Mass Effect 3 Message Board older than one year ago

My Shepard isn’t saving the universe in Mass Effect 3. I wanted her to, but as I play through the final instalment, she’s still stuck half-way through the immeasurably dull scanning missions that would ensure Mordin and my other best people survive Operation: Certain Death. Instead, I’m playing with someone else. She looks the same – red hair, the right eyes, the same voice and the same no-nonsense approach to saving the galaxy. She’s even had many of the same experiences. But she’s not my Shepard. She’s Bioware’s – the sum of their choices.

And while I’m sure I could find a Shepard closer to my own, ready to import, from Mass Effect 2 Saves, that’s even worse. Mass Effect is inherently a sum of Bioware’s choices – a few more in character creation hardly makes much of a difference. But to just climb into someone else’s story? That feels… weird. In an era where ownership of our own characters is an increasingly rare privilege, you may as well ask to borrow another gamer’s underpants…

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Got an email today informing me that my ME3 pre-order has been canceled (though they are offering a refund on the deposit plus a £5 voucher) and that the ME3 Collector's Edition is limited to four websites. Looks like I'm gonna have to go sort out a new preorder on Amazon, assuming I have enough money in my bank account (my brother was planning on paying for the majority of it).

Jim’s already judged Bioware’s new guns’n'conversation epic, while I am a mere 6-7 hours into Mass Effect 3. What I have done that he hasn’t is pick up the contentious From Ashes DLC, allegedly developed after work on the main game was completed and included in the £55 Collector’s Edition, or as a £6/$10 addon to the standard edition. I forked out for the latter, and thus have an extra dude in my crew. We’ve already pondered about whether it should have been part of the core game in concept, but now it’s time to look at it what it actually includes.

I’ve avoided all major storyline spoilers outside of the core concept of From Ashes – if you already own it and want to go in totally blind, I would strongly advise against reading the below. And if you are 100% spoiler-averse about ME3 in general, I would also avoid reading the below. I’ve steered clear of any discussion of plot outcomes, but I do talk about the nature of the new character – stuff you’d find out for yourself not long after meeting him, but I do understand that might be too spoilersome for some. (more…)

• Eurogamer (100/100): "Taken as a whole this is arguably the first truly modern blockbuster, a game that transcends the genre boundaries of old and takes what it needs from across the gaming spectrum in order to finish its story in the most compelling, thrilling, heartbreaking way possible. Few gaming sagas come to a definitive close, but this one signs off in breathtaking style."
• OXM (95/100): "From the visceral combat to the excitement of finishing Shepard's 100-hour fight, Mass Effect 3 is a rare, magnetically engaging treat that'll compel you to stay up well past your bedtime to do "just one more quest."
• EGM (90/100): "Some cover and combat issues remain unsolved, though, and the idea of participation in a completely separate multiplayer mode potentially influencing your single-player ending is mind-boggling."
• Giant Bomb (4/5): "The value in this story is from seeing characters you adore dealing with a continuing situation. Even though it doesn't come together quite as successfully as it did in the previous games, those of you with an attachment to the Mass Effect universe should still play it."