Mass Effect 3 Catch-All

Stele wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

Speaking of EDI:

Spoiler:

Check out her alternate outfits. Ridiculous camel toe for an anatomically incorrect machine.

Yeah in the

Spoiler:

Cerberus "Miranda" outfit... jeez.

I need a rolleyes smiley... :lol:

Oh come on that was just the unfortunate lines on her outfit! Don't dis on the catsuit!

How's the difficulty treating you guys so far? I did my last ME2 run on Veteran/Hardcore (first half/second half) and started out on Hardcore. Other then getting used to health not regenerating, I am doing fine. Not using Charge enough yet... Playing a Vanguard (like seemingly 90% of everyone else).

Scratched wrote:
Stele wrote:

And an amazing and plot integral story to go along with it.

Pretty much a must-buy DLC. But also pretty dickish of them to make it DLC in all honesty. :(

There goes the neighbourhood.

For a whole £6.19 I'm still not sure about it.

To be clear, while the character is ridiculously cool, he basically just adds context to the series... He doesn't really seem terribly important to the main storyline. At least as far as I've played. He's full of cool information but it's not like he's got the one secret that will save the galaxy. :p

Stele wrote:
nel e nel wrote:
Stele wrote:
Luggage wrote:

Either BioWare pissed of more people then I woulda thought or some {ableist slur} subset of the gamer community (e.g. 4chan) is on one of it's saddening crusades again. Just one day after release, ME3 has a Metacritic user score of 2.7/10 with over 300 negative reviews.

Glancing at the reviews, a lot of them are complaining about the day 1 DLC.

Glancing at how many are complaining about how 'conversation choices have been removed', a lot of them are also idiots.

Did they click Story instead of RPG when starting the game?

Honestly I'm a little pissed at how Bioware setup that starting menu. The choice should default to RPG. I don't know if they should list it first, or still in the middle. Or maybe have it be like the difficulty, where it's a left/right menu choice, and RPG is the default... But something to get the traditional game as the default.

Granted I think you can change it somewhere in options... but it should be there at the start, for people expecting traditional ME/Bioware gameplay.

That's my guess, but I'm pretty anal about adjusting all of my settings BEFORE I even fire up the game. I go into options first thing and set volume, difficulty, etc.

Tortoise > Hare

Another thing I noticed, a good number of the reviews I read were from people who loved ME1 but hated ME2, so I don't know why they were hoping the pendulum would swing back to the opposite side of the spectrum. Especially when the majority of changes made to ME2 were pretty well regarded.

Stele wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

Speaking of EDI:

Spoiler:

Check out her alternate outfits. Ridiculous camel toe for an anatomically incorrect machine.

Yeah in the

Spoiler:

Cerberus "Miranda" outfit... jeez.

I need a rolleyes smiley... :lol:

IMAGE(http://www.zappateers.com/bb/images/smiles/emot-barf.gif)

Wait, that's the wrong one. Let me try again.

IMAGE(http://www.zappateers.com/bb/images/smiles/emot-barf.gif)

Dammit.

I haven't started yet but skimming through the thread it seems you can change classes on an imported character and still get the bonuses. Is this correct?

Luggage wrote:

How's the difficulty treating you guys so far? I did my last ME2 run on Veteran/Hardcore (first half/second half) and started out on Hardcore. Other then getting used to health not regenerating, I am doing fine. Not using Charge enough yet... Playing a Vanguard (like seemingly 90% of everyone else).

I'm playing Soldier on my first playhthrough so the conversation will maintain my interest - if I don't play Soldier now, I'll never finish a game with it (it'll get too boring). I'm reserving Adept and Vanguard for my Action playthroughs. Right now, I'm on Hardcore and I have something like 20+ points unassigned. I die when I do stupid things, but it's not punishing, and I'm not even doing anything special, nor am I using combos.

Liara being the only biotic on board means that it's now extra special to be Adept, because you'll be the only Shepard who can do an insta-combo without the DLC. That said, Soldier is now improved because he can now combo as well! Cryo Ammo self-combo with his Concussive Shot and

Spoiler:

EDI's Incinerate.

Also, the Indra Sniper Rifle from the Alienware giveaway is frickin' awesome. It's the only fully automatic sniper rifle I've got so far - it pairs well with the burst-fire rifles.

Can we declassify, errr, the thing everyone is spoilering?

Spoiler:

EDI the fembot/squadmember

It happens early in the story and isn't too tied into the story besides in the first mission. The character is already known from ME2. I think it's a case of you can't make an omelette (discussion thread) without breaking a few eggs (minor spoilers). Obviously keep the "Luke, I am your father" stuff to the dedicated spoiler thread, but keeping that 'classified' means a weird cross between the two.

I'd wait until it has been released for a day or two worldwide. And curse you for making me click that, I hadn't gotten that far yet.

I don't think we should, Scratched. It surprised the heck out of me.

EvilDead wrote:

I haven't started yet but skimming through the thread it seems you can change classes on an imported character and still get the bonuses. Is this correct?

Yep.

Yeah and there is a spoiler thread where you can talk more freely about it.

I was skeptical at first, but after trying multiplayer ... holy heck is it fun!

