Mass Effect 3 Discussion

Initial reaction is meh. Leviathan was a rather good mission DLC I thought for reasons I elaborated on in the spoiler thread. This one though isn't doing it for me so much, though the story is promising to come to a reasonably interesting finale.

It really suffers for completely excluding your squad from it, and as your squad (to me at least) is the primary draw of the series...

I'll probably finish it tomorrow.

For how much they decided to charge for it, I need a lot more than "meh." And excluding my squad is a big NO. Maybe if you got to keep Aria and Ms. Turian after you finished, I'd be more open to it (hell, maybe you do! But I doubt it!), but meh. MEH.

I do think that the fact it's over makes me semi-reluctant to buy new DLC, but they're asking me to pay way too much for it to boot. So for the first time in a LONG TIME, I think I'm skippin' a DLC.

I'd happily pick up all the ME3 DLC they wanted to make, if they hadn't so thoroughly poisoned the Mass Effect well for me with that catastrophe of an ending.

My advice is to hold off for the moment because right now it's not as good as Leviathan, which I thought was worth picking up and was also cheaper.

Leviathan had new squad stuff, new LI moments, interesting between-mission stuff, cool atmosphere and utilized multiplayer objective modes that I wasn't familiar with to keep the combat fresh. The Omega DLC doesn't have any of that; it has Aria, and she's not really carrying it for me. I don't think Carrie-Anne Moss pulled off her first Shepard speech either, though the animation for that was pretty rough (or the camera jumps were in the wrong place to hide it).

I'm only an hour or two in though, so it might build up to something better.

No Garrus around when the female Turian arrives?

Goddammit.

So the Omega DLC is a dungeon crawl, essentially. Except the dungeon is the sewers, air ducts and back passages below the main section you've seen before. There's some kind of cool stuff, the new party member and some new enemies, a couple new guns, but nothing crazy added. It doesn't feel significantly larger than Leviathan so I'm not sure why the price increased by 50%. I'm not disappointed in it, but then my ME fanboy status is fairly well established. But if you're on the fence this may not be worth it - wait for a sale.

Generally, it was pretty lame, especially the ending. I think you can skip this one relatively safely.

I'll put my more detailed thoughts in the spoiler thread.

I draw one positive and that's that it would seem to me that the DLC likely has a couple of ways the end might play out, and that this is not decided at the end.

EDIT: Yep, there is variance in the endings. I might YouTube it though rather than play again.

Someone on the Bioware forums posted that Omega was done by the multiplayer dev team, not the same people who did the single player. If so, that explains to me why some of the combat felt like I was in a multiplayer game. I'll bet the next free MP DLC will have levels from Omega.

Arise!

I am replaying ME3, this time with the DLC. Holy crap, From Ashes contains key story points. Like, the plot makes a lot more sense with this piece of DLC than it does without it. Pretty shameful that they charged for it.

Yup. I think that was one reason the pile-on gained such enormous momentum with the ending debate, EA/Bioware had already gained quite a lot of ill will. I remember I was angry as hell at the time.

Wasn't From Ashes included if you bought the game at launch? Or was it a preorder bonus or something? I certainly don't remember paying for it...

IIRC it was included with the collector's edition and the digital deluxe edition. I know that I didn't get it with my purchase of the basic digital version of ME3.

IIRC, it came bundled with the Deluxe Edition or whatever it was called. So you did pay for it, but not as a separate charge.

Hrm, I don't recall getting the Deluxe addition, but I definitely had From Ashes. Maybe I was just a sucker. :(

What didn't you understand before that you do now?

For example,

. Not a wholly new revelation possibly, but one that is important to setting up the ending.

Be sure to bring Javik to Priority: Thessia for some interesting dialogue you won't see with any other companion.

More ending thoughts:

Re: jeffd's thoughts on the Destroy ending:

Oops, I forgot my spoiler tags! Heh....

jeff:

It makes (somewhat) more sense if you assume Space Kid isn't telling you the straight dope. Lying by omission in some places, by suggestion in others, with a side of perspective bias.

I'm moving this discussion to the spoiler thread, because this thread is still technically spoiler free!

Yeah Space Kid is not reliable.

He's an expression of the synthetic form of the leviathans.

The Dark Energy theory makes so much more cohesive sense.

Which is why Soverign said you can't possibly comprehend the reapers. In a purely arithmetic interpretation it makes for a screwed up kind of logic, like a dystopian Asimov story.

That would be a cool idea if it was somehow worked into the previous 2 games, or at least, the previous game. As it is, it's a philosophy that comes out of nowhere that is barely supported by the text of the game previously, while simultaneously ignoring all the other thematic beats the story has set up elsewhere in the world. For instance, the dark energy story with Tali, the genocide of the Rachni prior to discovery of the surviving queen, (though, yes it could be argued that the reaper knew she existed and therefore did nothing), the beats about organic lifeforms and synthetics coming together and working together. The way it's presented now, it feels as if it was cobbled together to explain away how the ending doesn't really make cohesive sense.

It doesn't because you can't possibly comprehend it is a cheap way to excuse poor writing.

Sam Hulick put up a video showing how one of the Extended Cut tracks is built up from all its various sub-parts.

The dark energy story is a plot point in favour of the dark energy theory that they didn't use, but what about the Rachni is relevant to the ending? The rachni were just one of the (probably many) ways that Sovereign tried to carve a path for himself to reach the Citadel and open the Reaper Relay, without revealing himself to galactic civilization. The ship with eggs frozen on it was just a random ancient derelict ship, that sovereign had no reason to care about since the rachni plan failed once the Krogan were uplifted.

Last DLC for ME3 announced:

http://blog.bioware.com/2013/02/21/mass-effect-3-citadel-reckoning-dlc-announced/

Single-player DLC for the Citadel, including more VO. MP DLC with new booster packs.

Ouch, $15 again? I was never expecting an epilogue DLC, but this really sounds like it would be better as an epilogue DLC with that whole squad sendoff feeling.
And I can't really see the point of customizing an apartment on the Citadel, when...

Edit: Oh snap, I didn't realize it's going to be 4GB. I'm still undecided though, even though all I really care about the series now is it's characters. So I'm probably going to get it after much whining and groaning

Anyone seeing part 2 of the content yet?

Update, part 2 of the 4 gig download went live. AND IT IS AWESOME!

If you like squad banter, you're in for a good time. If you have ever wanted to see the whole crew working at the same time, you're in luck. Then it's party time, and Tail comes armed with a straw.

If you care about the characters, you will buy this dlc. TRUST ME.

Sounds like there is loads of additional voice work from the whole crew which means more Garrus.

More Garrus is never a bad thing.

It looks dumb in a fun way, but going back to ME3 after finishing it is possibly the most unappealing gaming-related prospect I can imagine. That shit is DONE. Say what you will about that ending, but it ended with a giant capital E.

What did you want from an ending? an hour of conversation with the characters you know, and love? Some kind of party?