd have easily shot him through all four eyes just to get Legion back
The gun would be nice if it did damage. Using it felt like I was using a water pistol against most enemies.
If you're firing continuously and it suddenly goes BLAAAARRRGGGHHHH with a much wider beam, that's when your damage peaks.
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Mortious had this to say about Robocop:
It does stacked damage, and by that I mean the longer you're firing the more damage it does but the faster it uses ammo.If you're firing continuously and it suddenly goes BLAAAARRRGGGHHHH with a much wider beam, that's when your damage peaks.
Well then that's part of my problem. I either play Vanguard where I'm charging everywhere raping everything and never firing long enough to get the bonus, or I'm playing Infiltrator and 1-shotting almost everything with the Black Widow. God that sniper rifle is great.
Those two classes are just so much fun.
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Those good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye, singin' this'll be the day that I Khyron:I liked the game intensely up until the endings. The endings put a HORRIBLE taste in my mouth.
No matter what you do, The fleets are stranded in the sol system, your crew is stranded god-knows-where, and your character is dead.
I pretty much agree with everything said here (including what I cropped out of the quote). One thing that left me confused was WHY would Joker and your crewmates leave the Sword group and jump in a Mass Relay at the end of the battle, to get caught by the explosion and crash land? Where are they going? WHY are they abandoning Shep? Your romance interest gets off the ship with EDI and Joker (at least in my ending) If they were in your group when you went after the 'teleport beam' to the Citadel, they still get off the ship with EDI and Joker -- how the hell did they get there and why did they leave Shep, too?
I refuse to believe your crew, the people who swear they'll always have your back, would take the eff off. Bajah fucked around with this message on 03-15-2012 at 11:27 AM.
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Khyron said:
Well then that's part of my problem. I either play Vanguard where I'm charging everywhere raping everything and never firing long enough to get the bonus, or I'm playing Infiltrator and 1-shotting almost everything with the Black Widow. God that sniper rifle is great.Those two classes are just so much fun.
I'm playing a Soldier because I have no imagination.
I normally go with the particle rifle for close range and a sniper rifle for long range. No need to carry anything else.
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Mortious had this to say about pies:
I'm playing a Soldier because I have no imagination.I normally go with the particle rifle for close range and a sniper rifle for long range. No need to carry anything else.
Hey, nothing wrong with a Soldier. It's fun to charge in and shoot everything.
The Collector beam gun was my favorite in 2, along with cryo ammo. I'm not far enough in 3 to have a favorite weapon yet. Just about to go to Televen (Yes I finally played the series)
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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Lyinar Ka`Bael had this to say about Cuba:
Hey, nothing wrong with a Soldier. It's fun to charge in and shoot everything.The Collector beam gun was my favorite in 2, along with cryo ammo. I'm not far enough in 3 to have a favorite weapon yet. Just about to go to Televen (Yes I finally played the series)
Palavin? The turian homeworld? Or was there another planet that I don't remember called Televen?