I'm still on blackout, so this is a write-only comment -- I haven't read the thread at all. But I wanted to make the comment that quests seem rather buggy and very incompletely done, and that the overall game feels rushed. It's lacking some polish.

There's lots of quests where, for instance, you need to find Object A and deliver it to Person B (Stepan Fetchit quests, basically), but they don't update when you get the item. So you can't tell if you should be searching, or delivering. And quests SEEM to be popping back up as incomplete AFTER the item delivery. I am, however, not entirely certain, because there are a LOT of those quests, and I could easily be confusing some.

And there's a fairly bad bug on the Normandy, where if you stand behind Joker, you can get stuck in the deck plates and be completely unable to move. I was able to unstick myself by saving and reloading, but it's happened twice now.

The game doesn't quite feel all the way done to me yet.

edit: Oh, I had a HUGE problem in one mission, where enemies simply stopped spawning, and I was unable to complete it. I had to restart the entire mission from scratch. That was very frustrating.

Malor:

Both ME2 and ME1 were the same way. I wouldn't say that this was rushed anymore than Skyrim was rushed - that's just the level of polish Bioware thinks is appropriate. They're not perfect, but kind of middle-of-the-pack that way. Really puts a perspective on the polish of Nintendo and Blizzard releases.

Well, I don't remember having any problems with ME2. I put a ridiculous amount of time into that game, and I don't, offhand, remember any bugs at all.

I'm seeing quite numerous polish issues in this one. I think it needed more cooking time.

Having played through almost all of ME2 in the run-up to ME3, I can say that there are a few bugs like those you're describing. A couple of places where you need to kill all enemies to proceed, but not all enemies spawn.

Malor:

It's a matter of personal experience. I haven't encountered any bugs in ME3. Does that mean anything?

Of course it doesn't. Or at least, it's not an end-all experience to judge the game's QA by. Neither is yours. Bioware's kind of notorious for polish issues, as I mentioned. The fact that you never encountered any in ME2 doesn't mean that they weren't there.

Luggage wrote:

How's the difficulty treating you guys so far? I did my last ME2 run on Veteran/Hardcore (first half/second half) and started out on Hardcore. Other then getting used to health not regenerating, I am doing fine. Not using Charge enough yet... Playing a Vanguard (like seemingly 90% of everyone else).

Coming fresh from honing my skills in ME2, I started out ME3 on Hardcore, and about 10-12 hours in, it seems pitched about right. I've died in a couple of places, but never took more than 2 retries to get through the sticking point.

I imported my femShep to see how bad it was... surprisingly her face looked very good. I had to tweak hair color one notch over to match ME2, but otherwise good. Of course her face got a total redesign when I started ME2, so those imports seem to be faring better than straight ME1>2>3 faces.

Although I was shocked that I didn't get to respend all of my points like I did on my first Shep. Apparently if you don't change classes, they give you a ton of preset points already. That was pretty disappointing, as some people have mentioned already tech armor isn't quite as nice this time around, and I certainly wouldn't have dumped 15 early points into it. I guess once I hit my ship I can respec, but still I'm stuck this way for a bit.

In interesting news, it offered me all of the bonus powers I've already unlocked on my first playthrough to go ahead and take from the start. But that's just another reason I'd love to have every single skill point available. Oh well, I guess I can suffer for a couple missions.

Probably get back to my main run for now. But I was just curious after so many problems people have had, to go ahead and import and see how bad she looked through the first few scenes. Now the only thing I'm mad about is that I can't steal default femShep's hair.

Stele wrote:

Although I was shocked that I didn't get to respend all of my points like I did on my first Shep. Apparently if you don't change classes, they give you a ton of preset points already. That was pretty disappointing, as some people have mentioned already tech armor isn't quite as nice this time around, and I certainly wouldn't have dumped 15 early points into it. I guess once I hit my ship I can respec, but still I'm stuck this way for a bit.

You can solve that by using the "respend talent points" feature in Normandy's lab in ME2 and then just exit out of the talent screen with all points unspent. Save the game again and then just import that save game when creating your ME3 Shep based on a ME2 save.

Malor wrote:

I'm still on blackout, so this is a write-only comment -- I haven't read the thread at all. But I wanted to make the comment that quests seem rather buggy and very incompletely done, and that the overall game feels rushed. It's lacking some polish.

In the first mission after evacuating the earth, one of my squad members would get caught up on the geometry. Wouldnt climb over the railing, but would just move their hand up and down as if they were starting the animation. I basically had to get to the next cutscene before they would respawn.

indy wrote:
Malor wrote:

I'm still on blackout, so this is a write-only comment -- I haven't read the thread at all. But I wanted to make the comment that quests seem rather buggy and very incompletely done, and that the overall game feels rushed. It's lacking some polish.

In the first mission after evacuating the earth, one of my squad members would get caught up on the geometry. Wouldnt climb over the railing, but would just move their hand up and down as if they were starting the animation. I basically had to get to the next cutscene before they would respawn.

I have not had any of these problems, but I am a console plebian.

indy wrote:
Malor wrote:

I'm still on blackout, so this is a write-only comment -- I haven't read the thread at all. But I wanted to make the comment that quests seem rather buggy and very incompletely done, and that the overall game feels rushed. It's lacking some polish.

In the first mission after evacuating the earth, one of my squad members would get caught up on the geometry. Wouldnt climb over the railing, but would just move their hand up and down as if they were starting the animation. I basically had to get to the next cutscene before they would respawn.

Luckily that should only have taken 2-3 minutes.

That's my only gripe so far, control was taken away from me way too much during the first 2 hours.

i38warhawk wrote:

So I went back to the Citadel to complete rapidly expanding series of quests that seem to be taking place there. When I get there I keep getting more quests by walking by dudeds. Anyway now I have at least five quest that I have no clue how to continue. Like maybe I missed a line of dialogue or something, but I found myself hopelessly running around the Citadel waiting for the quest marker thing to show up when I came within range of an important character. One quest tells me to find a character in the Presidium Embassies, but the elevator (which is instant now, thank you SSD) goes to the Citadel Embassies (which only seems to house the Human Embassy) or the Presidium Commons. So where are the Presidium Embassies. My Shepard spent a sh*tload of time in the Citadel, I shouldn't be f*cking lost trying to find some dude for a quest.

Did you figure this one out yet? I was assuming that the erea was just not available yet. I have all sorts of missions now from listening to people, its starting to feel like the side quests I was getting in Skyrim, except more issues figuring out what to do.

Luggage wrote:

That's my only gripe so far, control was taken away from me way too much during the first 2 hours.

I'm not sure how I feel about how ME3 ramps up. It's quite complex compared to ME1/2, there's a lot of information that it has to give you, and by the time it had I still felt like it had dumped it on me.

I bought a bunch of crap from the vending machine in the hospital of the citidel, was it a waste of money or was anything useful?

I've had the game unlocked, but haven't been able to play until last night cause I was finishing up my ME2 playthrough. And when I did get to play it was rather late so, I just wanted to start the game up and see if I could import my character and maybe watch the opening scenes. Couple of nits to pick:

1. That's not my Shepard. I was able to import my character without a problem (have seen some folks having a hard time and having to create folders and whatnot...not cool, Bioware), but my face (like everyone) didn't make the cut. I realize this sounds like entitled nerd-rage, but when one of the biggest talking points about your game is how you can carry your character through the series, not having the models transfer seems like huge blunder. The hair is different. The face is strange. The voice is the same, but every time I look at the screen I get a bit of disconnect. I feel like I'm gonna be spending more time this afternoon fiddling with Shep's face than actually playing the game.

2. It's dark. Not the story, mind. The first scene almost all the characters have dark blobs for faces. One in particular walked up and was like "hey, I'm Ashley" and I was like "why do you have black paint smeared all over your face, Ash?" Tried the brightness settings, but it says "make sure you can see the N and the 7" in the dialogue box for that setting and no matter how much I fiddle, I can't see the 7. I read online that I might have to fiddle with the config utility (which is buried in the ME3 folder...where's the little popup when you start the game giving you the "play" option and "configuration" option and so forth like ME2 had?). Looks like more fiddling this afternoon.

3. The opening scene did not flow like it did in ME2. There was an obvious continuity going from ME1 to ME2. I ended ME1 storming off the Citadel, going to find the Reapers. I start ME2 on the Normandy "looking for the Reapers" and then ATTACK! I loved that opening scene. Got me right into the game. ME3? Um, where am I? What am I doing? Last I remember in ME2 I was on the bridge of the Normandy hanging out with my crew. Now I'm an Alliance office worker on Earth? Huh?

That said, I can't wait to get into the game and finish up the story. I've been looking forward to this ever since my first playthrough of ME1.

I ran into the gay male crew member. Kind of him to almost immediately identify himself as such. "Hi, I'm Lt. Cortez, and I'm in charge of piloting, shuttle maintenance, requisitions, and hot male-on-male action." (-:

mwdowns wrote:

3. The opening scene did not flow like it did in ME2. There was an obvious continuity going from ME1 to ME2. I ended ME1 storming off the Citadel, going to find the Reapers. I start ME2 on the Normandy "looking for the Reapers" and then ATTACK! I loved that opening scene. Got me right into the game. ME3? Um, where am I? What am I doing? Last I remember in ME2 I was on the bridge of the Normandy hanging out with my crew. Now I'm an Alliance office worker on Earth? Huh?

Erm- they address this about two minutes into the game: (spoilered for me2 plot details)

Spoiler:

You're under a sort of house arrest for blowing up an entire solar system during the me2 "arrival" dlc. The Alliance military doesn't know what to do with you... You basically killed millions of people, but are also responsible for saving the galaxy several times and being the only person they have with experience in fighting reapers

.

hbi2k wrote:

Did you not play the Arrival DLC, mwdowns? I could see that whole scene feeling a bunch more disjointed if you didn't, depending on how it plays out without it.

So far, I'm pretty pleased with how that and Shadow Broker have tied into the story (played both of them)

Yeah... Both the Shadow Broker and the Arrival dlc reflect heavily upon the plot in ME3- I can imagine a few things may be confusing in ME3 to those who haven't played them.